Parenting Quotes

“It still remains unrecognised, that to bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society; and that if the parent does not fulfil this obligation, the State ought to see it fulfilled, at the charge, as far as possible, of the parent.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“[My dad] didn't do much apart from the traditional winning of bread. He didn't take me to get my hair cut or my teeth cleaned; he didn't make the appointments. He didn't shop for my clothes. He didn't make my breakfast, lunch, or dinner. My mom did all of those things, and nobody ever told her when she did them that it made her a good mother.”
― Michael Chabon, Manhood for Amateurs

“... be radical about grace and relentless about truth and resolute about holiness...”
― Ann Voskamp

“Much of life, fatherhood included, is the story of knowledge acquired too late: if only I’d known then what I know now, how much smarter, abler, stronger, I would have been. But nothing really prepares you for kids, for the swells of emotion that roll through your chest like the rumble of boulders tumbling downhill, nor for the all-enveloping labor of it, the sheer mulish endurance you need for the six or seven hundred discrete tasks that have to be done each and every day. Such a small person! Not much bigger than a loaf of bread at first, yet it takes so much to keep the whole enterprise going. Logistics, skills, materiel; the only way we really learn is by figuring it out as we go along, and even then it changes on us every day, so we’re always improvising, which is a fancy way of saying that we’re doing things we technically don’t know how to do.”
― Ben Fountain

“Being a parent is dirty and scary and beautiful and hard and miraculous and exhausting and thankless and joyful and frustrating all at once. It’s everything. (Confessions of a Scary Mommy, Gallery Books 2012).”
― Jill Smokler, Confessions of a Scary Mommy: An Honest and Irreverent Look at Motherhood - The Good, The Bad, and the Scary

“I loved her, instantly. Of course, most parents love their children instantly. But I mention it here because I still find it a remarkable thing. Where was that love before? Where did you acquire it from? The way it is suddenly there, total and complete, as sudden as grief, but in reverse, is one of the wonders about being human.”
― Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

“I hope someday she meets just the right man and has babies - a whole passel of babies, more than I could have - so she understands how it kills me now that she won't let me hug her when she's in obvious distress. (The Life You've Imagined)”
― Kristina Riggle

“The path of development is a journey of discovery that is clear only in retrospect, and it’s rarely a straight line.”
― Eileen Kennedy-Moore, Smart Parenting for Smart Kids: Nurturing Your Child's True Potential

“The reality is that most of us communicate the same way that we grew up. That communication style becomes our normal way of dealing with issues, our blueprint for communication. It’s what we know and pass on to our own children. We either become our childhood or we make a conscious choice to change it.”
― Kristen Crockett, The Gift of Past Relationships

“The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable-even legally actionable-to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, "Hey fatty-lose some weight." By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of "health" and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self image.”
― Amy Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

“Remember, you are not managing an inconvenience; You are raising a human being.”
― Kittie Frantz

“My mom is cool and my mom will treat you right.”
― Sam Hyde

“It must be this overarching commitment to what is really an abstraction, to one's children right or wrong, that can be even more fierce than the commitment to them as explicit, difficult people, and that can consequently keep you devoted to them when as individuals they disappoint. On my part it was this broad covenant with children-in-theory that I may have failed to make and to which I was unable to resort when Kevin finally tested my maternal ties to a perfect mathematical limit on Thursday. I didn't vote for parties, but for candidates. My opinions were as ecumenical as my larder, then still chock full of salsa verde from Mexico City, anchovies from Barcelona, lime leaves from Bangkok. I had no problem with abortion but abhorred capital punishment, which I suppose meant that I embraced the sanctity of life only in grown-ups. My environmental habits were capricious; I'd place a brick in our toilet tank, but after submitting to dozens of spit-in-the-air showers with derisory European water pressure, I would bask under a deluge of scalding water for half an hour. My closet wafter with Indian saris, Ghanaian wraparounds, and Vietnamese au dais. My vocabulary was peppered with imports -- gemutlich, scusa, hugge, mzungu. I so mixed and matched the planet that you sometimes worried I had no commitments to anything or anywhere, though you were wrong; my commitments were simply far-flung and obscenely specific.

By the same token, I could not love a child; I would have to love this one. I was connected to the world by a multitude of threads, you by a few sturdy guide ropes. It was the same with patriotism: You loved the idea of the United States so much more powerfully than the country itself, and it was thanks to your embrace of the American aspiration that you could overlook the fact that your fellow Yankee parents were lining up overnight outside FAO Schwartz with thermoses of chowder to buy a limited release of Nintendo. In the particular dwells the tawdry. In the conceptual dwells the grand, the transcendent, the everlasting. Earthly countries and single malignant little boys can go to hell; the idea of countries and the idea of sons triumph for eternity. Although neither of us ever went to church, I came to conclude that you were a naturally religious person.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“The French believe that kids feel confident when they're able to do things for themselves, and do those things well. After children have learned to talk, adults don't praise them for saying just anything. They praise them for saying interesting things, and for speaking well.”
― Pamela Druckerman, Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting

“The guys who fear becoming
fathers don't understand that fathering
is not something perfect men do, but something
that perfects the man. The end product of child
raising is not the child, but the parent.”
― Frank Pittman

“I'm so cool that the kids come to my bedroom and go, 'Mom! Turn the music down!”
― Melissa Etheridge

“Oh fer Christ's bloody sake Martha I didna' raise ye to be well regarded. To be liked. Any puny weak-waisted slut can be liked. I raised ye to be reckoned with.”
― Kathleen Kent, The Wolves of Andover

“Saturday mornings, I’ve learned, are a great opportunity for kids to sneak into your bed, fall back asleep, and kick you in the face.”
― Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing: The Best of Year One

“I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it won't change the fact that they are upset.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“If a child sees something in a parent that the child aspires to, he or she will copy that parent and be content. If a children feel that a parent is living a life that shows compassion and understanding, patience and love, that child will not have to reach a stage of rebellion against that parent. Why rebel against someone who has listened to you and wants to help you fufill your dreams? A parent who has proven time and again that growth and happiness of his or her children is priority number one does not have to worry about where these children are heading in life. They will be sensitive and productive members of society for as long as they live.”
― Alice Ozma, The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared

“There are a hundred ways in which a boy can injure—if not indeed kill—himself. The more adventurous he is and the greater his initiative, the more ways he will find. If you protect him from each of the first hundred, he is sure to find the hundred and first. Though most men can look back on their boyhood and tremble at the narrowness of some of their escapes, most boys do in fact survive more or less intact, and the wise father is the trusting father.”
― Christopher Milne, The Enchanted Places

“We all know that parents do not make children but that children make parents…Authentic parenting is one long sacrificial act…parenting reveals the way that sacrifice at once diminishes our life as we knew it…while at the same time revealing to us larger and infinitely more fascinating forms of life…Parents know experientially that the very process which makes them suffer also makes them grow.”
― Luke Timothy Johnson, The Living Gospel

“Oftentimes I felt ridiculous giving my seal of approval to what was in reality such a natural thing to do, sort of like reinventing the wheel and extolling its virtues. Had parents' intuition sunk so low that some strange man had to tell modern women that it was okay to sleep with their babies?”
― William Sears, SIDS: A Parent's Guide to Understanding and Preventing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

“When you've had one call after another and your little one is tugging on your shirt, remember what really matters. When the milk is splattered all over the floor and those little eyes are looking at you for your reaction, remember what really matters. It takes 5 minutes to clean up spilled milk; it takes much longer to clean up a broken spirit.”
― Rebecca Eanes, The Newbie's Guide to Positive Parenting

“When we aren't curious in conversations we judge, tell, blame and even shame, often without even knowing it, which leads to conflict."
-The Power Of Curiosity: How To Have Real Conversations That Create Collaboration, Innovation and Understanding”
― Kirsten Siggins, The Power of Curiosity: How to Have Real Conversations That Create Collaboration, Innovation and Understanding

“يا أبتاه .. إن عظيم حقك علي لا يبطل صغير حقي عليك”
― عبدالله محمد الداوود

“The offspring cannot rely on its parents for disinterested guidance. One expects the offspring to be preprogrammed to resist some parental manipulation while being open to other forms. When the parent imposes an arbitrary system of reinforcement (punishment and reward) in order to manipulate the offspring to act against its own best interests, selection will favor offspring that resist such schedules of reinforcement.”
― Robert Trivers, Social Evolution

“Child give me your hand so that I may walk in the light of your faith in me.”
― Hannah Kahn

“Some parents pin all their hopes and dreams on their children, and as a result, those kids feel all kinds of pressure to be some sort of familial savior destined to achieve greatness and keep their extended family from drowning.”
― Aaron H. Aceves, This Is Why They Hate Us

“There was, truly no place for him. The home of his childhood was long gone, and it had never been his home, even when he was a child.
His mother had said to him, "Do not anger your father. Try to do as he says. Try to be who he wants you to be."
But he had not known how to do that, had he?
He still did not know how to do that.
He knew, only, how to be himself.
And shouldn't home be the place where you are allowed to be yourself, loved as yourself?”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Beatryce Prophecy