I set out to write an anti-parenting parenting book.
I realize that of all people, I am no expert on parenting or marriage.
When you hold your baby in your arms the first time, and you think of all the things you can say and do to influence him, it’s a tremendous responsibility. What you do with him can influence not only him, but everyone he meets and not for a day or a month or a year but for time and eternity.
I went to my local Sure Start centre, and they put me on a parenting course. I learned things that might seem simple – that it was important to hug and love your child, and read to them. This might seem obvious, but it wasn’t to me at the time.
I do think that there’s an art form to parenting, and I have nothing but admiration for those who do it well.
My son was five months old, and I built a makeshift studio in my living room so that I could do the attachment parenting approach and write the record at the same time. That was fortuitous, that we could build that in the house.
Whatever needed to be done, I need to know how to do it just as well as my wife. You know, for us to be able to really balance the parenting. It was very humbling, and it was also, um – terrifying. Because, you know, giving a baby a bath for the first time is one of the scariest things you can do on this whole earth.
Mom and Dad would stay in bed on Sunday morning, but the kids would have to go to church.
I hope to find the roles that are age appropriate but not yearning to be younger, or parenting ad nauseam.
Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life.
The challenging part of parenting for me is to make sure that an individual person is an individual and not some sort of cookie-cutter version of me. At the same time, I want to make sure that I impart my sense of the world as an adult.
I have three daughters, so I can’t be as tough as I want to be. When you have kids – especially daughters – they know how to work you. They’re a lot smarter than we are, that’s for sure. But I’ll be more tough on their boyfriends.
You can make sure your kids make their beds and hang up their clothes and put their dishes in the dishwasher when you’re the one calling the shots. So, parenting alone, for me anyway, I think is almost easier, being single.
I was allowed to do whatever made me happy. I can’t think of a better or more worthwhile approach to parenting.
I’ve met many rich kids over the years. Many are very down to earth and work hard; they come from decent parenting. Others, however, are not.
The parenting books didn’t work for me; I got my parenting lessons from everything but the books! And it was about figuring things out. So every time I had a thought, I would put down my conclusions and thoughts.
My daughter’s position in our household is definitely higher than mine. I listen to her a lot. I guess you can say that’s my parenting style.
My dad was not super-intentional in his parenting. He was very self-absorbed. I won’t say mean or selfish per se, but very self-absorbed. I think he was just thinking out loud.
I had a pretty well-adjusted style of parenting. I think my parents were very young, very open. I think I learned many things from them: etiquette and grace, compassion and charity. And who I am today is due to a lot of attributes of my parents.
Leave part of the yard rough. Don’t manicure everything. Small children in particular love to turn over rocks and find bugs, and give them some space to do that. Take your child fishing. Take your child on hikes.
People who choose not to have kids do so because they respect the job of parenting so much that they know not to take it on if they know it’s not something that they’re up for, and I don’t know what to be a bigger tribute to parenting than that.
In my experience (I am the lone father of an eight-year-old boy who lost his mother when he was one year old), parenting is the most difficult of all jobs: forget your chief executives, editors, prime ministers and the like – parenting is far more challenging.
Family life was wonderful. The streets were bleak. The playgrounds were bleak. But home was always warm. My mother and father had a great relationship. I always felt ‘safe’ there.
Having children is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.
What parent has it easy? I just never make the difficulty of it an obstacle. I just do it.
I have a shallow understanding of what it means to be alive, and I know certain things about parenting and being a wife and doing the school run. I know little bits, but I’m really a paddler on a beach.
Society should see parenting as a public health issue and help parents to bring their children up feeling loved. We have birthing classes, but no parenting classes. The latter is desperately needed if we are to avoid self-destruction.
I think that being a parent has expanded my writing, expanded my understanding of my characters, and has added a depth and richness to my work. Having kids deepened my idea of parenting and all the anxieties that come along with it.
We all, as parents, are laughing at ourselves and helicopter parenting and saying, ‘This isn’t the way we were parented; we were allowed to run free.’ When I talk to my friends, we are all fascinated by what we are doing, but we can’t seem to stop ourselves.
Offering unequal leaves just reinforces the longstanding notion that parenting responsibilities aren’t equal, and that doesn’t help anyone.
A baby is born with a need to be loved – and never outgrows it.
A parentologist is a person who writes a book about parenting that is very clear about answers to, ‘How am I supposed to raise my child?’ Some of these well-intentioned people may be a bit too sure-footed on the sometimes slippery slope of parenting.
Edith Vonnegut behaved like a guest in her children’s lives. To her way of thinking, parenting came under the general heading of household tasks, which, as a wealthy woman, she could pay others to do.
Certainly, workers in many industries do not have the privilege of being able to balance parenting at the workplace, and we must fight especially hard to support working parents in low-wage jobs.
Giving kids whatever they ask for is disastrous parenting. There’s no sense of something earned. I’m sorry, but when you’re 12, you don’t need a new cell phone every few months just because a new one comes out.
What lingers from the parent’s individual past, unresolved or incomplete, often becomes part of her or his irrational parenting.
Being a chef isn’t the ideal career to intersect with parenting, but I try to be in my kids’ lives as much as possible.
People ask me how I’ve raised three children as a single parent but honestly, parenting has been a breeze.
If two very different people pool their DNA, they’ll create more genetic variety, and their young will come to the job of parenting with a wider array of skills.
From politics to parenting, Christians have something to say.
Modern parents want to nurture so skillfully that Mother Nature will gasp in admiration at the marvels their parenting produces from the soft clay of children.
Do remember to pick your battles when you start parenting your stepchildren.
I have become more and more afraid about marriage and parenting. I think it’s because I am getting older. Of course, there will be a lot to learn, and I also know that the experience will help in my acting.
There is a lot of parenting that’s completely out of your control, but I think we live in an era right now where we think if, God forbid, you couldn’t talk to someone, you would flip out – you know what I mean?
Parenting is not for everybody. It changes your life. Especially when they’re little.
It’s hilarious to me that by writing an obscene fake children’s book I am mistaken for a parenting expert.
I learned that life is about the people around you and the people you give back to. That’s what parenting is: You’re not there for yourself; you’re there for your offspring and everyone else around you.
The children who are ‘our future’ will inherit a world created not just by parental devotion but by the sort of zealous, focused endeavors that can preclude good parenting.
I ask only child-free pals for parenting advice because they’re the only ones sane and well-rested enough to have any real insight.
I suppose it’s amazing how quick life goes by when you have children.
Everything that happens to me in a day enhances my parenting.
Parenting is different for everybody.
Some men don’t want to be responsible fathers. It’s easier to say ‘Let’s just turn the kids over to the state.’ Women end up bearing the entire load, raising kids alone without a husband to share the parenting.
Studies show that children best flourish when one mom and one dad are there to raise them.
It’s hard enough to work and raise a family when your kids are all healthy and relatively normal, but when you add on some kind of disability or disease, it can just be such a burden.
I am no expert on parenting.
The parenting bit is much harder than the acting bit. You just never know what to do.
Children live in the only successful Marxist state ever created: the family. ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need’ is the family’s practice as well as its theory. Even with today’s scattershot patterns of marriage and parenting, a family is collectivist to a more than North Korean degree.
