Quotes & Sayings About Becoming A Parent

Unfortunately, it's not until you've had children that you discover how selfish you actually are. That's one of the paradoxical aspects of becoming a parent: at the very same time you realize precisely how selfish you are, you are forced to become less selfish. — Mark Cleary

All great human deeds both consume and transform their doers. Consider an athlete,or a scientist, or an independent business creator. in service of their goals they lay down time and energy and many other choices and pleasures; in return, they become most truly themselves. A false destiny may be spotted by the fact that it consumes without transforming, without giving back the enlarged self. Becoming a parent is one of these basic human transformational deeds. By this act, we change our fundamental relationship with the universe- if nothing else, we lose our place as the pinnacle and end-point of evolution, and become a mere link. The demands of motherhood especially consume the old self, and replace it with something new, often better and wiser, sometimes wearier or disillusioned, or tense and terrified, certainly more self-knowing, but never the same again. — Lois McMaster Bujold

I think the addiction stuff, because I was already sort of outed in my family as a sexual person: as a sexually-adventurous and sexually-conflicted person and sexually-driven person. They already knew that about me. They knew that about me when I was eleven. My parents very consciously tried to provide an environment that would protect me from becoming a drug addict. — Melissa Febos

A woman's life may die away in the fore of self-hatred for complexes can bite hard and, at least for a time, successfully frighten her away from coming too near the work or life that matters to her ... Many years are spent not going, not moving, not learning, not finding out, not obtaining, not taking on, not becoming. The vision a woman has for her own life can also be decimated at someone else's jealousy or someone's plain out destructiveness towards her family, mentors, teachers, and friends are not supposed to be destructive if and when they feel envy, but some decidedly are, in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways. No woman can afford to let her creative life hang by a thread while she serves an antagonistic love relationship , parent, teacher or friend. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Becoming a father made me a lot more sentimental than I ever was before. I never cried at movies before I became a parent. I feel music more intensely. I think of my political ideas as ideas about how I want to interact with other human beings as opposed to abstract theories about how the world should be. — Boots Riley

To be a visionary parent, we need to keep working on ourselves, becoming forever new and improved. — Mark Victor Hansen

You don't want to be that parent - the one who dresses his kid in a cloth sack when all the other kids are in Armani cloth sacks - especially in a time like ours, when materialism is not only rampant and ascendant but is fast becoming the only game in town. — George Saunders

Becoming a parent erased many of my negative childhood feelings and filled them in with something new. — Mariska Hargitay

Becoming a parent is one of the most sudden and dramatic changes in adult life. — Jennifer Senior

A child needs to internalize a model of someone who has a life of her own. The parent whose life is centered around her children is influencing them to think that life is about either becoming a parent or being forever served by a parent. Let your child know you have interests and relationships that don't involve her. Take trips without her. Show her that you take active responsibility in meeting your own needs and solving your own problems. — Henry Cloud

Becoming a parent changed you forever, as nothing else could. p. 368 — Jennifer Donnelly

When I was little, I thought about becoming a lawyer like my parents, and my mother would always tell me, "You can do anything you want - except be a lawyer." — Alexandra Daddario

Adoption is a wonderful way of becoming a family. If being a biological parent is any better or more rewarding than being an adoptive parent, I really don't think I could stand it! — Kathleen Silber

Seven years after becoming a lone parent, I feel qualified to look anyone in the eye and say that people bringing up children single-handedly deserve, not condemnation, but congratulation. — J.K. Rowling

They may already know too much about their mother and father
nothing being more factual than divorce, where so much has to be explained and worked through intelligently (though they have tried to stay equable). I've noticed this is often the time when children begin calling their parents by their first names, becoming little ironists after their parents' faults. What could be lonelier for a parent than to be criticized by his child on a first-name basis? — Richard Ford

Progress is hardly ever dramatic; in fact, it is usually very slow. As every parent and teacher knows, education is never a matter of ten-step plans or quick formulas, but of faithful commitment to the mundane challenges of daily life: getting up from the sofa to spend time with our children, loving them and disciplining them, becoming involved in their lives at school and, most important, making sure they have a wholesome family life to return to at home. Maybe that is why Jesus teaches us to ask for strength little by little, on a daily basis - "Give us this day our daily bread" - and why he stresses the significance of even the smallest, humblest beginnings: "Wherever two of you agree about anything you ask for, it shall be done for you ... For where two or three come together in my name, I shall be with them" (Mt. 18:19-20). — Johann Christoph Arnold

For some people, becoming a parent does change them, but it never changed me. — Vinnie Jones

Remember when you used to watch TV in the Sixties and you'd see Perry Como in a cashmere sweater? That's what rock 'n' roll is becoming. It's your parents' music. — Neil Young

Mum was an amazing parent and my best pal. The tragedy of it, really, was that she died from breast cancer just as I was becoming a man, aged 17, and we were just starting to speak as adults. She was snatched away, and it felt cruel. She made me laugh. — Robert Webb

Still a daughter. But soon, in hours apparently, I'll be nobody's daughter.
Surface lovliness was the outward visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.
Still a daughter. But soon, in hours apparently, I'll be nobody's daughter.
Parenting-a child must grow away from the parent
you must abandon ship in order to ... what? To exist, to be a "self" Becoming a person is the point. Being a child-that's an interim position. I neglected to break away. I remained the daughter. — Vanessa Diffenbaugh

When your child stops breathing 60 times a night, you don't worry about what's going on next year or even next week. You put aside thoughts about which preschool you're going to enroll him in and focus on how he's doing right now. It's not the Norman Rockwell relationship that you sign on for when becoming a parent. — John C. McGinley

Becoming a parent has just completely changed me, and made life so beautiful and given me such a center and a focus and such joy. — Angelina Jolie

I don't have a fear of becoming a parent, but I do have a fear of taking care of a newborn because they are so tiny and vulnerable. — Lindsay Price

Becoming a parent is like being coated in beef blood and being thrown in a cage with an angry tiger. Maybe I'm wrong, the tiger might actually have mercy on you and kill you quickly. Children have no mercy. They see that you have a weakness and they exploit it starting with pregnancy. I don't believe for a second that they don't know what they are doing in there. They do! Oh you want to go out today? BAM Bout of morning sickness that would lay low an elephant. You like that food? Let me tweek at your taste buds so it suddenly tastes like rhinoceros rectum deep fried. I think they have a little control center in your uterus to just continuously screw with you until you give up and just want them the hell out of your body. — Pixi Bunnell

There are no problems without consciousness ... , in what way does consciousness arise? Nobody can say with certainty; but we can observe small children in the process of becoming conscious. Every parent can see ; if they pay attention. And this is what we are able to observe: when the child recognizes someone or something - when [they] "know" a person or a thing - then we feel that child has consciousness. That, no doubt, is also why in Paradise it was the tree of knowledge which bore such fateful fruit."
Carl Jung
Modern Man in Search of a soul
1933 — C. G. Jung

The preparation for building a series of thrillers based on a single character is kind of like the preparation for becoming a parent: The best part is the idea - wink, wink. — Harlan Coben

Becoming a parent gives you access to a whole world of feeling. It gives you a much stronger sense of life and death: becoming a father made me realise my own mortality. — Laurence Fox

I think there comes a point in probably most father-son relationships where the son kind of starts becoming the parent. — Francois Arnaud

Becoming wealthy is not a matter of how much you earn, who your parents are, or what you do.. it is a matter of managing your money properly. — Noel Whittaker

The amazing thing about becoming a parent is that you will never again be your own first priority. — Olivia Wilde

I like kids but I also like the option to close the door. Becoming a parent is a whole other life, and it doesn't stop. — Jon Hamm

The progressive notion of the state as a loving, caring parent is becoming a bipartisan affair. — Jonah Goldberg

My parents were skeptical about me becoming a footballer and encouraged me to study. — Carles Puyol

A moral society will not set standards for becoming a parent, but it will establish irreducible minimums for maintaining that sacred status. — Andrew Vachss

Life, Rose well knew, could throw some hard punches at you, but nothing hurt as much as losing a child, or seeing one of your children hurt and suffering. Becoming a parent changed you forever, as nothing else could. Not good or bad fortune. Not friendships. Not even a man or a woman. — Jennifer Donnelly

Becoming a parent is always going to be a default setting. I truly believe there will always be more people who want to have children than who don't. — Meghan Daum

Of all the things I have learned since becoming a parent(and sometimes, it feels as if this might be everything I've learned), perhaps the hardest to accept is that it is selfish and possibly even dangerous to desire particular outcomes for our children. — Ben Hewitt

Becoming a father made me much more interested in the parent character in my novels. I've never found parents that interesting. — John Green

I write from the same place I parent, and since becoming a single parent, I have found it difficult, if not impossible, to write anything of length. — Dirk Benedict

Becoming a parent is actually terrifying. A lot of people have that feeling about their dogs. And if you're the kind of person who's going to have that feeling about a dog you're definitely going to have that about a child. — Joan Didion

while living on His script. While far from perfect, the Spiritually Healthy parent is a parent who walks each day, step by step, with God as his guide. Becoming a spiritually healthy family means you will allow God to call the shots for you and your family members and that you look to Him to give you wisdom instead of relying on your own strength and "great ideas". Because you realize you are a work in progress yourself, you offer your children grace when needed, while helping them see the corrected path that God desires all His children to follow. You recite the following things each — Michelle Anthony

I believe employment regulations for women, whereby the prospective employer is not able to inquire about the interviewee's status regarding children, childcare, or indeed their intention of becoming a parent, are counterproductive. — Alan Sugar

'Monsters,' everybody has the thought of monsters in your closet as a kid, and more importantly, the idea of becoming a parent. We're always kind of looking for those emotional nuggets. They're always at the heart of the story. — Pete Docter

I think that becoming a parent absolutely changes your entire life and certainly changes your work, and it has changed mine. It just allows you to have access to your emotions, even more than you already did. You're watching this little person grow in front of you, and you realize that you're seeing how precious life is and how quickly it goes. You get to things faster, even emotionally. I'm not as timid about reaching into some areas in myself and bringing that to my work. — Sasha Alexander

Defining yourself in terms of how you rank is always dangerous and ultimately immature. It doesn't matter whether the rank has to do with your grades, your weight or where you finished in the 800 meter race. Becoming a mature adult means, among other things, that you define yourself relative to your own potential, not relative somebody else's standard. — Leonard Sax

My father once said about being a parent that it is the only thing you do that requires a very long period of learning, and at about the time that you are becoming competent, you don't need the skills anymore. Notwithstanding this modest assessment of their parenting skills, they were wonderful parents. — Michael Spence

Personal credibility has everything to do with how others perceive us and how we perceive ourselves. Sandy Allgeier's book teaches the all-important truth that it doesn't matter how much money, status, or power you have if nobody believes in you. Every parent should read The Personal Credibility Factor and instill its lessons in their kids.Achieving a full understanding of these principles is the first step in becoming a truly great human being. — Michele Borba

Becoming a parent expands you as a human being. I am having the most wonderful time. You've married, but the addition of a child strengthens and deepens everything. — Kyle MacLachlan

Quit trying to become a better parent and decided to try becoming a better person. — Glennon Doyle Melton