Parenting & Family Quote by Fran Lebowitz

Lebowitz takes a scalpel to a sacred modern ritual: the boast disguised as parental pride. The first sentence lands like friendly small talk, then curdles into accusation. "I never met anyone" is classic overstatement, a comic blanket that covers everyone in the room. The target isn't children; it's adults who insist their kid is exceptional, as if intelligence were both hereditary and proof of moral worth. She’s mocking how status-seeking migrates into the family, turning a child into a résumé line.

The second sentence is where the joke becomes social critique. "What happens to these children" pretends to be a sincere question, but it’s really an indictment of magical thinking. If every child is a genius, adulthood should be a golden age of brilliance. Instead, we’re surrounded by ordinary people doing ordinary things, many of them still convinced they’re secretly extraordinary. The implication: the "smart child" narrative doesn’t predict future achievement so much as it preserves adult ego. It also nods to a culture that confuses being praised with being educated, and being labeled "gifted" with being prepared.

Context matters: Lebowitz comes out of New York’s late-20th-century literati, where wit is a weapon and self-deception is a public utility. In an era of competitive parenting, school rankings, and curated identities, her line reads even sharper: everyone wants credit for a prodigy; no one wants to reckon with the banal fact that most prodigies grow up to be people.