Quotes & Sayings About Growing Up Without A Father

Growing up in eastern Turkey, I was not really involved with the family business - sheep and cow farming, yogurt and cheese making. But I think I learned from my father the unspoken business language or instincts that go back thousands of years. — Hamdi Ulukaya

I can't stop watching 'Pan Am.' When I was growing up, my father worked as an engineer in Turkey, and we always flew Pan Am. The stewardesses were so glamorous! When they gave me a set of those golden wings, I felt very grown-up. Not only is the show's plot full of mystery and infidelity, they get the period details just right. — Gayle King

My father was a local radio celebrity in the Albany area while I was growing up. That was his dream when he was a boy. I learned from him that some dreams are attainable and the penalty for inaction is regret. — Jonathan Weeks

I had a cookie business there, with my brother, when we were growing up, called the Chip Yard, and that became the inspiration for the banana stand. My father said that he wanted us to develop a work ethic, so we'd sit there selling cookies, all day. — Mitchell Hurwitz

I am opposed to the idea of a child growing up with two gay parents. A child needs a mother and a father. I could not imagine my childhood without my mother. I also believe that it is cruel to take a baby away from its mother. — Stefano Gabbana

Growing up in Ireland, when my family received important news, good or bad, we would boil water and make tea. It was the first thing I did when my father died in 1984. This ritual allowed me a moment to take in the enormity of what had happened. — Roma Downey

You can't rest on yesterday's growth. You must be dedicated to growing today ... and every day. — Jim George

I'm blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived. I saw it all growing up. — Rod Blagojevich

One of the tragedies of our day is that too many boys are growing up without guidance of a father, or another man, to show them what it looks like to do away with that boyhood stuff. As a result, they often move into adolescence and then adulthood looking like men but still speaking, reasoning, and behaving like boys. — Dennis Rainey

I didn't really have an interest in politics when I first entered the workforce. What I wanted to do was help people who grew up like me. When I was a kid growing up in Tucson, my father lost his job and we lost everything - including our home. We lived in an abandoned gas station for two years until we were able to get back on our feet. — Kyrsten Sinema

As I was growing up, you know, I'm a white Jewish American born to Holocaust parents. My father fled Nazi Germany in 1939 and my mother's family had fled the czars of Russia before that. — Eugene Jarecki

No, you become a man when you first decide to put away the things of childhood, the talk of childhood, and the thoughts of childhood. You decide because you cannot be treated as both a man and a boy. Because you are either one or the other, but you are not both ... — Carew Papritz

One of the things about being a boy, especially growing up without a father, is you really don't have that role model to teach you how to do things. — Art Alexakis

In my entire life growing up I've never heard my dad say an unkind word about anyone. My father has always taken the high road in life and to me he's a complete inspiration without being a pushover. — Hugh Panaro

Our children are going to be remarkably stubborn," he commented as they started down the main street of town. Lily tried to ignore the avid stares of passers-by. "We aren't going to have any children," she said. Some instinct caused her to lie. "My - my monthly arrived today." Caleb fell silent, and in a sidelong glance Lily saw his disappointment. She laid a hand on his arm but could not. bring herself to admit the truth. If the major believed there was no child - indeed, no possibility of a child - he might stop pursuing Lily. The sooner he gave up, the sooner she could get on with building up her homestead and finding her sisters. She bit down on her lower lip. Of course, if there was a baby growing inside her, would it be fair to let Caleb go back to Fox Chapel without ever knowing he was about to become a father? The — Linda Lael Miller

When I was growing up, my house was filled with books. My mother was an educator, and my father was a history buff, so our home was a virtual library, covering every author from Beverly Cleary to James Michener. — Jeff Kinney

When he mentioned family, I could only think of my father, my real father, the Long Island janitor with the impenetrable accent and true-to-life smells. My mind returned away from what Joshie was saying and I pondered my father's humiliation. The humiliation of growing up a Jew in the Soviet Union, of cleaning piss-stained bathrooms in the States, of worshipping a country that would collapse as simply and inelegantly as the one he had abandoned. — Gary Shteyngart

I grew up without a father, and my mother grew up without a father and her mother grew up without a father. So we have this long heritage of growing up without fathers. — Gloria Gaynor

The U.S. is becoming an increasingly fatherless society. A generation ago, an American child could reasonably expect to grow up with his or her father. Today an American child can reasonably expect not to. Fatherlessness is now approaching a rough parity with fatherhood as a defining feature of American childhood. — David Blankenhorn

So many of our young women today, they're growing up without a father, but they're still thirsty for that and desiring positive male love. — Hill Harper

The only guy that speaks at any sort of depth is, in my mind, Eminem. He's a guy that does music that talks about the struggles of addiction and before that violence, with growing up in a broken family, not being a good enough father. So, you know that's what I enjoy about it. It's harder to listen to than ever before because I have a bunch of kids and you just can't put it on. — Marco Rubio

I just gravitated toward (working behind the scenes by) growing up on the different sets and watching my father and other people in their different capacities ... When I was 13 years old, I asked for a Super 8 camera. — Michael Landon Jr.

My father is a well known artist, Ted Dyer, who has been painting for many years. Our work is very different, but growing up surrounded by paintings, paints, easels and art books does have an effect. — John Dyer

Growing up, my father was a financial analyst for an oil company. He was just a regular dad. And when I would say, 'Hey, come see my play,' he'd say, 'Sure.' He'd see one, 'Oh, good play' - you know, very typical dad reaction. — Eric McCormack

My father said, Don't grow up to be a woman, and what he meant by that was, a housewife ... without any interests. — Maria Goeppert-Mayer

You are young," said my father. "You won't get any younger even if you clean your teeth twice a day."

"You'll get older," said my mother, "that's what happens."

"Then what happens?"

"You won't be able to find the treasure."

"Will I be too old to look for it?"

"No, but you'll be looking in the wrong place. — Jeanette Winterson

My father used to say that when he was growing up the water was clear and there were tons of fireflies everywhere ... He felt sorry for the kids growing up today ... But it is really beautiful ... Time will just keep on passing ... we'll get old ... and look back on the past. I hope we can always say ... how great things were. — Fuyumi Soryo

For me, growing up, the downside of it was that as a kid you don't want to stand out. You don't want to have a famous father let alone get a job because of your famous father, you know? But I'm a product of nepotism. That's how I got my foot in the door, through my dad. — Jeff Bridges

Our memories and the events of our lives are untidy things. We wish that we could file them away and shut the door, or we wish the opposite - that they would stay with us forever. You want to banish the remembrance of a tight hold on your ankle, a rope under a bed, the amber-colored medicine bottles of your father, the door your mother slams after a night of too much wine and jealousy. You want to keep close to you always that first sweet kiss, a maple leaf, that growing sense of yourself; you want to hold the sight of your dying father on that last boat trip, the calm you remember as your mother held you. Her voice. — Deb Caletti

Blood doesn't make you family. Hell, an only child can bleed. It's the sharing of pain that makes you family. 'Cause, you can't really love a brother or sister until you know that they're as scarred and broken as you are. And, hey, if you grow up with a father like mine and you aren't at least a little scarred and broken, well then, that's not your father. You were spawned by an entirely different guy. — Christopher Titus

I always prayed the same way at night: "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Please bless my mother, father, sister, everyone in the word, and me. And please make my father quit drinking."
As a child growing up in a family battling alcoholism, this is what I know: Something bad is coming; it always does. I can't ask for help; I'm too ashamed. I can't talk about our secrets; no one understands. I can't trust anyone; they always leave.
Questions bounced off my self-constructed wall of values
a barricade I'd made from the fears I'd pushed into my darkness.
How could Ryan, a professional baseball player, really resist all those women? How could I really trust Jerry, my childhood friend? I'd barely awakened to sex and already boys were the seventh wonder of the world. Did anyone really trust another person? I needed proof. That proof hadn't revealed itself ... yet. — Pamela Taeuffer

When I was growing up, we always had music playing in our household. I enjoy spending time with my father singing. — Pattie Brooks

DEAR MISS MANNERS:
I a tired of being treated like a child. My father says it's because I am a child
I am twelve-and-a-half years old
but it still isn't fair. If I go into a store to buy something, nobody pays any attention to me, or if they do, it's to say, "Leave that alone," "Don't touch that," although I haven't done anything. My money is as good as anybody's, but because I am younger, they feel they can be mean to me. It happens to me at home, too. My mother's friend who comes over after dinner sometimes, who doesn't have any children of her own and doesn't know what's what, likes to say to me, "Shouldn't you be in bed by now,dear?" when she doesn't even know what my bedtime is supposed to be. Is there any way I can make these people stop?
GENTLE READER:
Growing up is the best revenge. — Judith Martin

I stared at her - unable to accept that at one time I was growing inside her. I was once just a couple of cells. My father and my mother were naked something had to be satisfactory about it, because he came inside her and she got pregnant. She, like me, was once a baby in her mother's stomach and so on and so forth and so it goes. So it goes. — Peter Hedges

A father would do well, as his son grows up, and is capable of it, to talk familiarly with him; nay, ask his advice, and consult with him about those things wherein he has any knowledge or understanding. By this, the father will gain two things, both of great moment. The sooner you treat him as a man, the sooner he will begin to be one; and if you admit him into serious discourses sometimes with you, you will insensibly raise his mind above the usual amusements of youth, and those trifling occupations which it is commonly wasted in. — John Locke

I suppose it must be admitted that I was raised in a "dysfunctional" family, but in truth, I do not think I had any sense of that as I was growing up. Probably part of the reason was that all of my extended kin had families at least as dysfunctional as mine. Just to give a little of the flavor of it, my "Aunt Fern," who lived just across the street and was one of the most present and puissant female relatives in my life, was, to be genealogically precise, my mother's brother's, first wife's, second husband's, father's, 3rd, 4th, and 5th wife. (She married "Uncle Lew" three times in the course of her seven matrimonial ventures.) — Carlfred Broderick

When I was growing up, I never really knew my father. I didn't get to know my father until I was about 14 years old. — Cole Hauser

People ask me from time to time what it was like growing up with Henry Fonda as my father. I say, Ever see Fort Apache? He was like Colonel Thursday. — Peter Fonda

Lindsey took my father's hand and watched his face for movement. My sister was growing up before my eyes. I listened as she whispered the words he had sung to the two of us before Buckley was born:

Stones and bones;
snow and frost
seeds and beansand polliwogs.
Paths and twigs, assorted kisses,
We all who knowwho Daddy misses!
His two little frogs of girls, that's who.
They know where they are, do you, do you?


When her eyes closed and they both slept silently together, I whispered to them:
Stones and bones;
snow and frost;
seeds and beans and polliwogs.
Paths and twigs, assorted kisses,
We all know who Susie misses..... — Alice Sebold

My one complaint with my father as a parent is that, not only was he not a golfer, but also he was sort of opposed to golf. I was a country club kid growing up. I should have played golf, but my father thought golf was a sport for old men. — Mike Greenberg

For my writing, and because I love talking to young women about life, I often asked them which would they rather have - a father in the house with them while growing up or a big butt? I tell you 86 percent of the time, girls say a big butt because it gets them further. — Jill Scott

I haven't much time to be fond of anything ... but when I have a moment's fondness to bestow, most times ... the roses get it. I began my life among them in my father's nursery garden, and I shall end my life among them, if I can. Yes. One of these days (please God) I shall retire from catching thieves, and try my hand at growing roses. — Wilkie Collins

Well people often ask me how I felt growing up with a father who was a politician and who was often away. But when I'm asked that question I often reflect on my inability really to be able to answer it in any relative sense because I never grew up with a father doing anything else. So I just have no idea what it would be like otherwise. — Alexander Downer

'Thirteen' was really hard on my family. I wrote this movie about them and their flaws and imperfections and what it was like growing up. It was from one kid's perspective and not a well rounded one. You get older, and it's like, 'How dare I portray my father as being a totally vacant, careless schmuck?' — Nikki Reed

So as this child's father, you would give him some basic, good advice and then let him go off and make his own mistakes?"
"I wouldn't run behind him and mollycoddle him if that's what you mean."
"But what if he fell and skinned his knee?"
"He would learn to be more careful."
"So although you have the power to interfere and prevent your child's pain, you would choose to show your love by letting him learn his own lessons?"
"Of course. Pain is part of growing up. It's how we learn."
The camerlengo nodded. "Exactly. — Dan Brown

I've been very blessed. My parents always told me I could be anything I wanted. When you grow up in a household like that, you learn to believe in yourself. — Ricky Schroder