But if you don’t have kids, or until you do, you tend to identify with the children in any story. When the question is phrased as, “Do you have a family?” my instinctive response is yes. I have parents, siblings, cousins, grandparents. A friend once introduced a couple as her “friends from preschool,” and I said: “That’s amazing! You’ve known each other since you were 3?” They all stared at me, and then said, “No — our kids went to preschool together.” They had become close in a trying time, as the parents of small children. My “friends from preschool” are the kids I stacked blocks with: the girl who was late growing hair, and the other girl who gave her a hickey on her irresistibly bald head. There were also the formidable twins, who presented a united front. I still know their birthdays, and remember the cakes and the conflicts at the parties. Those memories haven’t been overlaid with the experience of navigating a child through preschool from above.

When I heard that someone with teenage daughters was reading the girls’ diaries for danger signs, I was outraged, and I still kind of am. Kids know and think about things adults would rather protect them from, and — this is important — kids would rather protect their parents from knowing about them, too. The idea of my parents reading my diary fills me with horror. (Mom, Dad — if you did, please don’t confess.) In my mind, the personhood of teenagers trumps the hazards of not knowing. And that allegiance to my 14-year-old self can be useful in writing for them.

Sometimes, though, I need notes from the other side. In the first draft of my novel “The Apothecary,” the title character took his 14-year-old son and his son’s two friends to the island of Nova Zembla to avert nuclear disaster. A friend with kids said, “He can’t just take them all to the Arctic Ocean without asking their parents.” I said: “But there’s a nuclear disaster at stake! He needs their help!” She held firm: ­Putting other people’s kids in danger made him a bad father. So, in the revision, the apothecary forbids the kids to go (good parent), but they stow away on the boat anyway (teenage personhood).

I understand now why so many fictional kids are orphans. The existence of parents throws a monkey wrench into an efficient plot. By protecting their kids from danger, they stave off adventure. It would be simpler to dispense with them altogether, and maybe that’s easier to do if you aren’t a parent yourself.