From
The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family, by Dan Savage, chapter 14 ("Two Moments of Transcendant Bliss"):
For children, promises are a deadly serious business because it's all they really have. They don't own anything, they don't control anything. The promises their parents make them are all they've got. And while no parent can keep every promise he makes - no child can either - your credibility as a parent rests on a promises-kept-to-promises-broken ranking that your child carries around in his head. Keep more than you break, and you're a parent in good standing. Break more than you keep and you're in trouble. It took me several re-reads of that paragraph before I could continue reading, through my tears. Hmmmm, think I've got parental issues?!? ;-)
Anyway, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Savage is in, well, savagely good form here -- it's literally laugh-out-loud funny in places. And even if (unlike me) you find his weekly column rakish, offensive, or juvenile, I guarantee you'll enjoy this book. Hell,
emboline told me as such ("I find his writing offensive," she said), and then she sat across from me at Last Drop engrossed in it for at least half an hour.