The other day, we caught up with a young couple, first-time parents to an absolutely adorable child. As we swapped parenting stories across a gap of several decades, the conversation turned to the little one starting pre-school. The young mother was already anxious about leaving her baby in the care of strangers, wondering whether the child would settle, feel safe or wonder why the two people who had always been there were suddenly nowhere in sight.

Her worry was familiar. When children are small, we anticipate their needs, protect them from discomfort and try to make the world feel safe. Then comes the moment when we must hand them over to that very world, hoping it will be kind, despite knowing from experience that the world has never been particularly committed to the job. For the child, it is a first small step away from home. For the parent, it can feel like the beginning of losing the ability to make everything all right.

As we spoke, we found ourselves thinking about how early the business of letting go begins, and how reluctant we are to take to it. We want our children to grow, explore and become independent. We simply prefer that they do so without frightening us, disappointing us or making choices that require a family meeting.

Kahlil Gibran’s words came to mind: “Your children are not your children, they merely come through you.” Most parents would agree. Some might even frame the quotation and hang it in the living room or nursery as a daily reminder. It is a lovely sentiment when a child is small enough to be carried on one’s hip. It becomes considerably harder to practise when that same child develops opinions, questions family wisdom and announces an ambition that cannot be explained to relatives in one sentence.

And so begins the business of aiming, encouraging, worrying and, when all else fails, managing.

Warren Buffett popularised the expression ovarian lottery to describe the accident of birth. None of us chooses our parents, genes, family circumstances or the world into which we are born. Before we make a single decision, life has already dealt us a hand. Some children grow up surrounded by encouragement and opportunity. Others must overcome obstacles before they can even begin to compete. The lottery does not determine everything, but it influences what we consider possible and how much room we have to make mistakes.

We acknowledge this readily enough when discussing someone else’s success. When reviewing our own, however, we prefer a more heroic account. We worked hard, made sacrifices and persevered. All true, perhaps. But a supportive family, a timely opportunity or the freedom to fail without financial ruin may also have helped. Recognising luck does not diminish hard work. It simply saves us from behaving as though we personally invented success.

Naturally, parents want to improve the odds for their children. It is a noble ambition, until it acquires a timetable, a budget and a spreadsheet.

We want our children to have opportunities we missed, avoid mistakes we made and achieve things we could only dream of. We choose schools, arrange classes, nurture talents and monitor progress. There are activity schedules, development milestones and enough extracurricular commitments to make a corporate manager ask for a day off. Childhood begins to resemble a business project, complete with targets, performance reviews and a management team that has no intention of resigning.

The child, meanwhile, may simply want to play with a cardboard box.

Consider the child of exceptionally accomplished parents. Their careers are impressive, their sacrifices have paid off, and family conversations contain a steady supply of stories about hard work and achievement. The child is told that anything is possible, until they discover that some possibilities receive considerably more applause than others. Certain universities command respect, particular professions attract admiration, and an unconventional career choice can produce a silence usually reserved for bad news.

Nobody needs to say, “You must do as well as us.” Children are remarkably good at reading the room. They notice which achievements make their parents beam and which choices require lengthy explanations. Parents may call it inspiration; the child may experience it as an examination for which the syllabus changes every time they think they have prepared.

What if the child would rather earn a modest living doing work they enjoy than spend their life chasing a prestigious title? The parents may see wasted potential. The child may see the possibility of sleeping peacefully on Sunday night. Both may have a point, although only one is likely to have a presentation ready to defend it.

A favourable start is not a set of instructions. The ovarian lottery cannot dictate temperament, interests or the kind of life that will make a child happy. Nor does a difficult beginning make failure inevitable. People surprise us, often by refusing to become the people everyone confidently predicted they would be. This can be inconvenient for families that have already discussed the child’s future at length, without consulting the child.

We also tend to give parents too much credit for success and too much blame for failure. Parents matter, but they are not the sole authors of another human being. Friends, teachers, disappointments and chance encounters all leave their mark. If parenting alone determined outcomes, every child from the same household would turn out much the same. Anyone with siblings knows that nature occasionally treats the family home as an experimental laboratory.

Then there is the family culture we pass on without noticing. We tell children to be kind while making unkind observations about people whose jobs or incomes do not impress us. We preach honesty while adjusting the truth to suit the occasion. We demand emotional control from teenagers while losing our own over traffic or a misplaced set of keys. We tell them not to judge people, then conduct a forensic investigation into whether the neighbour can possibly afford a new car.

Children notice these contradictions. They inherit our habits and prejudices alongside our advice, and may eventually question both. We say we want independent thinkers, but what we often mean is that we hope they will think independently and reach conclusions broadly compatible with our own. Individuality is encouraged, provided it does not become too individual. Freedom is celebrated, provided nobody uses it to choose an uncertain career or a partner we would not have selected.

The same household can produce children with entirely different temperaments. One thrives on competition; another finds it exhausting. One wants a predictable career; another would rather take a chance. Parents can influence these differences, but they cannot iron them out. Children are not products emerging from a family assembly line, although some parents approach adolescence as if quality control has failed.

Which brings us back to the young mother worrying about pre-school. Her anxiety was understandable. A child stepping into an unfamiliar world is a milestone for the parent as much as for the child. The first separation will be followed by others: new friends, unfamiliar ideas, decisions we would not have made and, eventually, a life in which our advice may be heard politely and ignored with impressive efficiency.

That is not necessarily a parenting failure. It is the point.

Gibran’s words are easy to admire when children are small and harder to practise when they grow old enough to disagree with us. We spend years preparing them to stand on their own feet, then look faintly offended when they refuse to stand where we have marked the spot. We want them to be resilient, provided they never have to test their resilience; independent, provided they remember to consult us first.

Perhaps the responsibility of parenting is not to engineer a successful outcome, but to help children discover what success means to them. We can teach them to recognise their opportunities without making them feel indebted for every one. We can offer guidance without turning it into a lifelong obligation. Above all, we can accept that the life we consider ideal may not be the life they want.

The ovarian lottery determines neither character nor destiny. It describes the hand we begin with, not the person we must become. Parents can make that hand kinder, share what they have learnt and hope their children avoid a few of their mistakes. What they cannot do is guarantee the outcome, however carefully they manage the variables.

The ticket was never a contract, and the child was never the prize.

The lottery determines where life begins. What happens next is far less predictable. Perhaps the real test of parenting is whether we can let our children play their own hand without hovering over the table, suggesting better moves and reminding them, every few minutes, how much we sacrificed to get them there. 

After all, giving them a head start was never meant to ensure they ran the race exactly as we would have done. It was to give them the freedom to choose their own race, even if we think they have picked the wrong shoes.