“I think on the whole if you could choose your parents. . . we would rather have a mother who felt a sense of guilt – at any rate who felt responsible, and felt that if things went wrong it was probably her fault – we’d rather have that than a mother who immediately turned to an outside thing to explain everything. . . and didn’t take responsibility for anything.”
– Donald Winnicott.
Why does it have to be one or the other. For me, the ideal mother realizes that things sometimes go wrong and the source for that might be
a) she herself,
b) her child(ren),
c) someone or something else
In the first two cases, something can usually be done to better the situation but in the case of c) sometimes something can be done about it and sometimes there’s nothing to be done.
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Mike’s mother just used to let him play outside, as did mine. Neither were particularly involved in our lives.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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