Because the idea of scraping bare my soul in childrearing terrifies me, and because they’ve had a full, glorious decade of relative child-free living to compare the early spit-up and poop drenched days with, I asked my parents on the occasion of their 30th wedding anniversary to honestly tell me which bits of their marriage were the best. I fully expected to hear about all the fun they’ve had since I’ve been gone, but they surprised me with this instead:

We have had some wonderful times in our marriage, but since you asked, the best times always invariably involved time spent with you. We were young doting parents who read books on parenting and tried (foolishly, we might add) to implement all the recommendations. Except when Dad would forget to keep to the script and would lose his cool. But we learnt the value of having fun and spending quality time with our child, and boy have you returned the favour by making us immeasurably proud.

Reassuringly good to know.