Parenting & Family Quote by Erik H. Erikson

Erikson smuggles a quiet revolution into a sentence that sounds like common sense. Babies, he argues, are not passive clay waiting for parental sculpting; they are tiny social forces who reorganize the adults around them. The phrasing flips the usual hierarchy - “control” and “bring up” are verbs we reserve for parents - and that reversal is the point. In Erikson’s world, development is not a one-way transfer of wisdom from competent grown-ups to blank infants. It’s a feedback loop: the child’s needs, temperament, and sheer presence train the family into new roles.

The subtext is an attack on the fantasy of parental omnipotence. If the family “brings up baby by being brought up by him,” then parenting is less mastery than adaptation. Sleep schedules, finances, intimacy, even identity get renegotiated in response to a creature who can’t speak but can absolutely dictate. Erikson’s insight lands because it names what many parents feel but are culturally discouraged from saying: the baby is running a kind of household re-education program.

Context matters here. Erikson’s psychosocial theory emphasizes that human growth happens inside relationships and institutions, not in isolation. Early life isn’t just about feeding and safety; it’s where trust, autonomy, and the first templates for social life get formed. The line also gestures toward a more humane view of family power: influence flows both ways, and the “patient” in the nursery is also an agent shaping the system. That’s a surprisingly modern idea, especially in a culture that still treats “good parenting” like a solo performance.