Something peculiar has happened between parents and children since I was a child half a century ago: children have become no less than precious while parents have become their abject slaves. I am exaggerating a bit, but not much. Although I did not grow up in a traditional family, and although I was a single child, which was not typical of my surroundings at the time, I could not even imagine all the attention parents now lavish upon their children as a matter of course. When I had to eat, I ate. When I had to study, I studied, or at least pretended I was studying. And when I had to go to sleep, I went to sleep.

Of course, the reason for this momentous change is that children have become ever more scarce and parents have gotten ever older. After World War II many children were born, but their numbers were still puny by comparison with my parents’ generation. Having between ten and twenty children was normal for their parents, and it was also normal to lose a half of that number. Losing a child was horrendous, but far from devastating. The next one was on the way soon enough, and that was that. Nobody talked much about such things, let alone ended up in a lunatic asylum for the pains they had suffered.

By the time I came to America, the change of attitude toward children had already taken place there, while Yugoslavia was still someplace between the two worlds. For the first time in my life I saw children bossing their parents. And being rather cunning about it, too. In America I also discovered the other side of the same coin—parents left by the children to fend for themselves as best they could in their dotage. That was unimaginable in Yugoslavia of my youth.

Much of what I found in America regarding parents and children revolted me. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why I did my best to help my parents in every way imaginable, especially after Yugoslavia started breaking apart. They did not ask for any assistance, material or otherwise, until the situation there turned quite nasty, but I always felt only joy when there was something I could do for them. Nothing that came up during those difficult years was ever a problem for me. On the contrary, it was always a joy. I am not boasting, of course. I am only happy that this was so.

Perhaps American attitudes toward children revolted me enough to become rather hard toward my own children, as well. My love and care for them was never in question, and I spent a lot of time with them, but I staunchly resisted falling into the trap of parental slavery that I witnessed all around me. As I am getting longer in the tooth, I do not expect anything from my children, either, and I delight in everything they surprise me with. But I certainly do not feel any pull toward overindulging them in any fashion. Deep in my heart, I feel that everything is up to them now. I have done my bit already.