An Antidote to the Anxiety About Imperfection: Parenting Advice from Mister Rogers

“It’s part of being human to fall short of that total acceptance and ultimate understanding — and often far short.”

Being responsible for ourselves, knowing our own wants and meeting them, is difficult enough — so difficult that the notion of being responsible for anyone else, knowing anyone else’s innermost desires and slaking them, seems like a superhuman feat. And yet the entire history of our species rests upon it — the scores of generations of parents who, despite the near-impossibility of...