Seeing to it that a youngster grows up believing not just in the here and now but also in the grand maybes of life guarantees that some small yet crucial part of him remains forever a child.

I've begun to appreciate the generational patterns that ripple out from our lives like stones dropped in water, pulsing outward even after we are gone. Although we have but one childhood, we relive it first through our children's and then our grandchildren's eyes.

Single mothers have as much to teach their children as married mothers and as much love to share--maybe more. Yet their motives are often labeled selfish and single-minded--never mind all the babies brought into the world to snag husbands, save faltering marriages or produce heirs.

The truth is, no matter how trying they become, babies two and under don't have the ability to make moral choices, so they can't be bad. That category only exists in the adult mind.