PARENTHOOD QUOTES
quotations about parenthood
Welcome to parenthood. Now half your conversations will be about poo.
ANONYMOUS
If you would have your son to walk honourably through the world, you must not attempt to clear the stones from his path, but teach him to walk firmly over them -- not insist upon leading him by the hand, but let him learn to go alone.
ANNE BRONTË
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
The trouble with the family is that children grow out of childhood, but parents never grow out of parenthood.
EVAN ESAR
The Comic Encyclopedia
The hardest part about parenting is when I have to be The Dad--aka the Fun-Sucker--as opposed to being a friend.
JAMES PATTERSON
Family Circle, July 2011
You know how parents rattle on to you about, "Oh, you won't believe your life will never be the same," and you think, Why can't these people just get over it? All they're doing is yakking about their kids. It's such a bore. And then you have kids and you just want to do the same thing.
UMA THURMAN
Good Housekeeping, August 2010
For many, parenthood is a part of successfully completing an important stage in life. As couples begin to see and understand the passage of their own lives, the need to pass along life experiences to new generations enhances the meaning of life.
ANIRUDHA MALPANI
How To Have A Baby: Overcoming Infertility
Insecure about assuming such a significant role, which is like nothing they have ever done before, expectant parents are willing to do whatever it takes to make certain they get the right start on the parenting track. But preparing for parenthood is not just about doing or buying. It is about contemplating what it really means to be a parent. It is about recognizing how a baby will irrevocably transform their lives as individuals and as a couple.
DIANA LYNN BARNES & LEIGH G. BALBER
The Journey to Parenthood: Myths, Reality and What Really Matters
We live in a society that glorifies pregnancy and parenthood. A new life is certainly worth celebrating, but many men and women muddle through this enormous transition feeling inadequate, scared, stressed and even angry. In some ways, new parents have been set up to fail by cultural ideals that characterize the birth of a child as the most wonderful time in a couple's life. Society has sugar-coated the realities of the first-time parenting experience, leaving many new parents with a saccharine aftertaste. As a result, these new parent initiates believe they are not experiencing the real thing but some mediocre substitute, when they do not feel an instant bond with their babies, when they do not sense a more intense love in their marriages, and when the postpartum period does not consist of endless joy but rather of tension, unpredictability and a yearning for the way life used to be.
DIANA LYNN BARNES & LEIGH G. BALBER
The Journey to Parenthood: Myths, Reality and What Really Matters
No one is ever quite ready; everyone is always caught off guard. Parenthood chooses you. And you open your eyes, look at what you've got, say "Oh, my gosh," and recognize that of all the balls there ever were, this is the one you should not drop.
MARISA DE LOS SANTOS
Love Walked In
Although the transition to parenthood is a time of change, only a minority of couples find it extremely stressful, or regard it as a serious threat to their relationships; for most, new parenthood is a time when partners look forward to sharing the joys and challenges of what is, after all, a "joint project."
JUDITH FEENEY
Becoming Parents: Exploring the Bonds Between Mothers, Fathers, and Their Infants
I've come to realize that making it your life's work to be different than your parents is not only hard to do, it's a dumb idea. Not everything we found fault with was necessarily wrong; we were right, for example, to resent, as kids, being told when to go to bed. We'd be equally wrong, as parents, to let our kids stay up all night. To throw out all the tools of parenting just because our parents used them would be like making yourself speak English without using ten letters of the alphabet; it's hard to do.
PAUL REISER
Familyhood
Parenthood is--or should be--an exercise in planned obsolescence; if you have been a good parent, the best thing you can hope for is that your child will be eager to get out in the world and live a strong, deliberate, independent life.
DALE ATKINS
I'm OK, You're My Parents
Parenting is the greatest of hum-a-few-bars-and-I'll-fake-it skills.
STEPHEN KING
Duma Key
To be perfectly, brutally honest, those of us who are still carrying diapers everywhere we go are not at our most scintillating time of life.... We need to remember that at one time in our lives, we all had senses of humor and knew things that were going on in the world. And if we just keep our social networks open, there will be people ready to listen when we once again have intelligent things to say.
LOUISE LAGUE
The Working Mom's Book of Hints, Tips, and Everyday Wisdom
Parenthood remains the greatest single preserve of the amateur.
ALVIN TOFFLER
Future Shock
Parenthood is a trial-and-error process based on reading one's own and the child's cues. It is working toward clarity and consistency, but also being able to admit one's mistakes, face one's weaknesses, and change as the child changes.
ELLEN GALINSKY
The Six Stages of Parenthood
Parenthood is often valued as the key to adulthood; that is, the birth of a child makes the parent not only a mother or a father but simultaneously an adult.
GERALD Y. MICHAELS
The Transition to Parenthood: Current Theory and Research
Mother love is the most powerful, the most irrational force on earth, even more powerful than sexual love. However, one does lead to the other, so best not to spurn the former.
RITA MAE BROWN
Full Cry
Parenthood: It's about guiding the next generation and forgiving the last.
PETER KRAUSE
attributed, Amazing Parenting
Your children will become who you are; so be who you want them to be.
ANONYMOUS