But in our quest as adults to experience the life we want we are not giving our children the life they need. It is impossible to raise children well on the basis of the ideology of self-fulfillment. Children need us to be committed more to them than to ourselves. They need our time, our energy, our money, our attention, our discipline. They need sufficient family stability for life to make sense to them.
Caring adults are the scaffolding upon which children stand to construct their worlds.
From that scaffolding they launch into the world to become adults in their own right. But not enough of us are able or willing to be that scaffolding anymore. We're too busy building our own worlds and our own lives. So our children are raising themselves. And children can't do that well.