Yes, it’s true: many of the most successful artists and entrepreneurs and world leaders came from horrible circumstances. Adversity shaped and formed them, even fueled them to greatness.
Does that mean that, because you remain happily married and you are able to put your kids into good schools and new clothes, they are somehow disadvantaged? Hardly! “It has been suggested [that an unhappy childhood is necessary] for greatness,” the dancer and writer Agnes de Mille wrote in her biography of Martha Graham. “Possibly. Yet many childhoods are unhappy without producing anything attractive, one almost-certain result being trouble in life.”
The reality is that successful people come from all sorts of backgrounds. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had loving parents. Churchill did not. They both reached the same heights . . . and though they both struggled to do it well, they each sought to provide good, stable, and loving homes for their own children.
Creating a happy childhood for our kids is the whole point of what we’re trying to do here. Don’t second-guess yourself. Their lives should be good. Just remember that good is not the same as easy!