My two daughters are now living far away, attending college. I thought it might be a good time to reflect on what it means to be a parent. I looked hard for some quotes that reflected my experiences:
“Before I got married I had six theories about raising children; now, I have six children and no theories. ” John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647-1680)
“One thing I had learned from watching chimpanzees with their infants is that having a child should be fun.” Jane Goodall
“Parenting without a sense of humor is like being an accountant who sucks at math.” —Amber Dusick, blogger
“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” E.M. Forster
“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” ― Benjamin Franklin
“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” ― James Baldwin
“But kids don’t stay with you if you do it right. It’s the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won’t be needed in the long run.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Pigs in Heaven
“If your kid needs a role model and you ain’t it, you’re both fucked.”
― George Carlin, Brain Droppings
“The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.” ― Peter De Vries
“One reason we have children I think is to learn that parts of ourselves we had given up for dead are merely dormant and that the old joys can re emerge fresh and new and in a completely different form.” ― Anne Fadiman
“Who’s crazy: people who trust other people, or people who don’t?”
― Lenore Skenazy
“You don’t remember the times your dad held your handle bars. You remember the day he let go.”
― Lenore Skenazy, Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry
“We have to learn to remind the other parents who think we’re being careless when we loosen our grip that we are actually trying to teach our children how to get along in the world, and that we believe this is our job. A child who can fend for himself is a lot safer than one forever coddled, because the coddled child will not have Mom or Dad around all the time, even though they act as if he will.”
― Lenore Skenazy
