Any half-decent parent listens to their children. They tease out their concerns, think about their emotional needs. They ask their child what they want and try to help them work out their preferences.

Some decision making – ‘I want to have a sleepover’ – will be entirely driven by what children tell parents they want. Before making other, bigger choices that affect their children's lives parents will think deeply about a number of factors that could influence the long-term outcome, including some that a child will not have considered for themselves. Yes, of course they will always have to weigh their child's interests and desires against competing priorities, such as the impact on their other children or family finances, before deciding on a course of action. And yes, the outcome might not please a child – indeed they might be angry and resistant – but typically parents will have actively elicited their child's opinion and taken it into account. As a result, over time, that child comes to realise that while their views don't always win out, their opinions, needs and desires can and do influence what happens. They have agency in their own lives. And so they come to understand that they matter.

Thinking about their child's needs and wants underscores parents’ lives from the moment a baby is born. Parents spend untold time and mental energy thinking about and discussing their children: for parents in a couple it's often a standing joke that a night out almost invariably ends up in conversation about their kids: what is their eldest troubled by, what's the best way to help the one who's having a wobble? That conversation will be informed by a deep, nuanced knowledge of their children and by the ongoing conversations they have had with their child that give parents insight into how they’re feeling. A child who lives at home will be overwhelmingly likely to have at least one adult in their family who spends a substantial part of their waking life – and sometimes sleepless nights – thinking about their needs, considering what they want, managing as sensitively as possible competing family interests, and weighing up what to do for the best. Certainly parents don't always get it right, but the focus on children by most parents is intense, enquiring, committed, flexible – and enduring.