"My father taught me to play chess when I was six years old. I finished elementary school considering him one of the best players in the history of chess, and I really enjoyed playing with him. Sometimes he would let me win, and I knew he was letting me win. Fifty years later, either one of us would suggest playing a game of chess, and we enjoyed it a lot... Sometimes I would let him win, and he knew I was letting him win."

Jorge and Demián Bucay discuss the first, most critical, and most defining relationship of human existence: the one that connects parents with their children. Trying to express their own views on the eternal questions that concern humans from birth to death, they do not hesitate to disagree and do not try to cover up their differing opinions. What does it mean to be a parent? Why become one? What makes someone "more of a parent" than someone else? What does "I am a father" and "I am a mother" mean?

Starting from their professional experience as psychiatrists and psychotherapists, they approach the topic of parenthood and agree that from the moment you have a child, beyond the biological relationship that connects you to them, you are called to fulfill a role that requires you to feel, think, and act as a parent.

The reader will find a categorization of the various "types of parents" that we usually identify in modern society (neglectful, authoritarian, politically correct, etc...) as well as some views on how we can build the type of relationship we desire with our children.

Jorge Bucay comments on "Parents and Children" as follows: "This 'toolbox for maintaining a difficult relationship' I think is my best book (and perhaps the most useful) precisely because it works like tools. I would like to know that it has been useful to people who are thinking of becoming parents, and that it has somehow helped in their decision to dare to do so."