"Parents are often so busy with the physical rearing of children that they miss the glory of parenthood, just as the grandeur of the trees is lost when raking leaves"
About this Quote
Cox lands the knife softly: the tasks we call “good parenting” can become the very thing that blocks us from experiencing it. The line turns on an everyday image - raking leaves - and uses its mundanity as a trap. You can feel the ache in the metaphor: you’re doing something responsible, seasonal, even virtuous, and it still pulls your gaze downward. The trees are right there, towering, alive, doing the silent work that made the mess in the first place. Parenthood, she suggests, has the same optical illusion. Diapers, lunches, carpools, homework - the leaf pile grows, and the horizon shrinks.
The specific intent isn’t to romanticize neglect or sneer at labor; it’s to re-rank attention. “Physical rearing” names the measurable parts of caregiving: fed, clothed, scheduled, safe. “Glory” is a deliberately old-fashioned word that refuses to sound like a productivity metric. It’s the excess: the strange awe of watching a person become themselves, the fleeting intimacy, the daily comedy. Cox’s subtext is that modern parenting can become managerial, not because parents are shallow, but because the culture rewards visible effort and punishes stillness. You can’t post “I noticed my kid’s emerging mind today” the way you can post a packed lunch.
Context matters: as a writer born in 1925, Cox straddled eras where childrearing shifted from communal rhythms and looser supervision toward expert-driven, safety-saturated, time-squeezed parenting. The metaphor offers permission to look up - not away from responsibility, but through it - and to remember that the point of raking isn’t the lawn; it’s living in a world with trees.
The specific intent isn’t to romanticize neglect or sneer at labor; it’s to re-rank attention. “Physical rearing” names the measurable parts of caregiving: fed, clothed, scheduled, safe. “Glory” is a deliberately old-fashioned word that refuses to sound like a productivity metric. It’s the excess: the strange awe of watching a person become themselves, the fleeting intimacy, the daily comedy. Cox’s subtext is that modern parenting can become managerial, not because parents are shallow, but because the culture rewards visible effort and punishes stillness. You can’t post “I noticed my kid’s emerging mind today” the way you can post a packed lunch.
Context matters: as a writer born in 1925, Cox straddled eras where childrearing shifted from communal rhythms and looser supervision toward expert-driven, safety-saturated, time-squeezed parenting. The metaphor offers permission to look up - not away from responsibility, but through it - and to remember that the point of raking isn’t the lawn; it’s living in a world with trees.
Quote Details
| Topic | Parenting |
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