If there is anything we wish to change in our children

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All advice that pertains to raising

children betrays more or less clearly

the numerous, variously clothed

needs of the adult…. 

Among the adult’s true motives

we find:

~ The unconscious need to pass

    on to others the humiliation

    one has undergone oneself.

~ The need to find an outlet for

    repressed affect.

~ The need to possess and have

    at one’s disposal a vital object

    to manipulate.

~ Self-defense: i.e., the need to

    idealize one’s childhood and

    one’s parents by dogmatically

    applying the parents’ pedagogical

    principles to one’s own children.

~ Fear of freedom.

~ Fear of the reappearance of

    what one has repressed,

    which one reencounters in

    one’s child and must try to

    stamp out, having killed it

    in oneself earlier.

~ Revenge for the pain one

    has suffered.

Since at least one of the points

enumerated here is present in

everyone’s upbringing, the child-

rearing process is at best suitable

for making “good” pedagogues

out of its objects…. 

When children are trained, they

learn how to train others in turn.

~ Alice Miller, For your own good (1990)