Parenting & Family Quote by Bobby McFerrin

McFerrin slips a quiet provocation into what sounds like standard parent-talk: being a “good example” isn’t the hard part. Liking children is. The first sentence nods to the familiar cultural script of adulthood as moral performance - parents modeling patience, work ethic, kindness. Then he pivots from duty to disposition. “Responsibility” is public-facing; “like” is private, bodily, emotional. That shift matters because it exposes a modern hypocrisy: we build policies, schedules, and identities around kids while treating them as logistical burdens, status accessories, or future adults who only become interesting later.

The subtext is less sentimental than corrective. McFerrin isn’t asking for constant adoration; he’s suggesting that adulthood is impoverished if it can’t tolerate - even enjoy - the messiness, repetition, noise, and unfiltered need that children bring. In a culture that prizes productivity and self-optimization, kids are the anti-app: they waste time, demand presence, refuse efficiency. To “like children” is to accept a different tempo and to find meaning in it.

There’s also a musician’s worldview here. McFerrin’s art leans on play, call-and-response, improvisation - the very modes children live in naturally. He’s hinting that fulfillment comes less from control and more from participation. The line doubles as a critique of performative parenting and a defense of joy as an adult competence, not a childish luxury.