Parents Quotes

My parents died when I was so young, my mother when I was eight, my father when I was ten, that I know little of them but from hearsay. . . He was forty when he married my mother, who was more than twenty years younger. She was a very beautiful woman and he was […]

For as long as I could remember, the small cottage on Castro Street had been home. The familiar background was there; Mama, Papa, my only brother, Nels. There was my sister Christine, closest to me in age… But the first awareness was of Mama.

(The parents of prodigies) convey enthusiasm without conveying expectation. They reward their children more for trying than winning.

It’s not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can’t tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself.

You’re not a good parent, if at some point you are not an embarrassment to your children.

The excessive regard of parents for their children, and their dislike of other people’s is, like class feeling, patriotism, save-your-soul-ism, and other virtues, a mean exclusiveness at bottom.

They have taken the care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs, and thrown it upon a gang of irresponsible and unintelligent quacks.

Love and respect are the most important aspects of parenting, and of all relationships.

In everything I do – I am a total product of them. (speaking of her parents – her mother, a suffragette who picketed before the White House for better working conditions for women, and her father, a physician who with his wife was an avid promoter of birth control)

The last step in parental love involves the release of the beloved, the willing cutting of the cord that would otherwise keep the child in a state of emotional dependence.