Member-only story
How a Painful Childhood Made Me a Better Mom
By learning from her parents’ mistakes, Esther Wojcicki raised three of the most successful women in the United States
We all tend to parent the way we were parented, but when I became a mother, the one thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to repeat the mistakes of my parents.
As Russian Jewish immigrants who came to this country with nothing, my parents were always on the verge of financial ruin. My father was an artist, but beyond that, he had few skills. Eventually, he was forced to take a job as a gravestone cutter, one he kept for the rest of his life. You can still see hundreds of the gravestones he made in cemeteries all over Los Angeles — the only artistic legacy he ever left.
The work was grueling and the pay low, and at night, he would come home, slam the door, and proceed to stomp around the small house, saying nothing. It always scared me. I learned to stay away from him. If I didn’t, I’d be caught in the middle of a firestorm. “Spare the rod, spoil the child” is something he said to me often, and he meant it.
My mother did her best to protect me from his outbursts, and sometimes she even bought me my favorite foods — green Jell-O and canned apricots — rare treats that became our little secret…
