"Children use all their wiles to get their way with adults. Adults do the same with children"
About this Quote
Cooley’s line lands like a deadpan reversal: the cliché is that children are little schemers and adults are the rational referees. He flips the camera. If kids “use all their wiles,” it’s because they’re powerless; charm, tantrums, and strategic innocence are the only currencies available. The sting comes in the second sentence, where adulthood is unmasked as just a higher-budget version of the same game.
The specific intent is less to scold children than to puncture adult self-mythology. We like to imagine maturity as a graduation from manipulation into reason. Cooley suggests it’s mostly a change in tactics and legitimacy. Adults cajole, bargain, guilt-trip, withhold, praise, threaten, “explain” - and call it parenting. The subtext is that authority doesn’t abolish persuasion; it simply gets to define which forms of persuasion count as normal. A child’s tantrum is “behavior.” An adult’s conditional love is “discipline.” Same impulse, better branding.
Context matters: Cooley’s aphoristic style thrives on moral symmetry, the kind that makes you laugh and then feel implicated. Written in a late-20th-century moment increasingly skeptical of institutions and public narratives, the line echoes that broader suspicion: power always tells a story about itself. Domestic life becomes a micro-politics, with children and adults bargaining over attention, freedom, and identity.
It works because it refuses sentimentality about either side. Instead of elevating childhood innocence or adult wisdom, Cooley gives us a quieter, colder truth: everyone negotiates; only some people get to call it guidance.
The specific intent is less to scold children than to puncture adult self-mythology. We like to imagine maturity as a graduation from manipulation into reason. Cooley suggests it’s mostly a change in tactics and legitimacy. Adults cajole, bargain, guilt-trip, withhold, praise, threaten, “explain” - and call it parenting. The subtext is that authority doesn’t abolish persuasion; it simply gets to define which forms of persuasion count as normal. A child’s tantrum is “behavior.” An adult’s conditional love is “discipline.” Same impulse, better branding.
Context matters: Cooley’s aphoristic style thrives on moral symmetry, the kind that makes you laugh and then feel implicated. Written in a late-20th-century moment increasingly skeptical of institutions and public narratives, the line echoes that broader suspicion: power always tells a story about itself. Domestic life becomes a micro-politics, with children and adults bargaining over attention, freedom, and identity.
It works because it refuses sentimentality about either side. Instead of elevating childhood innocence or adult wisdom, Cooley gives us a quieter, colder truth: everyone negotiates; only some people get to call it guidance.
Quote Details
| Topic | Parenting |
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