Kids are a great analogy. You want your kids to grow up, and you don’t want your kids to grow up. You want your kids to become independent of you, but it’s also a parent’s worst nightmare: That they won’t need you. It’s like the real tragedy of parenting.

Safran frames parenting as an emotional paradox: the very goal of raising a child—helping them become self-sufficient—also threatens the parent’s sense of purpose and connection. The “tragedy” is not that independence is bad, but that love and caretaking create a role the parent cannot keep forever. By calling kids an “analogy,” he also hints at broader attachments (to partners, projects, even identity): we nurture what we love toward autonomy, yet fear the moment our presence becomes unnecessary. The quote captures how maturity and separation can be a form of success that still feels like loss.