Do they know they're old, these two who are my father and my mother whose fire from which I came, has now grown cold?
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I am the slave of my baptism. Parents, you have caused my misfortune, and you have caused your own.
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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.
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The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.
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The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.
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Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore, And that's what parents were created for.
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My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously honest.
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Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.
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How selfhood begins with a walking away, and love is proved in the letting go.
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The joy is still there when I see Sean. He didn't come out of my belly, but my God, I've made his bones, because I've attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I'm so proud of all his things. But he is my biggest pride.
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Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.
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The purpose of parenting is to provide steady and wide-ranging opportunities for a child. The child does the rest.
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Don't throw away your friendship with your teenager over behavior that has no great moral significance. There will be plenty of real issues that require you to stand like a rock. Save your big guns for those crucial confrontations.
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Parents are traffic signs that are always in our blind spots.
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The very best reason parents are so special . . . is because we are the holders of a priceless gift, a gift we received from countless generations we never knew, a gift that only we now possess and only we can give to our children. That unique gift, of course, is the gift of ourselves. Whatever we can do to give that gift, and to help others receive it, is worth the challenge of all our human endeavor.
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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.
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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.
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Parents are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfill the promise of their early years.
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The greatest impediments to changes in our traditional roles seem to lie not in the visible world of conscious intent, but in the murky realm ...
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My childhood should have taught me lessons for my own parenthood, but it didn't because parenting can be learned only by people who have no children.
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It's frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself. It seems unfair. You can't assume the responsibility for everything you do --or don't do.
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Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.
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Such joint ownership creates a place where mothers can 'father' and fathers can 'mother.' It does not encourage mothers and fathers to compete...
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Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality.
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No test tube can breed love and affection. No frozen packet of semen ever read a story to a sleepy child.
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I wish all the mothers, fathers and children out there realize how much I need them and how much I value their support.
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The happiest two-job marriages I saw during my research were ones in which men and women shared the housework and parenting. What couples call...
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It's a sad moment, really, when parents first become a bit frightened of their children.
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The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.
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Don't be discouraged if your children reject your advice. Years later they will offer it to their own offspring.
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