ABSTRACT
The ethic of individualism in a paradoxical way contributes to the situation, since children become overvalued in a culture where each person feels so much on her own. For a woman, the view may be especially compelling, since she carried child within her for nine months; but for both men and women, there is a tendency to seize on having a child as a support in what can feel like a lonely culture. To some degree, children are seen as possessions of parents, and there is a general reluctance in the culture to interfere in this relationship, although there are many forces working in opposite directions as well. In order to state a rule about studying a parent must be able to step back from an overidentified relationship with child, step back from feeling as though a huge life drama hangs in the balance, to see that all she can do is set a rule and try to enforce it.
