In this month's Atlantic Monthly, Lori Gottlieb writes that as a graduate student in pyschology, she learned that people end up frustrated, angry and disturbed, because their parents failed them in some way. Once she started practicing therapy, a stream of unhappy, miserable patients in their 20s and 30s sat on her sofa. Unlike the unhappy people in her textbooks, these patients actually had great parents who doted on them, gave them lots of options, and were warm and supportive. What went wrong?

Gottlieb explains that these parents were actually too good. They gave their kids too many options and protected them from failures, which made them unable to handle real disappointments that always happen in life. Because they never had to learn to overcome the disappointment of being cut from the baseball team, they didn't know how to handle the disappointment of not getting the promotion in their law firm or never finding true love. 

I know parents who offer their kids ridiculous options. Instead of giving them a choice between chocolate or vanilla ice-cream, the parents give the kids power over major family decisions. Where do you want to go on vacation this year: the beach or the mountains? What should I make you for dinner: chicken or pizza? 

Those rookie parents are no doubt creating spoiled children, but bad parenting isn't the source of sad adults. 

I'm at that point in my life where I'm surrounded by people who have been disappointed in some way. They never had a child. They never found the right job. They live with chronic illness. Their children have ADHD, dyslexia, epilepsy, or autism. Most of my friends are confronting these demons right now and will hopefully come out the other end in a few years. 

June's a tough month for me, because I have to watch other people's children perform in end-of-the-year assemblies or go through other rites of passage, which Ian doesn't get to participate in. In my more selfish moments, I feel that both of us have been cheated. 

We're all struggling to deal with this disappointments, not because our parents gave us too many options. My parents wouldn't even let me choose what band instrument that I would play in school. "You have to play the flute. Bells are a stupid instrument."

I think our disappointment comes from the fact that there are a deep inequalities in life. Some get more and some get less. Yes, the world could be structured better to lessen these inequalities, but some of these disappointments are just part of life. No political and social changes can prevent a child from contracting a disability or give someone the perfect job. This is a tough pill to swallow, because we have such a limited notion of success in this country. 

We're taught in school and in the media  that we can have whatever we want if we dream it and if we work really hard. It's the American Dream, after all. But there are somethings that dreams and hard work won't fix. 

I think that the people who can cope with disappointment are those who never bought into the standard notions of success, who have rejected the tyranny of normality, and happily live in a world without Harvard bound children and Pottery Barn sofas.