Parenting & Family Quote by Garrison Keillor

Keillor’s line flatters the exhausted caretaker without sentimentalizing the kid. It admits the daily indignity of raising children: you are both omnipresent and irrelevant, “hovering” on the edges of their worlds, trying not to be seen seeing them. That verb choice nails the paradox of modern parenting as a kind of disciplined surveillance. You watch so they can feel un-watched; you intervene so they can believe they did it themselves. The “averting our eyes” is almost comic in its self-consciousness, like adults pretending not to care while caring as a full-time job.

The sentence also performs a quiet bait-and-switch. It begins as reassurance (“Nothing…is ever wasted”), then immediately supplies the evidence that would normally disprove it: they don’t notice, they don’t thank you. Keillor anticipates the reader’s grievance and folds it into the comfort. The point isn’t that children are ungrateful; it’s that gratitude is the wrong metric. Parenting is an investment with no quarterly report.

Context matters: Keillor’s Midwestern, humane sensibility often elevates ordinary decency over grand gestures. Here he’s arguing for an ethic of uncredited labor. The subtext is cultural, too: in an era obsessed with outcomes and recognition, he sanctifies the invisible work - lunches packed, rides given, limits enforced - by insisting its payoff is delayed, indirect, and still real. The comfort is earned because it doesn’t pretend the work feels good; it insists it matters anyway.