When parents (married or single) are fulfilled, pursuing careers and interests they love, and are offering meaningful service to their community, it makes a remarkable difference to their children. Under these (admittedly) ideal conditions, childhood can be fully childhood. It can be carefree, safe, and free of the anxieties that come rushing into a child (which sometimes never abate) when a parent refuses to meet the adult demands of his or her role.

It is an overburdened child who must do all he or she can to keep mom sober or keep dad at work  — who must do all he or she can to make mom or dad into an adult. It is the anxious child who must take on parental responsibilities, who must function on a parent’s behalf when the parent abdicates the role.

Childhood is appropriately prolonged (as opposed to inappropriately truncated) when mother or father takes adulthood with the dedication adulthood deserves.

When parents take full responsibility for themselves, dedicating themselves to exercising their skills and callings within their greater community, and pursuing and enjoying mutual, respectful, and equal relationships with other adults, childhood, for the children of such adults, can run it full span, and the children can be appropriately oblivious to the pressures of life in the adult world.