Children go (places) beyond their parents' reach sooner or later. You may think that your own children will be different, but they, too, will be the same.
My husband, whose past affair was discovered, turned defiant, saying, "It was 10 years ago, so it's too late (to do anything)" I, too, couldn't bear to go forward with a divorce when I thought about our two children.
Yukio Mishima wrote that he remembered (literally: had a memory of) taking his first bath as a baby, but there's no way even he remembered everything he did from birth until death (literally: until he died).