Raising A Child Quotes & Sayings

It has been said that the hardest job in the world is raising a child, but the people who says this have probably never worked at a comb factory or captured pirates on the high seas. — Lemony Snicket

Child abuse is still sanctioned - indeed, held in high regard - in our society as long as it is defined as child-rearing. It is a tragic fact that parents beat their children in order to escape the emotions from how they were treated by their own parents. — Alice Miller

Raising a child is a little like Picasso's work; in the beginning he did very conventional representational things. Cubism came after he had the rules down pat. — Anna Quindlen

You're not safe to go back there," he said.
"I'm going," I returned.
"We'll see."
Jeez, there was just no shaking this guy.
"You do know that there's this little thing called the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote?" I asked.
"I heard of that," he said and there was a smile in his voice.
"And there's this whole movement called fem ... in ... is ... im." I said it slowly, like he was a dim child. "Where women started working, demanding equal pay for equal work, raising their voices on issues of the day, taking back the night, stuff like that."
He rolled into me, which made me roll onto my back.
"Sounds familiar."
"Do you have an encyclopedia? Maybe we can look it up. If the words are too big for you to read, I'l read it out loud and explain as I go along."
He got up on his elbow. "Only if you do it naked." I slapped his shoulder. — Kristen Ashley

There are a lot of sacrifices a mother makes when she's raising a child by herself. I saw it when I was growing up, watching all my mother did for me. But it wasn't until recently that I fully understood the price she paid because of how we had to struggle. — Christina Applegate

Raising a child is the only relationship you have where if you do it right, it will end in separation. — Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal

The good news is that your child has a natural desire to do well. Your job as parent is to bring out this quality and cherish it until the day your kids leave home, and then some. — Marlene Targ Brill

It's true that to speak of an ethic of giftedness, which is very much the ethic that I deploy in raising questions about designer children and genetic engineering - an appreciation of the giftedness of the child or the giftedness of life does have religious resonance, because a great many religious traditions emphasize the sense in which the good things in life are not all our own doing; they are gifts from God. — Michael Sandel

The biggest mistake that parents make, is believing that their assigned task in life is to teach their children and to guide them in every situation of their children's lives. The truth is that it is the task of parents to both learn from their children and to guide them as well. Parenting is a relationship that goes both ways, from the moment your child is born, you learn from that person, and in fact, your lessons begin long before your child's lessons do. Later on, when you've learned a great deal already, then they begin to learn from you. Throughout our lives, it is a give-and-take relationship, in many ways. Our assigned task is to learn from our children, and to guide and teach them. Their assigned task is to learn from us, and also to teach us. — C. JoyBell C.

Raising a small child as a woman while travelling 10 months out of the year would, I believe, be something I would not be able or even want to do, although with the amazing example of Leila, I am no longer so sure. — Lara St. John

Every parent is an artist, for the bared canvas of a newborn's soul begs for the artist's touch. And because this is so, a parent must prepare the palette with the utmost care, choose the brushes with poised caution, and mindfully attend to every brushstroke regardless of how slight. And such caution is utterly imperative for the emerging rendering will be both a legacy borne of the parent, and a life lived by the child. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

But birth control can also be compelled by sinful motivations. These can include putting lesser priorities like career above higher priorities like family or greedily wanting to make as much income as possible to the exclusion of everything else, and not incur the costs of child raising; being selfish and not wanting to have to care for a child; or immaturely not wanting to take on the responsibility that good parenting requires. — Mark Driscoll

My parents had a normal life in Russia and they could have easily kept living a normal life, working and raising a child in Russia. — Maria Sharapova

The quality of life is so different in France. There is the possibility of living a simple life. I would never contemplate raising my daughter in LA. I would never raise any child there. — Johnny Depp

I'm talking about the soul-crushing drudgery of day-to-day parenthood that we're too embarrassed to talk about. The boredom, the stress, the nagging dissatisfaction, and the sense of personal failure that parents feel when raising a kid isn't all it's cracked up to be. Perhaps worst of all is the guilt that so many women buy into because they're too ashamed to admit that despite the love they have for their kids, child rearing can be a tedious and thankless undertaking. — Jessica Valenti

Just because a child doesn't have both parents raising him or her, doesn't mean that child becomes half the person they were meant to be. One wonderful parent can love enough for two, and love will always be the biggest influence in a child's life. — Ron Baratono

There is nothing more pathetically sad than a parent who teaches a child not to hit by spanking them. Well, that, and adults who think hitting someone will solve a problem. — Anitra Lynn McLeod

The value of just one soul is greater than any single thing upon this earth. For there can be nothing greater than raising a child in preparation for that journey back to where he came from, a place where his immortal father lives, a place known as heaven, a place called home. — Richard B. Pelzer

Raising a child is a time of RAPID CHANGE! From the ages of 0 to 19, a PARENT can age over 30 years! — Tanya Masse

Motherhood - no matter if you're a working mom or stay at home mom - is really tough sometimes. It can really leave us each day with a sense of wondering if we're doing it right. You know, it's a long term investment. You don't see big returns in the short term. Raising a child can easily pull you into being hyper-focused on the tough everyday moments of life. — Lysa TerKeurst

It's more along the lines of raising a child: we train the system to a certain range of behaviors that we find most useful. But then we let it go, because we don't want to have to be babysitting it the whole time. — Kevin Kelly

Years ago someone wrote [about me]: 'She characterizes Molly Weasley as a mother who is only at home looking after the children.' I was deeply offended, because I until a year before that had also been such a mother who was at home all the time taking care of her child [ ... ] What has lesser status and is more difficult than raising a child? And what is more important? — J.K. Rowling

In general there should be gay characters in YA because a) surprise, there are gay folks everywhere and b) in my opinion as a father, there's not a damn thing wrong with my child encountering gay folks in her literature, because see point a). — John Scalzi

Theon swept his cloak off its peg and over his shoulders. "Fathers are like that," he admitted as he pinned the folds with a silver clasp. "Tell him he should be pleased. As many times as I've fucked you, you're likely with child. It's not every man who has the honor of raising a king's bastard. — George R R Martin

I'm well aware there is no job more important than that of raising a child, but the problem is that it isn't valued. Not in the sense that counts to me at the moment, which is financial. — Paula Hawkins

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

Kids don't come with instructions. We all mess up. Raising a child is pure impromptu. — Harlan Coben

Tayla stole a peek at the report. "What's fucked up? The Smurfette?"
"The what?"
"Smurfette." Tayla rolled her eyes. "You've never watched cartoons, have you?"
Wraith came around the corner, his leather duster flapping around his boots. He shot Tay a look drenched with sympathy. "E's way too starched to watch cartoons. That's so not happening to Stewie. He's already digging The Simpsons."
"He's three weeks old!" Tayla gaped at Wraith in outrage.
"Almost four."
Tayla huffed. "Good God. I can't believe you are raising a child. Isn't there some sort of demon equivalent of Child Protective Services ?"
"Hey. I have as much right to screw up a kid as anyone else. — Larissa Ione

Compared to the challenges or raising an autistic child, weightlifting is a relief. — Melanie Roach

Many heterosexual marriages are childless; many with children break up: they are no guarantee that children will be raised in a house with two parents of two genders. The courts have scoffed at the reproduction and child-raising argument against marriage equality. And the conservatives have not mounted what seems to be their real objection; that they wish to preserve traditional marriage and more than that, traditional gender roles. — Rebecca Solnit

I may adopt. I love children and I do feel the need to take the legacy forward. I am open to it, but emotionally you have to be ready for it. Raising a child is really a huge responsibility. And I should have that time and emotional energy to give to child. How and when is a decision my mother and I will take a few years from now. — Karan Johar

I'm the person that I always was, but in terms of how I approach my living, I'm not the same person at all. At all. I've buried a child, I've ended a marriage, and the grandson that I was raising is now grown. My family has totally shifted. — Iyanla Vanzant

Raising children is a spur-of-the-moment, seat-of-the-pants sort of deal, as any parent knows, particularly after an adult child says that his most searing memory consists of an offhand comment in the car on the way to second grade that the parent cannot even dimly recall. — Anna Quindlen

Raising a child is very much like building a skyscraper. If the first few stories are slightly out of line. no one will notice. But when the building is 18 or 20 stories high, everyone will see that it tilts. — Jim Bishop

There are many controversial issues in contemporary American politics where, in spite of my strong feelings, I have the ability to understand and respect the other side. But the notion that we could ever pretend women have real equality in this country when a man as uninformed about basic reproductive gynecology as Mr. Todd Akin could take away my right to decide whether I want to spend a minimum of eighteen years and an average of $235,000 raising a child - not to mention the significant cost to my own dreams and goals or the myriad ways my child might ultimately suffer for my having been denied the ability to make that choice, the ways so many children suffer every day at the hands of their frustrated, stultified mothers - is an absurdity. — Meghan Daum

The State is now more involved than it has ever been in the raising of children, and children are now more neglected, abused, and mistreated than they have been in our time. This is not a coincidence, and, with all due respect, I am here to tell you: It does not take a village to raise a child-it takes a family. — Bob Dole

But at the heart of it all we must take our noses out of textbooks and delve into the Book to gain God's perspective of raising and educating a child. We must become more concerned with their souls than their brains. A child's smarts can help them go places in life, but the character reflected from their soul is what will determine whether or not they do anything significant once they get there. — Lysa TerKeurst

You spend some time raising a child in London, carrying it around on one side of your body - it puts your back out! — Matthew Goode

And I love being a writer because I want to leave something here on earth to make it better, prettier, stronger. I want to do something important in my life, and I think that adding beauty to the world with books like The Relatives Came or Waiting to Waltz or Henry and Mudge and the Forever Sea really is important. Every person is able to add beauty, whether by growing flowers, or singing, or cooking luscious meals, or raising sweet pets. Every part of life can be art. I am so grateful to be a writer. I hope every child grows up and finds something to do that will seem important and that will seem precious. Happy living and, especially, happy playing. — Cynthia Rylant

There grew between him and Ella a conspiracy of experience, as if the raising of children, the industry of supporting each other in ways practical and tender, and the sum of years and then decades of private conversations and small intimacies - the odour of each other on waking; the trembling sound of each other's breathing when a child was unwell; the illnesses, the griefs and cares, the tendernesses, unexpected and unbidden - as if all this were somehow more binding, more important and more undeniable than love, whatever love was. — Richard Flanagan

A child is not a Christian child, not a Muslim child, but a child of Christian parents or a child of Muslim parents. This latter nomenclature, by the way, would be an excellent piece of consciousness-raising for the children themselves. A child who is told she is a 'child of Muslim parents' will immediately realize that religion is something for her to choose -or reject- when she becomes old enough to do so. — Richard Dawkins

Motherhood has completely changed me. It's just about like the most completely humbling experience that I've ever had. I think that it puts you in your place because it really forces you to address the issues that you claim to believe in and if you can't stand up to those principles when you're raising a child, forget it. — Diane Keaton

Each child is a unique person, so raise your child taking this fact into
consideration. — Eraldo Banovac

For a mother the project of raising a boy is the most fulfilling project she can hope for. She can watch him, as a child, play the games she was not allowed to play; she can invest in him her ideas, aspirations, ambitions, and values
or whatever she has left of them; she can watch her son, who came from her flesh and whose life was sustained by her work and devotion, embody her in the world. So while the project of raising a boy is fraught with ambivalence and leads inevitably to bitterness, it is the only project that allows a woman to be
to be through her son, to live through her son. — Andrea Dworkin

You can't predict the outcome. You can't raise a child and then tell them what to think. — Aimee Bender

By raising a child we should also help raise our children's generation, not just raise him or her alone. — Chart Korbjitti

I don't think that anyone can prepare for raising a child. I think it's one of those jobs that is far more overwhelming than you could ever expect and far more satisfying than you can ever expect. — Lisa Edelstein

When a woman does not want to have a child, she usually has good reason. She may be unmarried or in a bad marriage. She may consider herself too poor to raise a child. She may think her life is too unstable or unhappy, or she may think that her drinking or drug use will damage the baby's health. She may believe that she is too young or hasn't yet received enough education. She may want a child badly but in a few years, not now. For any of a hundred reasons, she may feel that she cannot provide a home environment that is conducive to raising a healthy and productive child. — Steven D. Levitt

Training a puppy is like raising a child. Every single interaction is a training opportunity. — Ian Dunbar

Don't box your children in and tell them that everything is a sin. You'll produce either rebels, or very boring people. — C. JoyBell C.

You don't like me, do you?" she asked suddenly and pathetically, just like a small child.
Sergei did not look at her but merely said, "What makes you think that?"
"It is normal to try to make conversation while in the car with someone, isn't it?"
"Oh, well, my English is only average," he lied.
"Maybe, but I speak Russian," she persisted
Sergei grunted.
"What, your Russian is only average too?" she said, raising an eyebrow. — William Axtell

Raising her arms, she defied Heaven.
'So,' she cried, 'you prefer your God to me? You think he is stronger than I am. You think he will love you better than I would? Ah, what a child you are! Do stop talking such twaddle. What we are going to do is go back to the garden together, and love each other, be happy and free, for that is life. — Emile Zola

This is a truism of child-raising, of course - whatever you give special time and attention to cooking, your children will despise and reject, with annoying gagging sounds. — Marni Jackson

I believe the only people that should be around a child and raising a child are people who absolutely, 100 percent love that child — Angelina Jolie

It was not easy for my mother, being a struggling actress and raising a child. We were these two sort of vagabonds, never knowing where the money was going to come from. She always says she couldn't afford a babysitter, which is why she put me on the stage. — Christina Applegate

While it's certainly true that raising children is a big job and certainly has emotional resonance, it's really hard to intellectually justify the belief that you're adding something important to the world by adding more people to pollute the planet and compete for opportunities that become more precious as the number of people vying for a chance grows. — Amanda Marcotte

If I had received good instruction as a child I would be with my family today and at peace with my neighbors. I hope and pray that all you parents in the sound of my voice will train up your children in the way they should go. — Charles Portis

A 'good' father will tenderly cultivate his children. But a 'good' father who is also a 'brave' father will let the children without cultivate the child within. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

The raising of a child is the building of a cathedral. You can't cut corners. — Dave Eggers

I made decaf," he said. "Caffeine isn't good for you."
"Thank you, Mama Lane."
He made a face at her. "Tate and I used to share everything. Let him go off in a snit. I'll share his baby. If he doesn't come back, I'll appropriate it, and you."
"That's one area where all your commando skills will fail, dear man," she said affectionately. "I like you very much, and you can be baby's godfather. But I'm raising this child myself."
"Godfather." He was savoring the word when the toast popped up.
"Bad choice of words," she murmured. "I wouldn't want to give you any bad ideas. I don't want my child outfitted in a fedora and a machine gun."
"Commando godfathers are a different breed."
"Black bags and camo gear aren't much better," she informed him.
"Spoilsport. Where's your sense of adventure?"
"Hanging in the shower trying to dry out. — Diana Palmer

It's sad but true that if you focus your attention on housework and meal preparation and diapers, raising children does start to look like drudgery pretty quickly. On the other hand, if you see yourself as nothing less than your child's nurturer, role model, teacher, spiritual guide, and mentor, your days take on a very different cast. — Joyce Maynard

Raising a child is like taking care of someone who's on way too many shrooms, while you yourself are on a moderate amount of shrooms. I am not confident in my decisions, but I know you should not be eating a mousepad. — Ron Funches

I grew up in an environment where the onus of raising a child was not on the parents alone but of the entire community. The logic is in that a child who becomes a burden or an armed robber becomes a threat not only to the parents but to a whole society! — Nana Awere Damoah

It's not just the look, the cost, and the time involved in putting sunscreen on a child, it's the battle. My kids have no idea why they would have to wait to have fun while they are smeared with chemicals all over their face and body. They scream. They cry. "It burns!" The process of applying sunscreen just highlights the preposterousness of raising pale kids on a planet that revolves around a hot burning star that emits poisonous UV rays. I can never tell if the concerned looks from strangers are because they think I am torturing my children or because I am dressed like an out-of-shape Superman at the beach. Does anyone know where I can get a red swim cape? — Jim Gaffigan

I'm old to be raising a child. And she ... She obeys me, but only because she wants to."
"It's the only justification for obedience," Ged observed. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I keep saying that i wish our black women would not stop raising their sons to be like the niggas who left them. I see mothers covering for their deadbeat sons, putting some other child's mother through the same shit, her babyfather put her through.
We have spent the last few decades blaming absentee fathers for the lack of "graces" among our young men forgetting that they are raised by women. Women have always been other women's worst enemies. Maybe we need to start asking our mothers, what have they been doing wrong. Trying to smother the only man who won't leave them cause he can't, hes biologically linked to her. Trying to make up for the men who dumped her.
Raising monstrous, spoiled brats and then unleashing them on the female population. What we have today is a culture of men raised like daughters who do not know how to be a partner, a man and a father. — Crystal Evans

When we prioritize and focus and that becomes the anchor the relationship becomes the anchor and it trumphs everything else than it's at once freeing and anxiety relieving because the connection itself feeds empowerment and self-worth and self-esteem so it takes away the anxiety of raising a child. — Shefali Tsabary

There is nothing like raising a child in a home filled with love and respect ... to watch them blossom as an adult, filled with hopes and dreams and good intentions. Dedicated to our son, my coauthor, J.R. Matheson. We wish you all the best Justin! Love you. — Lee Bice-Matheson

He [David Foster Wallace] compares raising children to raising books, you should take pride in the work you do inside a family and not from how they make out in the world. "It's good to want a child to do well, but it's bad to want that glory to reflect back on you," is what he says. — David Lipsky

Being a mother is not about 'birthing a child into the world.' Rather, it is about repeatedly 'birthing into the child' a steady sense of their inestimable worth, a prized understanding of their authentic self, a conviction that the impossible is largely the stuff of myth, and an utterly unwavering belief that cold actions of men never represent the warm heart of God. It is the relentless act of birthing these things into the innermost soul of a thirsty child that makes a woman a mother. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

If one takes meaning into consideration, happiness might best be described as "a zest for life in all its complexity," as Sissela Bok writes in her book. To achieve it means to "attach our lives to something larger than ourselves." To be happy, one must do. It could be something as simple as teaching Sunday school or as grand as leading nonviolent protests. It could be as cerebral as seeking the cure for cancer or as physical as climbing mountains. It could be creating art. And it could be raising a child - my "best piece of poetrie," as Ben Jonson said in his elegy for his seven-year-old son. — Jennifer Senior

Raising a child is the very definition of ambivalence. I am overwhelmed at times by how something can simultaneously be so awful and so rewarding. — Elizabeth Gilbert

You put a certain amount of effort into stitching a jacket or dress and you get the garment you expect. There's no mystery. But you put a thousand times more effort into raising your child and the result is the opposite of what you hope and dream for. This seemed so unfair. — Jeffery Deaver

One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child's name and how old he or she is. — Erma Bombeck

In a world of complete economic equality, you get and keep the affections you deserve. You can't buy love with gifts or favors, you can't hold love by raising an inadequate child, and you can't be secure in love by serving as a good scrub woman or a good provider. — B.F. Skinner

The best security blanket a child can have is parents who respect each other. — Jan Blaustone

For all the varied concerns attendant to the raising of a child - over schoolwork, dress, and manners - in the end, a parent's responsibility could not be more simple: To bring a child safely into adulthood so that she could have a chance to experience a life of purpose and, God willing, contentment. — Amor Towles

In Taiwan there's a saying: Raising a child is more important than giving birth. Raising a child is greater. — Chien-Ming Wang

Any one above or below the prescribed ages who takes part in the public hymeneals shall be said to have done an unholy and unrighteous thing; the child of which he is the father, if it steals into life, will have been conceived under auspices very unlike the sacrifices and prayers, which at each hymeneal priestesses and priest and the whole city will offer, that the new generation may be better and more useful than their good and useful parents, whereas his child will be the offspring of darkness and strange lust. Very true, he replied. And the same law will apply to any one of those within the prescribed age who forms a connection with any woman in the prime of life without the sanction of the rulers; for we shall say that he is raising up a bastard to the State, uncertified and unconsecrated. Very — Plato

Like the tide eroding the surface of a rock, the raising of children slowly eats away at all the fanciful ideals and standards that you were so adamant about when your first child was born. — Jon Ziegler

With the gentle force of their words, the dogged warmth of their embrace, and the assuring touch of souls softly bared, mothers are silently shaping whole societies and authoring entire cultures that sit poised on the horizon of the future. And although we ignorantly relegate such roles to some lower caste status, we would be wise to understand that the role of a mother sets the cadence of the future. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Raising a child is an on-the-job kind of thing. There aren't a whole lot of manuals for that. — Larry Elder

One of a mother's greatest gifts is to teach her child that to grow is not to timidly sit on some safe shore at water's edge and clumsily grab whatever happens to float by. Rather, it is to deliberately step into waters both calm and turbulent in order to wrestle great things to shore. And that lesson can be best taught by a mother who stands before her child dripping wet. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

How can one explain all the time and thought that goes into raising a child, all the opportunities for mistakes, all the chances to recover and try again? How does one break the news that nothing permanent can be formed in an instant
children are not weaned, potty trained, taught manners, introduced to civilization in one or two tries
as everyone imagined. — Mary Blakely

Everybody in a village had a role to play in bringing up a child - and cherishing it - and in return that child would in due course feel responsible for everybody in that village. That is what makes life in society possible. We must love one another and help one another in our daily lives. That was the traditional African way and there was no substitute for it. None. — Alexander McCall Smith

Children are taught to look down on their nurses (nannies), to treat them as mere servants. When their task is completed the child is withdrawn or the nurse is dismissed. Her visits to her foster-child are discouraged by a cold reception. After a few years the child never sees her again. The mother expects to take her place, and to repair by her cruelty the results of her own neglect. But she is greatly mistaken; she is making an ungrateful foster-child, not an affectionate son; she is teaching him ingratitude, and she is preparing him to despise at a later day the mother who bore him, as he now despises his nurse. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

He would read up on parenting, if he thought it would help, but his errors always seemed too basic for the manuals. "Always tell your kids they have siblings ... " He couldn't imagine any child-raising guru taking the trouble to write that down. Maybe there was a gap in the market. — Nick Hornby

You might have grown up barefoot and motherless, but you overcame," he whispered. "The person God made you to be stood up under adversity. Maybe he knew you needed to have that stress to realize your full potential. You wouldn't be the same person if you'd grown up in a different environment." His other hand went to her belly. "Makes the responsibility for raising our child so important. He's put our baby with us for a specific reason. We have to do our part, then trust him with the rest." Though — Colleen Coble

A parent holds within their hands the gift of a child to which they must expend the gift of themselves. And in such a monumental outpouring, the parent will lose both the child and the gifts given, but they will possess the far greater gift of knowing that they gave both. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Well, I've thought about donating, but they get so many damn donations already. I read about one foundation that raised over 100 million dollars. Well where the hell did that go? For all I know every starving child has a 2 story house by now. Or maybe they're all raging alcoholics, like homeless people. Homeless people who are more effective when it comes to raising money. Who wants to support alcoholic children? Not me. — Zach Braff

There is something about raising a child that helps to sharpen one's sense of what is real. — Dan Simmons

But then one morning when I'd been on night shift, she miscarried suddenly and severely. The doctor said it seemed as though she had provoked it herself. I found that hard to believe, given how much she'd been looking forward to having the baby. At any rate, there were large blue bruises on her abdomen. But it's impossible to know about these things. There are a lot of mixed feelings involved when a woman faces raising an unplanned child on her own. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

All too soon the garden of childhood is paved cold with the asphalt roads of adulthood. And while it is not within her power to halt this unrelenting progression, a mother can diligently guard this most precious garden and insure that the roads become gentle paths that wind through it instead of byways that kill it. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I am not only the person who wrote and sold a novel while raising a houseful of biological and foster children; I am also the person who wrote a horrific young adult novel that never sold and gave up on a foster child I couldn't handle - an experience that still haunts me. — Vanessa Diffenbaugh

A bonus in raising a child you don't have a biological tie to is you will never saddle them with watching their every move and declaring their musical talent as "that's from your dad's side". — Nia Vardalos

Our own egos are so fragile we cannot bear to give our lives to the raising of children only to have them become ordinary people. There, I said it. The worst thing a 21st-century child of interesting parents could be: ordinary. Like us. — Heather Choate Davis

I'm not the first to admit that raising a child in Park Slope, Brooklyn, can bear an embarrassing resemblance to the TV show 'Portlandia.' My wife and I try to have some ironic distance from the culture of organic, chemical-free parenting, but we're often participants. — Adam Davidson

Fyodor Pavlovitch was drunk when he heard of his wife's death, and the story is that he ran out into the street and began shouting with joy, raising his hands to Heaven: "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace," but others say he wept without restraint like a little child, so much so that people were sorry for him, in spite of the repulsion he inspired. It is quite possible that both versions were true, that he rejoiced at his release, and at the same time wept for her who released him. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

No mother in my community has a more widely recognized hobby than bitching about her child's school. I've come to realize that for many, school is a real drag. It gets in the way of raising a professional athlete. — Jen Mann

Any woman who has devoted herself to raising children has experienced the hollow praise that only thinly conceals smug dismissal. In a culture that measures worth and achievement almost solely in terms of money, the intensive work of rearing responsible adults counts for little. One of the most intriguing questions in economic history is how this came to be; how mothers came to be excluded from the ranks of productive citizens. How did the demanding job of rearing a modern child come to be termed baby-sitting? When did caring for children become a 'labor of love,;' smothered under a blanket of sentimentality that hides its economic importance? — Ann Crittenden