Quotes & Sayings About Being A Good Parent

I'm so adamant that being a really good parent does not mean you have to be there 24/7. I find that I'm never not thinking about where they are, but instead of it stressing me out, it comforts me to know that I'm completely aware of their schedule, and they're with someone I trust. — Brooke Shields

A child should never even think about being a "good son." A parent decides that fate for the child. The parent encourages that. Not the child himself. And the "perfect dad"? I shudder at thinking what that may be. — Bret Easton Ellis

I could spend the whole afternoon telling you about him, but it's not gonna do much good, is it? You never smelled his hair after he just got out of the bath, or carried him from the car after he'd fallen asleep on the way home, or heard the way he laughed when someone tickled him. So you'll just have to take my word for it: He was a great kid and he made you glad to be alive. — Tom Perrotta

Yes, to be a good parent, you have to sacrifice, but this is not a requirement of parenting, it is a requirement of being good at something. — Robert Breault

My daughter is the biggest gift; I've said it so many times and it sounds like a cliche, but the thing about being a parent is when you think you've cracked it, and you're on top of your game, they change again and you have to catch up and adjust. I feel such a responsibility to instill good values in her, to be polite, to have discipline. — Geri Halliwell

Being a parent is not transaction ... we do not get what we give. It is the ultimate pay-it-forward endeavor: we are good parents not so they will be loving enough to stay with us but so they will be strong enough to leave us. — Anna Quindlen

What I want to be best at is being a dad. There's no room for sucky dads, and that's another thing I'm proud of my bandmates for - they're all really good parents. — Adrian Young

The attempt to be an ideal parent, that is, to behave correctly toward the child, to raise her correctly, not to give to little ortoo much, is in essence an attempt to be the ideal child
well behaved and dutiful
of one's own parents. But as a result of these efforts the needs of the child go unnoticed. I cannot listen to my child with empathy if I am inwardly preoccupied with being a good mother; I cannot be open to what she is telling me. — Alice Miller

Being a good parent is not an obligation, it is a choice. Plenty of people fall short in the parent category and quite a few refuse to accept it. You will do a much better job if you understand that taking care of your children is a choice not an obligation. — Gudjon Bergmann

To be a good enough parent one must be able to feel secure in one's parenthood, and one's relation to one's child ... The security of the parent about being a parent will eventually become the source of the child's feeling secure about himself. — Bruno Bettelheim

Obviously, I feel a great sense of responsibility being a good parent and raising my children. I don't take that job very lightly. Who they are, what they become and what they contribute to the world is very important to me. — Madonna Ciccone

Being a parent, I'm acutely aware of how hard it is to get good childcare. — Maya Harris

Being a good parent will necessarily break our hearts as we watch a child grow and eventually choose their own way, even through many of the same heartbreaks we have traversed. — David Whyte

Time mellows people as it mellows wine, as long as the grapes are good. You may set out to be a businesswoman or businessman but in the course of time end up caring for a dying parent, orphaned niece, or disabled brother. You may encounter illness yourself and end up being a writer, touching the heartstrings, not the purse strings of other people. That's why it's best to always be true to yourself and God and to be flexible within His will. He will use you. — Barbara Johnson

I think women look for that quality in a man of being a good dad whether they're immediately wanting to be a parent or not. — Emily VanCamp

I was in fact anxious about whether I would be any good at being a father. And then I met so many people who had been good parents under difficult circumstances, and I felt inspired by them. — Andrew Solomon

It was if the charming theatrical curtain had dropped away and I saw him for the first time as he really was: not the benign old sage, the indulgent and protective good-parent of my dreams, but ambiguous, a moral neutral, whose beguiling trappings concealed a being watchful, capricious, and heartless. — Donna Tartt

It is easy to be a good parent to a good child, but what makes a good parent, is dealing and being there for a difficult child, that is a real good parent! — Beta Metani'Marashi

I take the academic education as seriously as the physical education. That's why I tell parents that the schools can't do it all themselves. The parents can't come home from work and turn on the TV. That's not being a good parent. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

It's nice to be able to work; I'd love to be able to do another TV show I could do in Chicago so I could live and work in the same place. It's hard being a parent and being in a good marriage, and it all takes a lot of work, but if you're not there you can't do any of it. — Joan Cusack

Do jungle animals understand the true nature of the trees among which they have their daily being? In the parent-forest, amid those mighty trunks, we shelter and play; but whether the trees are healthy or corroded, whether they harbour demons or good spirites, we cannot say. Nor do we know the greatest secret of all: that one day we, too, will become as arboreal as they. And the trees, whose leaves we eat, whose bark we gnaw, remember sadly that they were animals once, they climbed like squirrels and bounded like deer, until one day they paused, and their legs grew down into the earth and stuck there, spreading, and vegetation sprouted from their swaying heads. They remember this as a fact; but the lived reality of their fauna years, the how-it-felt of that chaotic freedom is beyond recapture. They remember it as a rustle in their leaves. — Salman Rushdie

Maybe being a good parent is about improvisation and spontaneity. Maybe it's about genuinely being with your kid. Sometimes though, it is also about being able to catch sick in yours hands. — Keith Stuart

I got a fortune cookie that said, "To remember is to understand." I have never forgotten it. A good judge remembers what it was like to be a lawyer. A good editor remembers being a writer. A good parent remembers what it was like to be a child. — Anna Quindlen

I worry about the kids who have too much. As a parent living in a so-called good neighborhood with children who went to private high school, I found myself spending much time in parent groups worrying about alcohol, unsupervised parties, and parents not being parents. — Marian Wright Edelman

I always knew I wanted to have children. When I met my husband, Rande, I thought, 'This is the guy.' When you are getting ready to become a mom, being in love with someone just isn't enough. You need to think about whether he would be a good parent and raise your children with similar beliefs. — Cindy Crawford

The scholars who research happiness suggest that more money stops making people happier at a family income of around seventy-five thousand dollars a year. After that, what economists call "diminishing marginal returns" sets in. If your family makes seventy-five thousand and your neighbor makes a hundred thousand, that extra twenty-five thousand a year means that your neighbor can drive a nicer car and go out to eat slightly more often. But it doesn't make your neighbor happier than you, or better equipped to do the thousands of small and large things that make for being a good parent. — Malcolm Gladwell

I don't think I would have been a good mother. Being a parent brings immense responsibility. It's a Herculean task. It would be almost too much for me. — Julie Christie

We found ... that being a good parent to one's own child was never and in no way enough; until we were all responsible for all the children of the world, no child would ever be safe, no society could survive. — Eda LeShan

I wasn't ready for the guilt of being a parent. I was raised Catholic, so guilt is a familiar friend. Guilt is as much a part of the Catholic culture as is rooting for Notre Dame. I grew up with a "God is watching you, so you better not make him mad" mentality. I felt guilty for feeling good, for feeling bad, and for feeling nothing. Attending Confession was supposed to alleviate some of the guilt, but I always ended up feeling guilty for not telling the priest everything I felt guilty about, so I stopped going to Confession. Then I felt guilty that I stopped going to Confession. That's a lot of guilt. Just when I thought that nothing could top "Catholic Guilt," I became acquainted with "Parental Guilt," which totally puts "Catholic Guilt" to shame. Sorry, Catholic Guilt. Now I feel guilty for shaming you. — Jim Gaffigan

Being a good human being is very easy: Be a good son, a good husband, a good parent and a good citizen. — Siddharth Katragadda

Gay people getting married is not a threat to the institution of marriage. You know what's a threat to the institution of marriage? Infidelity is! Hate is! Unforgiveness is! Apathy is! Coldheartedness is! Fear is! And you know what's a threat to the kids? It's not having gay parents! Most gay kids have straight parents! And plenty of gay parents raise respectable, straight kids! The threat to children isn't their parents being gay; the threat to children is their parents not loving one another! Not caring for one another! Not being crazy about each other! Domestic violence is a threat to children. Stupidity is a threat to children. A swimming pool in the backyard with no supervision is a threat to children! — C. JoyBell C.

Being a parent means my time use has to be a bit more focused, but it also gives me a new non-writing dimension to my life, which is a healthy thing. I can't wander along for weeks with an idea drifting through my head - I have someone who will drag me back into life, and that's a good thing. — Nick Earls

There's a marketing scheme that tells you that pregnancy and child rearing will make you into a moron, that your kids are only happy when you're buying them stuff. It's hard being a parent, but I laugh a lot and smile a lot and really enjoy it. The ratio of laughter to sadness is higher. There's part of me that wants to broadcast that. Parenting only affirmed what I already cared about, and that's good — Dar Williams

I remembered the taste of good Italian coffee in my London flat, brewed at the expense of time and a good deal of mess, compared to the sort that came out of machines in the office at the press of a button. I remembered walking to art school, through the windy winter, over hills and heaths: how much gladder I was to reach the rich warmth and to toast my hands on a radiator, than if I had gone by car. I remembered the nickels my father gave me as a child for being good: how much more I valued them than I would a dollar bill given all at once for no reason. Of course God as the ultimate parent could give happiness for the asking, just as my father could have given a handful of dollar bills, but at the age of five would I have known its value, or would it have looked to me just like a wad of grubby green paper? — Sumangali Morhall

The Road is not a record of fatherly fidelity; it is a testament to the abyss of a parent's greatest fears. The fear of leaving your child alone, of dying before your child has reached adulthood and learned to work the mechanisms and face the dangers of the world, or found a new partner to face them with. The fear of one day being obliged for your child's own good, for his peace and comfort, to do violence to him or even end his life. And, above all, the fear of knowing - as every parent fears - that you have left your children a world more damaged, more poisoned, more base and violent and cheerless and toxic, more doomed, than the one you inherited. It is in the audacity and single-mindedness with which The Road extends the metaphor of a father's guilt and heartbreak over abandoning his son to shift for himself in a ruined, friendless world that The Road finds its great power to move and horrify the reader. — Michael Chabon

And nothing inspires as much shame as being a parent. Children confront us with our paradoxes and hypocrisies, and we are exposed. You need to find an answer for every why - Why do we do this? Why don't we do that? - and often there isn't a good one. So you say, simply, because. Or you tell a story that you know isn't true. And whether or not your face reddens, you blush. The shame of parenthood - which is a good shame - is that we want our children to be more whole than we are, to have satisfactory answers. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Being a good psychoanalyst, in short, has the same disadvantage as being a good parent: The children desert one as they grow up. — Morton Hunt

99.9% of being a good parent is just being present with your child. On the flipside of that, 100% of being happy is just being present. — Mark Webber

Being a 'good' parent is more about the parent, and, less about the 'supposedly-could-have-been-bad' child. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Parenting can be established as a time-share job, but mothers are less good "switching off" their parent identity and turning to something else. Many women envy the father's ability to set clear boundaries between home and work, between being an on-duty and an off-duty parent ... Women work very hard to maintain a closeness to their child. Father's value intimacy with a child, but often do not know how to work to maintain it. — Terri E Apter

If you remain humble, people will give you love and respect even after you have finished with the game. As a parent, I would be happier hearing people say, "Sachin is a good human being" than "Sachin is a great cricketer" any day. — Sachin Tendulkar

women are not thinking about 'having it all,' they're worried about losing it all - their jobs, their children's health, their families' financial stability - because of the regular conflicts that arise between being a good employee and a responsible parent."34 — Sheryl Sandberg

The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children. — Alain De Botton

I think you are looking at sexuality and not attributes, and I think it's odd because the conservative mantra is a meritocracy. And I think what you're suggesting is the fact that being gay parents makes you not as good as others. And I would suggest that a loving, gay family with a financially secure background beats the hell out of Britney Spears and Kevin Federline any day of the week. — Jon Stewart

Being a parent is a monumental thing. You shape reality for another person. You cannot be an illusion. You cannot be paralyzed by the fear that you are an illusion. If you have done a bad job, or no job at all, what remains of you is proof that the world is an unfeeling place. If you have done a good job, what remains is the part of you that was magical. — Steven Galloway