I think all parents, save those who might be sociopaths or narcissists, are great worriers. The act of creating something unutterably new occasions great joy, seen as it is through the unforgiving lens of modern child-rearing. But it augurs in a lifetime of worry. Initially, this as all about the welfare of the new-born, the health, growth and development of the young child.

Somewhere in the teen years this seguys alarmingly into an array of cares about the uncontrollable. Parenting becomes a kind of crisis management, worse for some than others, but often as not tilting towards looming icebergs. I guess most come through this, though a few unlucky ones go under. There is simply no way of telling how a child might turn out, and childhood being the extended phenomena that it now is, there is not always an obvious point at which one might say, 'the ship has sailed at last.' For the ship may return to port at any time, apparently.

It appears that we live in a more dangerous world, and though I have challenged this perception in previous posts, the obstacle course that is the passage to adulthood is far less predictable than it was when I was a kid. Things are much faster and yet more temporary, there is an air of the contingent about matters that might once have seemed more stable, more permanent. I know that change is all and is an underlying condition of reality, but the stripping bare of necessary illusions strikes me as an opening for mental illness or worse.

Glad to be proven wrong though.