I grew up an only child, so I was so much more adult. My eldest daughter is 10, and I was so much more of an adult than she is. She just doesn't care for the real world. She's not interested.
There was a time when only wise books were read helping us to bear our pain and misery. This, after all, is not quite the same as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics. And yet the world is different from what it seems to be and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.