But kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run.

Kingsolver frames parenting as a paradoxical vocation: success is measured by a child’s growing independence rather than by continued reliance on the parent. The line suggests that good care is ultimately self-effacing—teaching competence, judgment, and resilience so that the parent becomes less central over time. It also gently counters possessive or identity-defining models of parenthood, implying that clinging, control, or over-involvement can be a sign of doing the job poorly. In the “long run,” the parent’s reward is not being needed, but being able to watch a capable adult step into the world.