Children can trigger deep shame precisely because their demands are childish

Evidence

Both Linda and I live on the brink of chaos, or the feeling of chaos: everything can fall apart at any moment and we have to force ourselves to come to terms with the demands of a life with small children. … However, this constant improvisation increases the significance of the moment, which of course then becomes extremely eventful since nothing about it is automatic, and if our lives feel good, which naturally they do at times, there is a great sense of togetherness and a correspondingly intense happiness. … The corrosive part, of course, is the awareness that being nice to them is not of the slightest help when I am in the thick of it, dragged down into a quagmire of tears and frustration. And, once in the quagmire, each further action only serves to plunge me deeper. And at least as corrosive is the awareness that I am dealing with children. That it is children who are dragging me down. There is something deeply shameful about this. — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 102

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle: the shame specific to losing one’s temper with small children, where the very defenselessness of the target amplifies self-contempt.
• XREF: connects to: Actions driven by desperation can lead to lifelong shame. — Crews, Harry, A childhood the biography of a place, 258; Children’s questioning of unjustified authority is inherently punk — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 350

Broader Connections

• Actions driven by desperation can lead to lifelong shame. #expands (0.35) — Crews, Harry, A childhood the biography of a place, 258