Parenting impotence is hard to see because the power that parents used to possess was not conscious of itself. It was automatic, invisible, a built-in component of family life and of tradition-based cultures. By and large, the parents of yesteryear could take their power for granted because it was usually sufficient for the task at hand. For reasons we have begun to explore, this is no longer the case. If one does not understand the source of one’s ease, one cannot appreciate the root of one’s difficulty. Owing to our collective ignorance of attachment, our difficulty recognizing parental
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