The Misinterpretation of Dreams

Coming home, no matter the occassion, always takes me back to the good old days. I’m lucky enough to have grown up in a family that was very close knit, and in any sort of crisis most of the family pulls together. It’s sad that most of the time, we only see all of the family at funerals. Even at weddings there are usually a few people missing.

My family is huge on my mother and father’s sides. I won’t go into any detail about my father’s family because I never grew up very close to them (THANK GOD!) except to say that my father was the youngest of 8 children. My mother was in the middle of 13 children.

My grandmother was a very strong woman and by number 8 she was sitting and knitting while she was in the labour room. A nurse walked in and said to her: ARE you in labour or AREN’T you? Because if you’re not in labour you need to come out of the labour room!
And my gran calmly replied: The last time the midwife examined me I was 8cm dilated!
By number 13 she agreed to have a tubal ligation because even though my grandfather wanted more and more children, he wasn’t very concerned about exactly how my grandmother kept everyone fed and clothed. He would give her a certain amount of his paycheck every forthnight (something like R10 back in the day) and he expected miracles to happen every day. And my gran, being the woman that she is, worked miracles every single day.

At the age of about 5, I moved into my grandmother’s house for what would be the greater part of my childhood, my mother and younger brother came along too but not my dad. And my gran didn’t mind at all even though she still had three sons living with her. We all stayed in one room: my mother, brother and I.

Now we grew up in a normal coloured neighbourhood: 3 bedroom red brick houses, nice sized gardens, enough place to play. Back in world war two the houses were used as army barracks which my grandfather helped to build. When the war was over they were turned into houses, not for white people for a number of reasons. One being that there was a huge oil refinery who’s fumes blew straight over the area. But it was a nice enough neighbourhood, not as nice as a white neighbourhood, but not as bad as a black township. The apartheid government’s cleverest trick, I think: DIVIDE AND CONQUER and keep them at different levels of conqueredness. So the coloureds went around feeling not as good as white people, but still better than black people. We were half white anyway. (And we would hang up pictures of our white great great grandfather, but there would be no pictures of the black great great grandmother.)So why would any coloured person want freedom and equality? My gran was taught, and taught me, that you should be grateful for what you had. The white man ran our country very well and treated us well.

But for most of my childhood I wasn’t even aware that apartheid existed and I went along happy as can be, despite the raging war that was going on in the rest of the country.

While living with my gran in our “nicer-than but not as-nice-as” neighbourhood, I learned many things:
1) That a chicken came out of a fowl! My grandfather kept a few fowls and one day decided to kill one for supper. I wasn’t too impressed because I didn’t imagine that feathers tasted very good. Then when the head was cut off, my gran put it into hot water and I sat watching as she plucked the feathers off. I couldn’t believe it: there was a chicken under all those feathers! I jumped up and ran to call my mother to come and seeeee: There’s a chicken inside the fowl!
2) That milk didn’t come from the bottle it actually came from a cow!
3) That you could make a meal from green things that grew in the garden!
4) That it was ok if your neighbours picked the fruit from your tree without asking because they’re your neighbours.
5) That I wasn’t the only girl who didn’t live with her mother and father and siblings, but with gran.
6) That we weren’t allowed to swim on the same beaches as white people and that blue bottles sting. (On the same day.)
7) That if you can stand the sting, curry is one of the best things you’ll ever taste.
That holidays are the time when all the cousins visit gran’s house and we could spend the whole day playing until it got dark outside and that one bath was enough for three people and we could sleep four in one bed.

Death is no dream, we are all going to die no matter what we do to try to slow down the process. We will die differently and some of it depends on how we live our lives, but a lot of it is completely out of our control. So basically life is this road with death at the end of it and different people have roads of different lengths before they reach the end: DEATH.

If there is one thing I am afraid of, beyond any consolation or rationalisation, it’s death. Maybe it’s so scary because we don’t actually know for a fact what happens after death. There are many theories, many books written on the subject, mainly religious books. But no one who is alive can know for certain what comes after death. And that’s scary!

Now let’s imagine that the Christian belief of heaven and hell is true, hell is eternal suffering and heaven is eternal bliss. Have you ever thought about eternity? I mean really thought about it? Just sit for a moment and contemplate eternity. It’s not a million years, it’s not a billion years, it’s eternity. The thought of eternity boggles my mind and scares the shit out of me and I don’t know if I could stand anything for eternity, even paradise.

What makes almost anything bearable is that it comes to an end. If I must suffer, please let me know until when, then I can survive it. I can project myself toward the end, like I project myself toward 4pm everyday. But if there’s no end won’t even paradise turn sour? (You can’t know what happiness is if you’ve never been sad.)

Maybe my paradise would be to live on this earth and never grow old. I’ll take the sad and bad moments as long as there are enough good times to make up for it. I don’t need a beautiful place where everything is perfect and you never ever long for anything, never ever cry. But maybe I only feel this way because I’ve never been in an eternal perfect paradise. Nevertheless, it still remains true that no one can know for certain what comes after death and it remains for many people a matter of faith and belief.

I’m not sure I have that much faith, so I remain afraid.

I would like to deny any form of alcoholism, in fact I think that most alcohol tastes terrible, but I LOVE wine! Wine somehow has a wonderful effect on me.

Some of the best wine I’ve ever tasted comes from Robertson. All the farms are still quite small and not commercialised. You can go and taste as many wines as you like and it’s all free of charge. Sometimes you might even meet the wine maker himself and get to chat to him. As opposed to Stellenbosch where the farms are all so huge and full of bus loads of tourists and you pay R20 to taste 5 wines or something like that!

Now a wine festival is just an excuse to get drunk, and in Robertson they make it really easy for you. There are two major wine festivals in Robertson: in June there’s the Wacky Wine Weekend and in October there’s the Wine on the River Festival. Now each one has it’s own advantages, I don’t believe there are any disadvantages to drinking as much wine as you like all day.

In June for a whole weekend all the farms in Robertson are open to visitors. You pay R30 and you get the biggest wine glass I’ve ever seen and a passport and you just drive from farm to farm and drink wine all day. At different farms there will be different added attractions like picnic baskets and live music and different kinds of food all to complement the wine. And even if you spend all day driving from one farm to the other you won’t get to see it all, there’s so much to see and usually when you find a farm you like you don’t want to leave. And they’re always considerate if there’s rugby or cricket on, there will be a few big screens around so that you don’t have to miss any of the action.

In October the enitre festival is on two farms. There are two huge marquees put up and they are both filled with stalls of the different wine farms that can be found in the area. Getting drunk has never been easier. You just walk from stall to stall (less than 1m apart) and you hold out your glass and ask for anything from the list. Then when you’ve had all you can to drink in the one marquee, you jump on a boat that takes you down the river to the next farm and it’s the same there. In between the wine there’s olive and cheese tasting stalls and there are even some food stalls, it’s just a pity that the food isn’t free. So by around 4pm everybody is as happy as can be. When it’s a hot day, the cold white wine and rose and sparkling wine is so refreshing that you start drinking it like juice. Pretty soon your head is spinning, but not in a bad way. When this happens you can go and sit under the trees on the river bank and take in the music and maybe get some food. It doesn’t really matter who you sit next to, nobody minds, everybody’s friendly and chatty.

I remember lying on the grass around 17h30 (now I don’t normally lie on the grass because I don’t like getting dirty and the grass gets stuck in my hair, etc) and I looked up at the sky and it was the most amazing blue with the prettiest clouds and I could hear music playing and there were people chatting all around me and I just felt content.

Now again I’d like to say that I’m not an alcoholic, I don’t abuse alcohol! According to the DSM IV classification for substance ABUSE there is a maladaptive pattern of use leading to significant impairment or distress as manifested by: 1) Failure to fulfill major role obligations (work, school or home) OR
2) Recurrent use in situations in which it is physically hazardous OR
3) Recurrent substance related legal problems OR
4) Continued use despite persistent or recurrent problems caused or exacerbated by the effects of the substance.

And substance DEPENDANCE is basically the presence of:
1) Tolerance (needs larger quantities for the same effect)
2) Withdrawal symptoms if you have to go without the substance
3) Persistent desire or unsuccessful attempts to cut down use
4) Great deal of time and effort goes into obtaining the substance or recovering from its effects
5) Continued use despite knowledge of a physical condition which is present or exacerbated by its use
6) Social, recreational or occupational activities are given up because of the substance.

I just love wine! But I encourage you to read the above criteria and honestly assess whether you might be abusing any substance or are dependant on any substance!

The hardest thing for me to do is wake up in the morning and go to work. In winter I don’t want to get out of bed AT ALL before 8 but once I’m out it’s not so hard to walk into the hospital because it’s a tad bit warmer inside than out. In summer it’s much easier to climb out of bed because the sun is shining, but walking into the hospital is the hard part because it’s such a waste of a beautiful sunny day to have to spend it indoors. So what is it the solution? I think it would be to have more flexible work hours- in winter we should start work at 9h30 at the earliest. Then we still go home at 5 but we only take a 10minute break during the day. In summer work should be completely optional! IF ONLY!!

Nevertheless, most of us ordinary people work at least 5days a week from 8 to 5 and there has to be something that keeps bringing us to work day after day, doesn’t allow us to just decide to try to collect a disability grant simply because we’re ugly. Some of us are just driven and have a passion for what we do and coming to work is a pleasure, but not all of us are lucky enough to be Oprah or Brad Pitt who just love being in front of the camera. I personally work for the money, and I need money because I want a good life.

Now you might say that money is not what makes life good, it’s love and family and all those invaluable things that money can’t buy. And I agree, but in order to have a good life you DO need a certain amount of money. I really don’t think that you can have a truly good life if you’re constantly worrying about where your next meal will come from. The root of many divorces is financial difficulty.

So that’s why I wake up every morning, because I need the money. I’m not saying that everything I do is just for money, I do get some satisfaction out of being qualified enough to fill out a record number of discharge summaries everyday. But at the end of the day, if my daddy was Mr Hilton of the Hilton Group of Hotels I don’t think I’d be a doctor. (I’m hoping I wouldn’t be a Paris either, but you don’t know until you’ve actually been there.)
I need money to be able to eat everyday, I need money to be able to go out and have a good time, I need money for clothes, I need money to visit my friends and family and boyfriend, I need money for a car, I need money to be able to buy a house, I need money to be able to go on holiday now and then. And I think I need all those things and love in order to have a good life.

So why do you wake up in the morning?

Doctors are a bunch of weirdos and freaks. We spend our working lives complaining about having to work so many long hours and generally feel sorry for ourselves because we’re so underrated and unappreciated. But then, gives us a night off and what do we do?

Well, for starters we all go out as one big group of nerds, then we spend the evening discussing work and making nerdy jokes, and that’s on a good night. On a bad night we spend the night bitching and moaning about how bad things are at work and we just make ourselves feel even worse. If there should happen to be a non medical person in the group they spend most of the evening feeling spare because they’re automatically excluded from 99.9% of the conversation.

If by some bizarre chance one of us should go out with a group of non medical people we spend the evening feeling a bit bored and slightly above it all. Well, that’s personal experience anyway. If I’m in a restaurant I find myself looking around at the people at nearby tables and playing spot diagnosis sort of games, but it’s no fun if there’s no one to share it with. The other night in a club, I was bored after half an hour of head banging tunes that all sound the same. I tried some of my people watching comments out on the girl sitting next to me but she didn’t find it as funny as my nerdy medical friends would have. Anyway I couldn’t even go all the way with a comment like: What hormonal imbalance do you think he has? So I found myself sitting there thinking that maybe if someone collapsed in front of me it would make the evening more interesting. (I could spot a few potential collapsees.) If that happened I’d be able to practice my resuscitation skills outside of the casualty setting, without the nurse to run and fetch every little thing I shouted for, without even my stethescope! I’ve never done it before. In medical school we practiced our HHH (Hazards, Hello, Help) and ABC (Airway, Breathing, Circulation) on dummies but I’m sure it’s not quite the same if a real live person collapses in front of you and you’re forced to do something without any equipment or assistance on hand. Like a scene out of ER or Grey’s Anatomy!

Then I stopped myself and thought: I’m such a weirdo freak. When I’m at work all I can think of is having a day off and then when I have time off all I think about is work and how exciting it would be if work came and found me on my day off!

I think I can honestly say that the only person who comes close to getting me not to think of work for a while is my boyfriend. Now I’m not saying that I NEVER think about or discuss work when I’m around him, but when the two of us are sitting down together for dinner in a nice restaurant, work really doesn’t matter and I would probably ignore someone who collapsed right under my nose!

So I think that’s what I’m dreaming of: ONE night free from any thoughts of work, just to spend looking into my boyfriend’s eyes! AAAHHH, BLISS!

Since I’ve been around I’ve definitely seen begging metaporphosise. Gone are the days when a beggar said loud and clear: I’m a beggar, and sat on the street with a bowl or stood at the traffic lights with a cardboard sign. I mean, there was a time when the cardboard sign beggar was top of the range, high tech, sophisticated. But you could still look at him or her and choose to ignore them without feeling too guilty because at the end of the day they weren’t working. Now there is a new class of beggar: THE CARGUARD!

The carguard has taken begging to a whole new level. Now look here, don’t try to convince me that the carguard is not a beggar! What does a carguard do? He stands on the road or in the parking lot looking at your car. Then when he sees you approach your car he walks toward you with his hand outstretched. Back in the day an unemployed scruffy man standing and looking at your car was something you were extremely unhappy about, now it’s accepted that you pay him!

And should you jump into your car without paying him, he might hang around and obstruct your view while you’re trying to manouvre out of the parking and wave his hands about aimlessly IF he doesn’t see someone with a fancier car come along. And if you should happen to give him money before you jump into your car you won’t see him again. Now the average amount that people give to carguards during the day is around R2. So are you telling me that if a car thief came along and threw a R10 at the so called carguard and told him to disappear while your car was being broken into, that he would put up any sort of protest? I’m telling you that they would just have to wave an iron rod at him and tell him to get lost and he’d be gone!

Carguards at shopping centres sometimes double as trolley collectors and they might help you to pack your groceries into your car (IF you don’t give them money as soon as they walk up to you) and they are called “parking lot attendants” and might even have fancy looking uniforms. But, all in all, carguards are just beggars in disguise as far as I’m concerned. I’m not sure who started the whole movement, but I have a sneaky suspicion it was a beggar with a little bit of brains who was just a bit too lazy to go and look for work and decided that he knew a way to make people feel guilty enough to give more than copper coins to the unemployed standing around on the side of the road or outside shopping malls.

I love smells, even bad ones can be interesting! Walking down a hospital corridor it’s not just medicinal smells that greet you.

As I pass the porters’ room I smell baked beans sizzling and I think of my younger brother. While he was still in primary school and maybe even the early years of high school he used to love making “bush chow” which was basically baked beans made on the fire in the bushes behind our house. But it tasted so much better than the baked beans cooked on a normal stove. I remember my best friend and I always trying to convince my brother and his friends to share their “bush chow” with us even though we weren’t willing to go into the bushes behind the house to go and help with the cooking of the bush chow.

Further along the corridor I pass the hospital kitchen and the smells that come out of there are always a bit strange. It smells almost ok when I’m hungry but almost repulsive at the same time, kind of like cooking cheap meat in previously used oil. I remember boarding school and walking past the lunch hall even though I was hungry to rather go and eat bread and Simba chips in my room.

When I walk past the paediatric ward I smell penicillin and I remember repeated bouts of tonsillitis and sore ears! And I remember my little brother again (he’s not so little anymore; 21years old). We found out he was allergic to penicillin when he landed in hospital with very confusing symptoms. I remember not being allowed into the ward because I was too young and I sat at the end of the corridor crying because I thought I would never see him again, he would stay in hospital forever and I would never be allowed in. Or he would die…! And then I remember that he came out and he said that he had lots of jelly and custard and then I wanted to be in hospital so badly but I never ever got sick enough and I was jealous.

As I walk out of the hospital I see that it’s just rained and I smell rain on the tarmac and I think of home, Durban. I dream of hot humid days followed by thundershowers and clean air for a while and then sticky humidity again by 5am the next morning. 

The best thing I EVER learnt to do was to read! I remember when all the letters came together and made a word and then I finally understood how my mother knew exactly what Red Riding Hood said when she arrived at her grandmother’s cottage in the woods with the wolf in her grandmother’s bed. Before learning to read, I had always been sceptical when I was read bedtime, or anytime, stories. I mean, I know my father wasn’t there when Mama Bear cooked the porridge and it was too hot and they decided to go for a walk. So if he wasn’t there, how did he know that they decided to go for a walk? It didn’t sound plausible to me. I mean, when my food was too hot my mother always just blew it a little bit and then it cooled down and I could eat. I’d NEVER gone for a walk just because my food was hot, especially not my porridge!

So learning to read cleared all of this up for me, and finally I didn’t have to wait for someone else to tell me new stories, I could pick up a book and discover it all for myself. I knew all of my story books from cover to cover already, word for word even though I couldn’t read, so I was hungry for new stories, new places to visit in my mind. I started to eat up books, in class 1 the teacher couldn’t find enough books for me to read. Eventually I discovered the library. By the end of primary school I was sitting with a book on my lap through most classes, only half listening to what the teacher said. This continued most of the way through high school, most of my teachers were understanding and I managed not to do too badly in most subjects anyway. But I remember being thrown out of my Afrikaans class by a substitute teacher who wasn’t used to my apparent disinterest and who tried to insist that I put away my novel and give her my full attention. She wasn’t that interesting and I chose to rather sit outside of the class reading my novel and miss out on the lesson completely than to give her my full attention. She was convinced I’d fail my next Afrikaans test but I showed her and she allowed me back in the class.

Through university I sort of had to listen a bit better and actually had to really read those textbooks, but it was never as easy to read a textbook as it was to read a real book. Often I would half fall asleep at my desk trying to get through physiology or histology, then I’d decide to climb into bed and wake up at 3am to carry on studying. But when I climbed into bed I’d pick up my real book and end up reading that for about 3 hours and then at 3am when my alarm went off I wouldn’t be able to wake up!

I think the reason that I don’t enjoy work so much is that I have to be constantly there, 100%. While I’m seeing a patient I can’t half listen while reading a book. I mean, I don’t really listen to most patients. That little bit in “Scrubs” about doctors only listening for 10 seconds is true, patients have 10 seconds to grab my attention and if they don’t I switch off. But I can’t really escape completely, I mean I do stand there looking at them but I’m usually thinking about what I’m going to eat when I get the chance, or how as soon as the clock strikes 8am Sunday morning, I’m gonna put off my bleeper and cell phone and pull out the land line and just sleep and forget everyone for at least 8 hours.

Ok, so you’re thinking I’m a bad doctor. Well, I suppose I am if I’m supposed to listen to people. I think that everyone has their weaknesses and faults and the worst doctors are those who deny that they have any, and refuse to ask for help. I think there might still be a niche for me in the medical world, I think I want to become an anaesthetist.

I can just hear you groaning: OH GOD, NO!! But listen, it’s perfect for me: I only have to listen to the patient for about 5min the day before the operation while they give me a medical history. Then when the patient is on the operating table they’re usually a bit sedated already from the premed and are most likely less than talkative. Even if they are talkative I only have to listen to them for a maximum of 10 minutes, and even then I don’t really have to listen, and then once the white stuff kicks in they’re gone. And then I can busy myself with the machines and gasses and fiddle around with the ventilator. Everything is so nice and ordered and there’s a reason for everything. And if the patient gets a spinal and they’re stable I can even sit and read a book and look at the monitor every 5 minutes and dream of far away places. And if they don’t get a spinal I can still stay in my own little bubble and float around busying myself with things that make sense. Only now and then I have to come back to reality and adjust the bed or lights for the surgeon.And once the operation is finished the most stressful thing is making sure that the patient wakes up again and breathes. And if they don’t want to breathe on their own then sometimes you have to put them in ICU on a ventilator. But there’s always an answer.

The control of the patient’s chronic medical condition is not the anaesthetist’s problem, an anaesthetist doesn’t have to worry about following the patient up in a month, only to find that the hypertension is worse and that the patient stopped taking the pills because she went to the GP, and when he measured her blood pressure it was normal, and he told her she doesn’t have hypertension! (Of course your blood pressure will be normal if you’re taking the pills, they’re called ANTI- hypertensives!)

So I think that’s the direction I’m going to drift in, I just don’t know if I’m clever enough to pass the exams while only kinda reading the textbooks and reading real books most of the time and dreaming of far away places.

Check out this song about anaesthetist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuZl9tRqjoQ

I personally think that the scariest thing any person can ever do is have children. I agree with a friend who says that it should be the law that people obtain a licence before being allowed to reproduce. If you want to drive a car you require a licence, if you want to have a gun you require a licence. I should think having a child is even more significant and even more potentially dangerous. In addition, in a perfect world females would be born sterile and only once a couple had obtained their child bearing licence would the female be able to undergo a simple operation (something like the opposite of sterilisation) so that they could reproduce. Now wouldn’t this solve a lot of problems? But, as with many other things, there is so much room for corruption. Hitler and Verwoed’s  dreams might have come much closer to being realised.

Nevertheless, having a child is something that is so often taken so lightly- Having trouble in the marriage? Let’s have a child to fix it! Boyfriend is looking for greener pastures? Maybe a child will convince him to stay. Or even worse are those stupid teenage girls who just seem to be able to pop out the children willy nilly because they aren’t responsible enough to use contraception, while married couples who really want children are barren.

I think at the top of my list of “Types of patients I hate” are teenage mothers. They walk into the labour ward screaming, you try to determine how far their pregnancy is (is this preterm labour, etc) and they have no idea. Then you try to determine how far along in the labour they are, and they half climb off the bed, they refuse to open their legs!! When they should have been squeezing their legs closed they were squeezing their eyes closed and moaning, but when they get to labour ward they’re suddenly virgins! I know I’m supposed to be compassionate, etc. but I really don’t have patience for teenage girls who pretend they’re victims of immaculate conception. I’ve heard of some who are so fertile a boy just looks at them and they fall pregnant, but listen: I’m the doctor and I’m here to try to help you, if you think that I’m inserting two fingers into your vagina for my pleasure think again! And if your boyfriend’s penis was smaller than my two fingers, then I’m sure you didn’t experience too much pleasure and I’m very sorry for you, but now’s the time to OPEN your legs. You had the oppurtunity to keep you legs closed and you let it pass you by.

Ok, yes I admit it: I’m judgemental. I don’t look at my patients from a neutral viewpoint, I have an opinion dammit! Is that a crime?

Now my grief with teenage mothers doesn’t end in the labour ward. I see them AGAIN a few weeks later on a Saturday morning around 2am. The dialogue goes a bit like this:

Me:        Hello mother, what’s wrong with the baby (to me the baby looks healthy and is sleeping)

Teenage mother:     He was crying and he didn’t want to stop.

Me:        Is he coughing? Does he have a fever?

Teenage mother:    I don’t know.

Me:        Has he been sick during the week?

Teenage mother:    I don’t know, I don’t look after him during the week. 

Eventually I manage to figure out that the mother actually doesn’t know how to make her child stop crying, because she has no idea of how to look after him, because HER mother looks after him most of the time, because she’s at school during the week. It’s usually only over weekends that the child is her responsibilty. In this scenario the child is healthy and just needs a bit of TLC. Even worse is when the child actually is ill and needs to be admitted to the hospital. The mother then stays in hospital with the child and she is miserable because she actually needs to take care of the child for most of the day, which she is not used to. After a few days she gets bored and you eventually hardly ever see her with the child and if you’re looking for her to discuss the child’s prognosis or treatment options you might find her at the hospital gate socialising with the male security guards or flirting in the passage with the cleaners or even taking a walk with a father of one of the other children! And I can predict that next year I’ll be seeing her AGAIN in labour ward, none the wiser. The funniest thing though, was a teenage mother who, when asked why she didn’t use contraception, replied: I’m Catholic, contraception is against my religious beliefs. Talk about missing the point!!

However, I did not begin this to moan about teenage mothers, believe it or not, my intention was to comment on the fragility of children. They come into the world and they’re completely helpless and vulnerable with brains like sponges: very easily squashed and able to absorb EVERYTHING! Every little thing has an effect on a child, we’re learning this more and more. We’ve known for ages that you have to be careful with your diet and preferably not smoke or drink during pregnancy because this has a great effect on the baby, but recently we’ve learnt that even your emotional state is important during pregnancy. Everyday we learn of new things that can have a detrimental or positive effect during pregnancy, during childbirth, during the early years.

I think for me the biggest problem is that there’s always that uncertain factor. You may follow the book and do everything you should and your child still turns out to be a rotten egg. Or you could be careless and let nature run it’s course, or even be a bad parent, and your child might still turn out ok, by no doing of yours. I’ve seen examples of both: Parents who give their children everything they know how to give and the child just gets used to having an easy life and doesn’t see the need to work hard. Or a parent might be a florid alcoholic and the child decides that they want a better life and so work hard to be the best that they can be.

So how can anyone be certain that they will be a good parent, or that the good parenting will in produce a good child?