A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.

Colette’s aphorism suggests that an upbringing marked by ease and emotional security can leave a person untrained for the frictions of adult life—competition, disappointment, manipulation, and the ordinary abrasions of intimacy. “Poor preparation” does not condemn happiness itself; it points to a mismatch between sheltered early experience and the complex, often unsentimental realities of “human contacts.” The line reflects Colette’s recurrent interest in how desire, power, and social performance shape relationships, and how innocence—whether sexual, social, or psychological—can be a disadvantage when one must negotiate others’ motives. It also implies that hardship can function as a kind of education in realism and self-protection.