Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth. — Erma Bombeck

Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.

Author: Erma Bombeck

Insight: There's a brutal honesty buried in this advice that goes way beyond just protecting your car's bumper. What Bombeck captures is something parents learn the hard way: lending something precious to your own kid hits different emotionally than lending to a friend. With friends, there's a built-in distance that makes it easier to forgive a scratch or a late return. But with your children, every small damage feels personal—like a vote on whether you raised them right, whether they respect you, whether they'll ever truly appreciate what you've sacrificed. The real tension isn't actually about the car. It's that parents struggle uniquely with boundaries because love and authority are tangled together in a way they aren't in other relationships. You want to help, to trust them, to show faith. Yet you also carry the weight of knowing exactly how expensive repairs are and exactly how careless they can be. The joke works because it acknowledges something we rarely say out loud: sometimes the kindest thing isn't always the most generous thing. Sometimes protecting your peace and your stuff—and your ability to stay calm when they inevitably mess up—is what your relationship actually needs.