Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he’ll escape.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
Let me go to hell, that’s all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss.
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) Irish Novelist, Playwright
The sooner you treat your son as a man, the sooner he will be one.
—John Dryden (1631–1700) English Poet, Literary Critic, Playwright
Live so that when your children think of fairness and integrity, they think of you.
—H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (b.1940) American Self-Help Author
You have to love your children unselfishly. That is hard. But it is the only way.
—Barbara Bush (1925–2018) American First Lady
Parenthood remains the greatest single preserve of the amateur.
—Alvin Toffler (1928–2016) American Writer, Futurist
Don’t set your wit against a child.
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Irish Satirist
Love well, whip well.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
Granted there are instances in which children have been reared in an atmosphere of inconsistency where value training of any kind was entirely missing; but even in these cases, it is the lack of loving guidance and structure rather than the lack of punitive retribution that has triggered the behavioral manifestations of delinquency. In a high percentage of court cases, there is evidence that the child has met with punishment that has not only been frequent but in many cases excessive. In fact, one of the sources of the child’s own inadequate development is the model of open violence provided by the parent who has resorted repeatedly to corporal punishment, usually because of his own limited imagination. This indoctrination into a world where only might makes right and where all strength is invested in the authority of the mother or of the father not only makes it easy for the child to develop aggressive patterns of behavior but makes him emotionally distant and distrustful.
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English Clergyman, Essayist, Wit
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.
—Bill Cosby (b.1937) American Actor, Comedian, Activist, Producer, Author
To show a child what once delighted you, to find the child’s delight added to your own—this is happiness.
—J. B. Priestley (1894–1984) English Novelist, Playwright, Critic
You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s. He’s more particular. The father is always a Republican towards his son, and his mother’s always a Democrat.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet
Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment, and especially on their children, than the unlived life of their parents.
—Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) Swiss Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Philosopher
Parents are usually more careful to bestow knowledge on their children rather than virtue, the art of speaking well rather than doing well; but their manners should be of the greatest concern.
—Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American Inventor, Philosopher
To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way—yourself once in a while.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) (1818–85) American Humorist, Author, Lecturer
Good breeding differs, if at all, from high breeding only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on its own rights.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
Parenthood is not an object of appetite or even desire. It is an object of will. There is no appetite for parenthood; there is only a purpose or intention of parenthood.
—R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943) English Philosopher, Historian, Archaeologist
When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.
—Sophia Loren (b.1934) Italian Actor
Parents are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don’t fulfill the promise of their early years.
—Anthony Powell (1905–2000) English Novelist, Memoirist
Telling lies and showing off to get attention are the mistakes I made that I don’t want my kids to make.
—Jane Fonda (b.1937) American Actress, Political Activist
Where parents do too much for their children, the children will not do much for themselves.
—Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American Writer, Publisher, Artist, Philosopher
I wish you would moderate that fondness you have for your children. I do not mean you should abate any part of your care, or not do your duty to them in its utmost extent, but I would have you early prepare yourself for disappointments, which are heavy in proportion to their being surprising.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) English Aristocrat, Poet, Novelist, Writer
Children need guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.
—Anne Sullivan Macy (1866–1936) American Educator
It is the common error of builders and parents to follow some plan they think beautiful (and perhaps is so) without considering that nothing is beautiful that is misplaced.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) English Aristocrat, Poet, Novelist, Writer
Selective ignorance, a cornerstone of child rearing. You don’t put kids under surveillance: it might frighten you. Parents should sit tall in the saddle and look upon their troops with a noble and benevolent and extremely nearsighted gaze.
—Garrison Keillor (b.1942) American Author, Humorist, Radio Personality
Clinical experience has indicated that where a child has been exposed early in his live to episodes of physical violence, whether he himself is the victim or … the witness, he will often later demonstrate similar outbursts of uncontrollable rage and violence of his own. Aggression becomes an easy outlet through which the child’s frustrations and tensions flow, not just because of a simple matter of learning that can be just as simply unlearned, not just because he is imitating a bad behavior model and can be taught to imitate something more constructive, but because these traumatic experiences have overwhelmed him. His own emotional development is too immature to withstand the crippling inner effects of outer violence. Something happens to the child’s character, to his sense of reality, to the development of his controls against impulses that may not later be changed easily but which may lead to reactions that in turn provoke more reactions – one or more of which may be criminal. Then society reacts against him for what he did, but more for what all of us have done – unpleasantly – to one another. Upon him is laid the iniquity of us all…
—Karl Menninger (1893–1990) American Psychiatrist
The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears: they cannot utter the one, nor will they utter the other
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
A wise parent humors the desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and advisor when his absolute rule shall cease.
—Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–65) English Novelist, Short-Story Writer
I am the slave of my baptism. Parents, you have caused my misfortune, and you have caused your own.
—Arthur Rimbaud (1854–91) French Poet, Adventurer
To understand your parents’ love you must raise children yourself.
—Chinese Proverb
Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.
—Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) British Actor, Playwright, Director
Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.
—John Locke (1632–1704) English Philosopher, Physician
How selfhood begins with a walking away, and love is proved in the letting go.
—Cecil Day-Lewis (1904–72) British Poet, Critic
From where can your authority and license as a parent come from, when you who are old, do worse things?
—Juvenal (c.60–c.136 CE) Roman Poet
Permissiveness is the principle of treating children as if they were adults; and the tactic of making sure they never reach that stage.
—Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian-American Psychiatrist, Psychoanalyst
The parent is low, who having children, truly feels bored.
—Jean Paul (1763–1825) German Novelist, Humorist
The pressures of being a parent are equal to any pressure on earth. To be a conscious parent, and really look to that little being’s mental and physical health is a responsibility which most of us, including me, avoid most of the time, because it’s too hard…To put it loosely, the reason why kids are crazy is because nobody can face the responsibility of bringing them up…
—John Lennon (1940–80) British Singer, Songwriter, Musician, Activist
The fact is that child rearing is a long, hard job, the rewards are not always immediately obvious, the work is undervalued, and parents are just as human and almost as vulnerable as their children.
—Benjamin Spock (1903–98) American Pediatrician, Author
Oh, high is the price of parenthood, and daughters may cost you double. You dare not forget, as you thought you could, that youth is a plague and a trouble.
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–78) American Children’s Books Writer, Poet, Writer of Children’s Books
If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.
—Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–94 ) American First Lady
Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.
—Benjamin Spock (1903–98) American Pediatrician, Author
If you want a baby, have a new one. Don’t baby the old one.
—Jessamyn West
I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One’s enough.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Don’t be discouraged if your children reject your advice. Years later they will offer it to their own offspring.
—Unknown
I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.
—Laurence Sterne (1713–68) Irish Anglican Novelist, Clergyman
When I was a young man, I didn’t think about having a family. My wife and I were too poor to have babies. Then all of a sudden, one came along and scared the hell out of us because we had no money. Once the baby arrives, you make do somehow. You fall in love with the baby and life adjusts itself. You find you don’t need as much money as you thought. When that happens, you can ask the questions that should have come before the baby.
—Ray Bradbury (b.1920) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune… to lose both seems like carelessness.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
If your children look up to you, you’ve made a success of life’s biggest job.
—Unknown
No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly; and this self-deceit is yet stronger with respect to the offspring of the mind.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish Novelist
A child, like your stomach, doesn’t need all you can afford to give it.
—Frank A. Clark