Quotes & Sayings About Parenthood

There's something about the alchemy of the show - the actors, the writers, the directors, the editors - that makes 'Parenthood' unique. You get so deeply embedded with these characters because you go through life with them, and that's our priority. — Jason Katims

The Child is the Alpha and the Omega of a parent's happiness. — Amit Abraham

In the middle of a grocery store, two children were horsing around (one holding the other in a headlock) when the mother turned abruptly to give them a stern reprimand.
'You two are old enough to know better than to behave this way in public! Could you - at least for the time we're in this store - mind your manners enough to act like an adult?'
The children took less than a moment to consider their mother's question before facing each other and engaging in the following conversation:
'I hate you.'
'I hate you too.'
'Let's get a divorce.'
'Okay.'
Perhaps 'act like an adult' isn't such good advice anymore. — Richelle E. Goodrich

We shoot with three cameras, try to shoot both sides of coverage if possible. That allows the actors to overlap and to find moments that feel more authentic and real than what you sometimes would normally get in a scripted drama that's shot more classically. And that's something in 'Parenthood' that has evolved. — Jason Katims

Parents don't have the luxury of being reasonable, not any more than a religious person does. What can make religious people and parents so utterly insufferable is also what makes religion and Parenthood so utterly beautiful: the All or nothing wager. The Faith. — Jonathan Safran Foer

The best thing to spend on your children is your time. — Louise Hart

Mothering you is the first thing of consequence I have ever done. — Kelly Corrigan

He closed the laptop. A sure sign I was about to receive his full attention. — Ransom Riggs

Of Teddy Roosevelt and his siblings, the author writes they were, armed with an innate curiosity and discipline fostered by his remarkable father. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Helplessness in the face of a child's suffering is the curse of parenthood. — Nancy Atherton

It is one thing to be a man's wife - quite another to be the mother of his children. In fact, once you become a mother, being a wife seems like a game you once played or a self-help book you were overly impressed with as a teenager that on second reading is puffy with common ideas. This was one of the many things I had learned since crossing over into the middle place - that sliver of time when childhood and parenthood overlap. — Kelly Corrigan

If we reward our children for doing the right things, or discipline for intentionally doing the wrong things, then we might be viewed as doing the right thing. On the other hand, we (or parents) might not fully grasp the right thing - as the "right thing" becomes convoluted in the mix of the time and period, the latest "grand experiment", and other influences of parenthood and childrearing. — H. Kirk Rainer

The family is the country of the heart. — Giuseppe Mazzini

It's difficult for people to come to the understanding that only a small minority of the people ever really get the word about life, about living abundantly and successfully. Success in the important departments of life seldom comes naturally, no more naturally than success at anything-a musical instrument, sports, fly-fishing, tennis, golf, business, marriage, parenthood, landscape gardening. But somehow people wait passively for success to come to them, living as other people are living in the unspoken, tacit assumption that other people know how to live successfully. — Earl Nightingale

Incidentally, I have also learned a bit about the importance of avoiding feminine embarrassment ('Daddy,' wrote Sophia when she enrolled at the New School where I teach, 'people will ask "why is old Christopher Hitchens kissing that girl?"') and shall now cease and desist. — Christopher Hitchens

All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them. — Erma Bombeck

You know you've officially hit a midlife crisis when you finally start feeling like you have your life together and your body starts falling apart! — Tanya Masse

In the past the intrinsic pleasures of parenthood for most American families were increased by the extrinsic economic return thatchildren brought. Today, parents have children despite their economic cost. This is a major, indeed a revolutionary, change. — Kenneth Keniston

We've never been in a time where mothers - parenthood, but particularly motherhood - is so fetishized. There's a whole industry around motherhood and mother-daughter bonds. And certainly when my mother was sick I found there was an incredible expectation for me to tell everybody how we were having this bonding experience and how healing it was. — Meghan Daum

Anything that opens you up emotionally is going to impact your acting. Parenthood, becoming a mom, certainly does that. — Keri Russell

I'm pretty sure that my Restless Leg Syndrome is simply caused my body just fighting the urge to RUN AWAY! — Tanya Masse

And most of the failures in parent-child relationships, from my observation, begin when the child begins to acquire a mind and a will of its own, to make independent decisions and to question the omnipotence or the wisdom of the parent. — Sydney J. Harris

I'm well aware that there is no job more important than that of raising a child, but the problem is that it isn't valued. — Paula Hawkins

In today's world parents find themselves at the mercy of a society which imposes pressures and priorities that allow neither timenor place for meaningful activities and relations between children and adults, which downgrade the role of parents and the functions of parenthood, and which prevent the parent from doing things he wants to do as a guide, friend, and companion to his children. — Urie Bronfenbrenner

It's quite sad that so many children go through life unsure whether their parents love them or not. — Wayne Gerard Trotman

We grow up opposing our parents only to become like them enough to oppose our children who behave as we once did - a reminder of how dreadful we were toward those now vindicated grandparents. And you thought God had no sense of humor. — Richelle E. Goodrich

It was not because I had a strong sense of the virtue of industry, but because Joe had a strong sense of the virtue of industry, that I worked with tolerable zeal against the grain. — Charles Dickens

Dinner is a cacophonous exercise of holy sanctification. — Jen Pollock Michel

There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory. — Pat Conroy

I don't think it matters how many parents you've got, as long as those who are around make their presence a good one. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

The end of parenthood is implicit in its beginning: separation. — Anne Truitt

Confession: Having kids did not fix me. I was not somehow more whole, less botched-up, or more certain just because I had a kid ... I was still me, with all my holes and problems and questions - only now I was also exhuasted and had a lot more laundry to do. — Jerusalem Jackson Greer

Cloning looks like a degrading of parenthood and a perversion of the right relation between parents and children. — Leon Kass

The vast majority of chatter surrounding parenthood is junk. All of these seemingly divisive decisions - like pain meds in labor, newborn sleep arrangements, and scheduling - are often phrased as moral imperatives from both sides. Screw that. Take care of your kid. Do what works. — J.J. Keith

I understood and appreciated the miracle of birth, but I did not understand motherhood, nor did I appreciate the oveselling of it. To me it was a choice, one of many options. To others it was what women did. We were supposed to breed. It had been decided for us. Society expected it. Religion demanded it. — Judy Morgan

The causes of crime are very complicated. But there is a very big literature, as you know, about single parenthood in crime, about race in crime, and about poverty in crime. — Bill Bennett

Excitement about things became a habit, a part of my personality, and the expectation that I should enjoy new experiences often engendered the enjoyment itself. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Like many men who experience fatherhood relatively late in life, Martin Luther was a devoted parent. Luther wrote his children letters of touching intensity, patiently converting the joys of the Christian life into a language of storytelling fit for the very young. A home with children brought out the best in Luther in a way that theological disputation patently did not. — Andrew Pettegree

In biblical times, they used to stone a few thirteen-year-olds with some regularity, which helped keep the others quiet and at home. The mothers were usually in the first row of stone throwers, and had to be restrained. — Anne Lamott

Worry not that your child listens to you; worry most that they watch you. — Ronald A. Heifetz

In the mystifying world that was Victorian parenthood, obedience took precedence over all considerations of affection and happiness, and that odd, painful conviction remained the case in most well-heeled homes up until at least the time of the First World War. — Bill Bryson

Planned Parenthood, we're going to get rid of that. — Mitt Romney

What could make a man stands taller than a newborn son? — Beth Moore

If a brokenhearted mother could sing, I could not remain silent. — Beth Moore

Originality must compound with inheritance. — Harold Bloom

Almightiness and wisdom combined will make no failures. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Faith can be very very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong. — Richard Dawkins

It's certainly TOUGH being AWESOME all
the time, but I do it so the kids have someone to look up to! — Tanya Masse

It takes a tremendous amount of strength to be a single mother. To hold down the forte of a home, a life and your child's entire happiness. — Nikki Rowe

Recalling his mother's endless drudgery, (Senator) Richard (Russell) Jr. was to say that he was ten years old before he saw his mother asleep; previously, he had thought that mothers never had to sleep. — Robert A. Caro

Any man's life can be seen as a series of engagements with his fathers, Including the surrogates provided by life and literature. — Richard Brookhiser

I am dedicated to ensuring reproductive health and freedom for all. Please join me in supporting Planned Parenthood's vital work to protect access to reproductive health care and real sex education worldwide. — Kathleen Turner

Sex is an open secret parents try to hide to their children — Bangambiki Habyarimana

Mothers and fathers must be gentle at least some of the time. Mothers and fathers must also be strict at least some of the time. Most of the time, though, most mothers and fathers must be mostly strict and gentle together. — Connie Kerbs

Unlike Mitt Romney, President Obama is standing up for Planned Parenthood. — Bev Perdue

In religion as in parenthood, uncritical loyalty to our ancestors may implicate us in an injustice against our descendants: imprisoning them in the errors of our ancestors. — Brian D. McLaren

At first parenthood was as I had expected, exhausting, sometimes heinous, and occasionally divine. I held my children close enough to feel them breathe, laugh, swallow. — Kelly Corrigan

There's no encyclopedia or book about parenthood. You learn on the fly. — LeBron James

It wasn't until we dropped him at his university dormitory and left him there looking touchingly lost and bewildered amid an assortment of cardboard boxes and suitcases in a spartan room not unlike a prison cell that it really hit home that he was vanishing out of our lives and into his own. — Bill Bryson

Parenthood is shit, snot, slime, fear, tears, spit, and spills. It's as intense as combat, which is to say hours of tedium relieved by moments of alarm and flashes of joy to remind you that you're alive. It is intensely practical and profoundly square, even if you're not. It's feeding, wiping, and picking up. — Scott Simon

And there's an argument to be made that if intentional and thoughtful parenthood is an indicator of parental and family happiness, then having gay parents - parents who weren't able to "accidentally" have a child - may be, in fact, among the better circumstances there are for a child. — Jessica Valenti

Society needs both parents and nonparents, both the work party and the home party. While raising children is the most important work most people will do, not everyone is cut out for parenthood. And, as many a childless teacher has proved, raising kids is not the only important contribution a person can make to their future. — Virginia Postrel

No woman shall have the legal right to bear a child without a permit for parenthood. — Margaret Sanger

Teach them the quiet words of kindness, to live beyond themselves. Urge them toward excellence, drive them toward gentleness, pull them deep into yourself, pull them upward toward manhood, but softly like an angel arranging clouds. Let your spirit move through them softly. — Pat Conroy

I have a pretty large experience of boys, and you're a bad set of fellows. Now mind! — Charles Dickens

Parenthood is a very, very intense experience. — Julianne Moore

Parenthood doesn't improve one's character, it exposes it. — Leslie A. Gordon

I didn't just see a child in my dreams - I felt it in my heart. — Seth Adam Smith

Along with the joy of parenthood, with every child comes a piercing vulnerability. It is at once sublime and terrifying — David Sheff

I can speak of our baby like this to no one else. Who but his father would linger over the exact width of his gummy little smile or the blueness of his eyes, or the sweetness of his little lick of tawny hair on his forehead? — Philippa Gregory

But the truth is, there's little even the most organized people can do to prepare themselves for having children. They can buy all the books, observe friends and relations, review their own memories of childhood. But the distance between those proxy experiences and the real thing, ultimately, can be measured in light-years. — Jennifer Senior

She was an alien, really - a sort of eating, pooping, tantrum machine - and he didn't understand anything about her species. — Christopher Moore

Wary of being caught unawares, we planned our parenthood, committed to trial marriages with pre-nuptials, and pre-arranged our parents' funerals - convinced we could pre-feel the feelings that we have heard attend new life, true love, and death. — Thomas Lynch

Distrust won't do good to you.
But still if you ever do.

Doubt you husband,
Maybe doubt your wife.
But never suspect,
your kid's father,
or the mother of your child. — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

When justice is more certain and more mild, is at the same time more efficacious. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Unlike Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, I never voted to provide taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood. — Ron Paul

The goal of a true family is not that their children follow in their footsteps, but that their children surpass them in all ways. — Andrew Vachss

I want to promise you / permanence, my constant orbit, but even continents / are revisions. I am only your diving bell in water / hemmed by shifting plates. — Robin Beth Schaer

It's all about the fungibility and money. If Planned Parenthood accesses hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money and they use that for other purposes, then they can use other dollars to fund abortion. — Eric Cantor

And the question is always "When are you going to have kids?" Rather than "Do you want to have kids? — Caitlin Moran

Indeed, while experiences and information can be good teachers, there are many times in life where we simply cannot afford to learn on the job. You don't want to have to go through multiple marriages to learn how to be a good spouse. Or wait until your last child has grown to master parenthood. This is why theory can be so valuable: it can explain — Clayton M Christensen

I had a very feminist mother who exposed me not only to Planned Parenthood - my first job - but also to Betty Friedan and Colette and Naomi Wolf. — Liz Goldwyn

The less obvious hurdle is that of preparing parents emotionally and putting forward realistic images of parenthood and motherhood. There also needs to be some sort of acknowledgement that not everyone should parent - when parenting is a given, it's not fully considered or thought out, and it gives way too easily to parental ambivalence and unhappiness. — Jessica Valenti

... hearts wrung with anguish, the anguish of having children, a vulnerability as astonishing as the capacity for love that parenthood brings. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Planned Parenthood gave me an award for the Willie Parker story that I was deeply honored by. I didn't get any negative comments. I think the Willie Parker piece had more of an impact on people in that sense because it went deeper into the clinic itself. — John H Richardson

If coupling should but make us whole / And of the selfsame mind and soul, / Then couple let's in celebration; / We have contained the population. — N. Scott Momaday

Apprehension of a painful or disagreeable recognition made me tremble. I am confident that it took no distinctness of shape, and that it was the revival for a few minutes of the terror of childhood. — Charles Dickens

I'm always keeping an eye on the court. Also, when the members of Congress came to his office during the budget debacle of a year and a half back and said, "We want to de-fund Planned Parenthood," he said, "Not going to happen." Those apparently were more or less his exact words. — Anna Quindlen

Was she insane?! She would lose her head before she was 20! — Margaret Landon

Oh, brothers and sisters, families can be forever! Do not let the lures [or the irritants] of the moment draw you away from them! Divinity, eternity, and family
they go together, hand in hand, and so must we! — Spencer W. Kimball

The more you care, the more you fear. — Wayne Gerard Trotman

The Mother Thing makes our world. — Robert A. Heinlein

My position in the family turned out to be a lucky one; I bore neither the brunt of my mother's newness to parenthood nor the force of her middle-aged traumas, as my younger sister, Ruth, did. — Katharine Graham

Defining and celebrating the New Father are by far the most popular ideas in our contemporary discourse on fatherhood. Father as close and nurturing, not distant and authoritarian. Fatherhood as more than bread winning. Fatherhood as new-and-improved masculinity. Fathers unafraid of feelings. Fathers without sexism. Fatherhood as fifty-fifty parenthood, undistorted by arbitrary gender divisions or stifling social roles. — David Blankenhorn

Senator John Kyle claiming that over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion.
Stephen Colbert: Over 90 percent, that is unbelievable ... in that it is not true. Only 3 percent of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion. Kyle just rounded it up to the nearest 90. — Stephen Colbert

What is much harder to handle is the sense that you have to live up to the mark someone else has set for you. The grades become too important, the competition too frantic, the fear of disappointing those who believe in you turns into an overwhelming nightmare. And it is desperately unfair to the boy. He cannot live his parents' life over again for them. He cannot make up for their own lacks, their own unfulfillments. He cannot carry their torch
only his own. — Sydney J. Harris

Over the last several years, I've passed defunding Planned Parenthood, the sonogram bill, voter ID. I passed the TSA anti-groping bill, sanctuary cities, loser pay, border security, and the toughest Jessica's law in the entire nation against sexual predators. — David Dewhurst

You can't be a legend in your parent's basement. — Joe Walsh

The psychologist Jerome Kagan has argued that parenting has a threshold function: up until that threshold is crossed, the effects of a child's very early experience even out in the end. But parenting that crosses the threshold - abuse, stress, utter indifference - can sink in deep, especially if the baby remains in that environment. There's a lot to be said for this perspective on parenthood, not least that it offers well-meaning parents some relief from scaremongering. It also accounts for the astounding flexibility of the human infant: he is game for the craziest parenting stuff you can come up with. — Nicholas Day

Frankie's chief virtue in my book is the way he talks about his kids. — Andre Agassi