In this era when children symbolize emotional fulfillment rather than free household labor, we cling to the belief that if we just do everything right — starting with what a woman eats before she’s even pregnant — we can protect them from pain or failure or sadness. We can make them perfect and, in the process, prove ourselves beyond reproach. But of course, that control is illusory: even if it were possible to do everything “right,” it could still come out wrong.
I think this applies to our own health just as much as it does to how parents treat the health of their children. Just like margarine was once the healthy alternative and is now found to be worse than butter, who knows what other things we’re eating/using now as the healthy choice that we’ll find is actually harmful in a few years. Yet, what other choice do we have but to follow whatever we know now?
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