“I'm trying to break any chain of negative parenting that I might have survived.”
Parenting is the most important job you will never feel qualified for. These quotes cover the chaos, joy, worry, and profound love that come with raising another human being — and the humbling realization that your kids are teaching you as much as you teach them.
“You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.”
“I'm trying to break any chain of negative parenting that I might have survived.”
“Parenthood remains the greatest single preserve of the amateur.”
“The interesting thing about being a mother is that everyone wants pets, but no one but me cleans the kitty litter.”
“My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.”
“I'm worried about parents who aren't parenting.”
“The child supplies the power but the parents have to do the steering.”
“Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.”
“No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior, and I'm not talking about the kids. Their behavior is always normal.”
“Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.”
“My childhood should have taught me lessons for my own fatherhood, but it didn't because parenting can only be learned by people who have no children.”
“My grandmother was a kind of Scarsdale, New York, society woman, best known in her day as the author of the 1959 book 'Growing Your Own Way: An Informal Guide for Teen-Agers' - this despite being a person whose parenting style made Joan Crawford's wire hangers look like pool noodles.”
“I'm torn about late parenting. I believe people should spend their twenties living and having fun and not having any regrets later. I also think people in their thirties generally make better parents but so many of my friends are having trouble - myself included - as fathers get older.”
“Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.”
“If there is any truth to my parenting the dreamwork movement, it comes from the power of the press.”
“I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection.”