116 Parenting Quotes For Inspiration

Parenting is a journey filled with highs and lows, endless questions, and moments that tug at your heartstrings. Whether you're guiding a newborn through their first steps, navigating the tumultuous teenage years, or reflecting on the growth of an adult child, finding the right words can offer solace and encouragement. To help you along this path, we've curated a collection of the top 116 parenting quotes designed to inspire and uplift. These words of wisdom not only capture the essence of parenthood but also remind us of the beauty and significance in every phase of raising a child. Dive in and let these quotes offer you the encouragement and perspective you need.

1. “Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.” - Emilie Buchwald

2. “Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your rest home.” - Phyllis Diller

3. “Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.” - Anne Frank

4. “Although it is very easy to marry a wife, it is very difficult to support her along with the children and the household. Accordingly, no one notices this faith of Jacob. Indeed, many hate fertility in a wife for the sole reason that the offspring must be supported and brought up. For this is what they commonly say: ‘Why should I marry a wife when I am a pauper and a beggar? I would rather bear the burden of poverty alone and not load myself with misery and want.’ But this blame is unjustly fastened on marriage and fruitfulness. Indeed, you are indicting your unbelief by distrusting God’s goodness, and you are bringing greater misery upon yourself by disparaging God’s blessing. For if you had trust in God’s grace and promises, you would undoubtedly be supported. But because you do not hope in the Lord, you will never prosper.” - Martin Luther

5. “When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he's doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911. ” - Erma Bombeck

6. “No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior, and I'm not talking about the kids. Their behavior is always normal.” - Bill Cosby

7. “Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.” - Barbara Kingsolver

8. “If you are a parent, open doors to unknown directions to the child so he can explore. Don't make him afraid of the unknown,give him support. ” - Osho

9. “I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then I want to move in with them.” - Phyllis Diller

10. “One must make allowances for a parental instinct that has been starving for twenty-five or thirty years. It is famished, it is crazed with hunger by that time, and will be entirely satisfied with anything that comes handy; its taste is atrophied, it can't tell mud cat from shad. A devil born to a young couple is measurably recognizable by them as a devil before long, but a devil adopted by an old couple is an angel to them, and remains so, through thick and thin.” - Mark Twain

11. “Without the support from religion--remember, we talked about it--no father, using only his own resources, would be able to bring up a child.” - Leo Tolstoy

12. “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

13. “We can surely no longer pretend that our children are growing up into a peaceful, secure, and civilized world. We've come to the point where it's irresponsible to try to protect them from the irrational world they will have to live in when they grow up. The children themselves haven't yet isolated themselves by selfishness and indifference; they do not fall easily into the error of despair; they are considerably braver than most grownups. Our responsibility to them is not to pretend that if we don't look, evil will go away, but to give them weapons against it.” - Madeleine L'Engle

14. “My kid, her life. I want for her what she wants for herself.” - Laura Castoro

15. “You can't make your kids do anything. All you can do is make them wish they had. And then, they will make you wish you hadn't made them wish they had.” - Marshall B. Rosenberg

16. “You are the reason why he exists on this earth. You don't have the right to abandon him just because he's inconvenient or has trouble in school.” - Michael Crichton

17. “I was delighted to see him growing more cautious and skeptical about what he heard, especially when he heard it from someone in apparent authority. I think that is fundamental to a good education. And if it comes back to bite me from time to time, that's a price worth paying.” - Martine Millman

18. “It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows” - Erma Bombeck

19. “Let children alone... the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions - a running fire of Do and Don’t ; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way and grow to fruitful purpose.” - Charlotte Mason

20. “Breasts are a scandal because they shatter the border between motherhood and sexuality.” - Iris Marion Young

21. “Don't stand unmoving outside the door of a crying baby whose only desire is to touch you. Go to your baby. Go to your baby a million times. Demonstrate that people can be trusted, that the environment can be trusted, that we live in a benign universe.” - Peggy O'Mara

22. “His son's transformation cannot be stopped, or hastened, or adjusted; the man he will become is already present, like a form emerging from a slab of stone. All that remains is to watch it happen.” - Justin Cronin

23. “Remember, you are not managing an inconvenience; You are raising a human being.” - Kittie Frantz

24. “Let those parents that desire Holy Children learn to make them possessors of Heaven and Earth betimes; to remove silly objects from before them, to magnify nothing but what is great indeed, and to talk of God to them, and of His works and ways. before they can either speak or go.” - Thomas Traherne

25. “. . . Mrs. Lambchop sighed and shook her head. "You're at the office all day, having fun," she said. "You don't realize what I go through with the boys. They're very difficult."Kids are like that," Mr. Lambchop said. "Phases. Be patient, dear.” - Jeff Brown

26. “It's impossible to protect your kids against disappointment in life.” - Nicholas Sparks

27. “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.” - Aldous Huxley

28. “Sebutir benih yang bertunas di bawah kaki pohon induknya tetap berada di situ sampai ia dipindahkan..Setiap manusia, kalau sudah tiba saatnya, harus pergi dan mewujudkan potensi masing-masing dengan caranya sendiri. [Ramayana-Mahabharata, hal. 28]” - R.K. Narayan

29. “What do we say to a guest who forgets her umbrella? Do we run after her and say "What is the matter with you? Every time you come to visit you forget something. If it's not one thing it's another. Why can't you be like your sister? When she comes to visit, she knows how to behave. You're forty-four years old! Will you never learn? I'm not a slave to pick up after you! I bet you'd forget your head if it weren't attached to your shoulders." That's not what we say to a guest. We say "Here's your umbrella, Alice," without adding "scatterbrain." Parents need to learn to respond to their children as they do to guests.” - Haim G. Ginott

30. “Let me say for now that we knew once the Creation was broken, true fathering would be much more lacking than mothering. Don't misunderstand me, both are needed- but an emphasis on fathering is necessary because of the enormity of its absence” - Wm. Paul Young

31. “Oftentimes I felt ridiculous giving my seal of approval to what was in reality such a natural thing to do, sort of like reinventing the wheel and extolling its virtues. Had parents' intuition sunk so low that some strange man had to tell modern women that it was okay to sleep with their babies?” - William Sears

32. “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. It's not a question of choice.” - Marisa de los Santos

33. “I don't understand why some kids git a good school and mother and father and some don't. But Rita say forgit the WHY ME shit and git on to what's next.” - Sapphire

34. “We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the ris- ing generation. I am an oldster myself and might be expected to take the oldsters' side, but in fact I have been far more impressed by the bad manners of par- ents to children than by those of children to parents. Who has not been the embarrassed guest at family meals where the father or mother treated their grown-up offspring with an incivility which, offered to any other young people, would simply have termi- nated the acquaintance? Dogmatic assertions on mat- ters which the children understand and their elders don't, ruthless interruptions, flat contradictions, ridicule of things the young take seriously some- times of their religion insulting references to their friends, all provide an easy answer to the question "Why are they always out? Why do they like every house better than their home?" Who does not prefer civility to barbarism?” - C.S. Lewis

35. “It's so awful, attacking your child. It's the worse thing I know, to shout loudly at this 50 lb. being with his huge trusting brown eyes. It's like bitch-slapping E.T.” - Anne Lamott

36. “The best way to make children good is to make them happy.” - Oscar Wilde

37. “Teaching our children to live a quiet, sane, and balanced life is one of the most important parental tasks of our day.” - Brent Top

38. “An environment-based education movement--at all levels of education--will help students realize that school isn't supposed to be a polite form of incarceration, but a portal to the wider world.” - Richard Louv

39. “Don't try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.” - Russell Baker

40. “There is no single effort more radical in its potential for saving the world than a transformation of the way we raise our children.” - Marianne Williamson

41. “No occupation in this world is more trying to soul and body than the care of young children. What patience and wisdom, skill and unlimited love it calls for. God gave the work to mothers and furnished them for it, and they cannot shirk it and be guiltless.” - Isabella Alden and Mrs. C. M. Livingston

42. “No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.” - Plato

43. “Babies don't come with instruction booklets. You'd learn the same way we all do -- you'd read up on dinosaurs, you'd Google backhoes and skidders. And you don't need a penis to go buy a baseball glove.” - Jodi Picoult

44. “I'll show up at every classroom open house and teacher conference,' she said, now in a voice that was almost frightening in its intensity. 'I'll bake brownies. My child will have new clothes. Her shoes will fit. She'll get her shots, and she'll get her braces. We'll start a college fund next week. I'll tell her I love her every damn day.'If that wasn't a great plan for being a good mother, I couldn't imagine what a better one could be.” - Charlaine Harris

45. “I want my girls to see their relationship with me as a place of refuge, a place they can retreat to for honesty, unconditional love, and support. I want to teach them and have them trust me, not fear me. I want to preserve the gentle souls that I see in them." -Liz. M.” - Hilary Flower

46. “Society tried to teach me that children are by nature selfish, out-of-control, and demanding, that their goal is power and that they are always trying to see how much they can get away with, that you can't let children manipulate you or become too dependant, and that disobedience equals disrespect. As a mother, I have come to believe strongly that my child's primary goals are having his needs met, feeling connected to others, and feeling self-worth. His misbehavior is an attempt to get a need met or to feel significance and connection, done in an appropriate way.... my job as a parent is to help my child identify and meet those needs in appropriate ways." - Lisa S.” - Hilary Flower

47. “Even if i'm setting myself up for failure, I think it's worth trying to be a mother who delights in who her children are, in their knock-knock jokes and earnest questions. A mother who spends less time obseessing about what will happen, or what has happened, and more time reveling in what is. A mother who doesn't fret over failings and slights, who realizes her worries and anxieties are just thoughts, the continuous chattering and judgement of a too busy mind. A mother who doesn't worry so much about being bad or good but just recognizes that she's both, and neither. A mother who does her best, and for whom that is good enough, even if, in the end, her best turns out to be, simply, not bad. ” - Ayelet Waldman

48. “يا أبتاه .. إن عظيم حقك علي لا يبطل صغير حقي عليك” - عبدالله محمد الداوود

49. “Peran seorang ibu juga adalah perang dengan dirinya sendiri agar selalu menyediakan ekstra pengertian bagi anaknya” - Miranda Risang Ayu

50. “The Children's HourBetween the dark and the daylight,When the night is beginning to lower,Comes a pause in the day's occupations,That is known as the Children's Hour.I hear in the chamber above meThe patter of little feet,The sound of a door that is opened,And voices soft and sweet.From my study I see in the lamplight,Descending the broad hall stair,Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,And Edith with golden hair.A whisper, and then a silence:Yet I know by their merry eyesThey are plotting and planning togetherTo take me by surprise.A sudden rush from the stairway,A sudden raid from the hall!By three doors left unguardedThey enter my castle wall!They climb up into my turretO'er the arms and back of my chair;If I try to escape, they surround me;They seem to be everywhere.They almost devour me with kisses,Their arms about me entwine,Till I think of the Bishop of BingenIn his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!Do you think, o blue-eyed banditti,Because you have scaled the wall,Such an old mustache as I amIs not a match for you all!I have you fast in my fortress,And will not let you depart,But put you down into the dungeonIn the round-tower of my heart.And there will I keep you forever,Yes, forever and a day,Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,And moulder in dust away!” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

51. “Howard adores Sam's looks. He loves the strong cut of jaw made satin with thickening peach fuzz, loses himself in the green eyes. Howard stares at them like a lover, but always obliquely. (Sometimes we watch our son from a distance. "I wonder what he's thinking," Howard will say.)” - Chandler Burr

52. “Greatness, whether athletic or otherwise, doesn’t come from those content on just being but from those who seek being the difference.” - Kirk Mango

53. “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances.The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.” - Kirk Mango

54. “This was our language: half-truths, obvious lies, accusations neither one of us would ever make. It was a system eery bit as complicated as Morse code or the dancing of bees. Don't ask, don't tell, stay civil.” - Jennifer Lynn Barnes

55. “The life of a mother is the life of a child: you are two blossoms on a single branch.” - Karen Maezen Miller

56. “You can't have that wish, my Little Bear,' said Mother Bear.” - Else Holmelund Minarik

57. “Uselessness, she thought, was the permanent condition of parenthood.” - Lisa Unger

58. “Would a minute have mattered? No, probably not, although his young son appeared to have a very accurate internal clock. Possibly even 2 minutes would be okay. Three minutes, even. You could go to five minutes, perhaps. But that was just it. If you could go for five minutes, then you'd go to ten, then half an hour, a couple of hours...and not see your son all evening. So that was that. Six o'clock, prompt. Every day. Read to young Sam. No excuses. He'd promised himself that. No excuses. No excuses at all. Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses.” - Terry Pratchett

59. “Everything I had to give went to my children, and though I loved them and my husband utterly, the drudgery of the day-to-day made it seem as if not love but coffee, my Toyota and sheer logistics were what propelled me through life.” - Marcia DeSanctis

60. “The one encouragement we can always give our children (and one another) is that God is more powerful than our sin, and He's strong enough to make us want to do the right thing.” - Elyse Fitzpatrick

61. “We all have the best laid plans for our children, and they go and ruin it all by growing up any way they want to. What the hell was it all for, then? (Real Life and Liars)” - Kristina Riggle

62. “What a difference it makes to come home to a child!” - Margaret Fuller

63. “If you've never been hated by your child, you've never been a parent.” - Bette Davis

64. “It's not politically correct to say that you love one child more than you love your others. I love all of my kids, period, and they're all your favorites in different ways. But ask any parent who's been through some kind of crisis surrounding a child--a health scare, an academic snarl, an emotional problem--and we will tell you the truth. When something upends the equilibrium--when one child needs you more than the others--that imbalance becomes a black hole. You may never admit it out loud, but the one you love the most is the one who needs you more desperately than his siblings. What we really hope is that each child gets a turn. That we have deep enough reserves to be there for each of them, at different times.All this goes to hell when two of your children are pitted against each other, and both of them want you on their side.” - Jodi Picoult

65. “Believe that God is strong enough to save your children, no matter how you fail.” - Elyse Fitzpatrick

66. “Babbit was an average father. He was affectionate, bullying, opinionated, ignorant, and rather wistful. Like most parents he enjoyed the game of waiting till the victim was clearly wrong, then virtuously pouncing.” - Sinclair Lewis

67. “The reality is that most of us communicate the same way that we grew up. That communication style becomes our normal way of dealing with issues, our blueprint for communication. It’s what we know and pass on to our own children. We either become our childhood or we make a conscious choice to change it.” - Kristen Crockett

68. “The miracle of children is that we just don’t know how they will change or who they will become.” - Eileen Kennedy-Moore

69. “Oh fer Christ's bloody sake Martha I didna' raise ye to be well regarded. To be liked. Any puny weak-waisted slut can be liked. I raised ye to be reckoned with.” - Kathleen Kent

70. “When dreaded outcomes are actually imminent we don't worry about themwe take action. Seeing lava from the local volcano make its way down the street toward our house does not cause worry it causes running. Also we don't usually choose imminent events as subjects for our worrying and thus emerges an ironic truth: Often the very fact that you are worrying about something means that it isn't likely to happen.” - Gavin De Becker

71. “There are many different ways of approaching parenting as there are cultures. However, in non-industrialized cultures, the similarities are also striking. Extended nursing, co-sleeping, carrying the baby in close physical contact, responding promptly to cries or distress, never leaving a baby alone, are all virtually universal in traditional societies that have not become overly "westernized".” - Ingrid Bauer

72. “While I pressed the tissue to my face, Beck said, “Can I tell you something? There are a lot of empty boxes in your head, Sam.”I looked at him, quizzical. Again, it was a strange enough concept to hold my attention.“There are a lot of empty boxes in there, and you can put things in them.” Beck handed me another tissue for the other side of my face.My trust of Beck at that point was not yet complete; I remember thinking that he was making a very bad joke that I wasn’t getting. My voice sounded wary, even to me. “What kinds of things?”“Sad things,” Beck said. “Do you have a lot of sad things in your head?”“No,” I said.Beck sucked in his lower lip and released it slowly. “Well, I do.”This was shocking. I didn’t ask a question, but I tilted toward him.“And these things would make me cry,” Beck continued. “They used to make me cry all day long.”I remembered thinking this was probably a lie. I could not imagine Beck crying. He was a rock. Even then, his fingers braced against the floor, he looked poised, sure, immutable.“You don’t believe me? Ask Ulrik. He had to deal with it,” Beck said. “And so you know what I did with those sad things? I put them in boxes. I put the sad things in the boxes in my head, and I closed them up and I put tape on them and I stacked them up in the corner and threw a blanket over them.”“Brain tape?” I suggested, with a little smirk. I was eight, after all.Beck smiled, a weird private smile that, at the time, I didn’t understand. Now I knew it was relief at eliciting a joke from me, no matter how pitiful the joke was. “Yes, brain tape. And a brain blanket over the top. Now I don’t have to look at those sad things anymore. I could open those boxes sometime, I guess, if I wanted to, but mostly I just leave them sealed up.”“How did you use the brain tape?”“You have to imagine it. Imagine putting those sad things in the boxes and imagine taping it up with the brain tape. And imagine pushing them into the side of your brain, where you won’t trip over them when you’re thinking normally, and then toss a blanket over the top. Do you have sad things, Sam?”I could see the dusty corner of my brain where the boxes sat. They were all wardrobe boxes, because those were the most interesting sort of boxes — tall enough to make houses with — and there were rolls and rolls of brain tape stacked on top. There were razors lying beside them, waiting to cut the boxes and me back open.“Mom,” I whispered.I wasn’t looking at Beck, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw him swallow.“What else?” he asked, barely loud enough for me to hear. “The water,” I said. I closed my eyes. I could see it, right there, and I had to force out the next word. “My …” My fingers were on my scars.Beck reached out a hand toward my shoulder, hesitant. When I didn’t move away, he put an arm around my back and I leaned against his chest, feeling small and eight and broken.“Me,” I said.” - Maggie Stiefvater

73. “All parents set out with expectations, hopes and dreams for their child. When a child is diagnosed with a health problem, these aspirations are altered. While one parent is hoping to see their child graduate from university, another is praying that they can live pain free” - Sharon Dempsey

74. “I've tried to teach what I learned all those years in my mother and father's house, all those things I didn't realize I was learning and that I never knew I'd be so grateful for. When you have love and it's proffered every day in a kind of tender, yet stern insistence and even reckless laughter, when it is given to you and you accept it in life as a thing as natural as rain or snow, or the littler of leaves in fall, you can't help but take it for granted. For a bewildered while you incorrectly understand that the world has given you this becuase it's there in equal measure, everywhere. You never knowuntil it's too late to do anything about it, how seet the effort is: how lasting the human will to love can be in the breast of people who want to make it for you, who want to give it to you, without calculating what's in it fo them, without thinking at all of what it will mean when you grow to full adulthood, see the world as it is, and forget to mention what you have been given.Ever day of my grown-up life, I have wanted to do what my parents did. I have wanted to widen the province of love and weaken hate and bitterness in the hearts of my children. And I've done these things because of what I got from my family, all those lovely years when I was growing up, being loved and cherished and, unbeknown to me, and in the best way, honored, for myself.” - Marian Wright Edelman

75. “We know – it has been measured in many experiments – that children with strong impulse control grow to be better adjusted, more dependable, achieve higher grades in school and college and have more success in their careers than others. Success depends on the ability to delay gratification, which is precisely what a consumerist culture undermines. At every stage, the emphasis is on the instant gratification of instinct. In the words of the pop group Queen, “I want it all and I want it now.” A whole culture is being infantilised.” - Jonathan Sacks

76. “... be radical about grace and relentless about truth and resolute about holiness...” - Ann Voskamp

77. “Once your baby arrives, the world is no more the same than you are. Because from our very bodies we add to the collective human destiny. Our deepest urge is always toward life, to wholeness and well being.” - Claire Fontaine

78. “That thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you is usually what you need to find, and finding it is a matter of getting lost. The word ‘lost’ comes from the old Norse ‘los’ meaning the disbanding of an army…I worry now that people never disband their armies, never go beyond what they know.Advertising, alarmist news, technology, incessant busyness, and the design of public and private life conspire to make it so. A recent article about the return of wildlife to suburbia described snow-covered yards in which the footprints of animals are abundant and those of children are entirely absent. Children seldom roam, even in the safest places… I wonder what will come of placing this generation under house arrest.” - Rebecca Solnit

79. “Mothers who know do less. They permit less of what will not bear good fruit eternally. They allow less media in their homes, less distraction, less activity that draws their children away from their home. Mothers who know are willing to live on less and consume less of the world’s goods in order to spend more time with their children—more time eating together, more time working together, more time reading together, more time talking, laughing, singing, and exemplifying. These mothers choose carefully and do not try to choose it all.” - Julie B. Beck

80. “If you want to be treated like a mother, act like one.” - Jeannette Walls

81. “Jumping, waving arms, cheering, laughing, head-butting him in the groin, an unfortunate ritual in the Tanner home, very much unappreciated by Jim, but tolerated for the sake of the children, Grace, Bobby and Steven joined Jason next to their father.” - Mike Jackson

82. “Now and again, one could detect in a childless woman of a certain age the various characteristics of all the children she had never issued. Her body was haunted by the ghost of souls who hadn't lived yet. Premature ghosts. Half-ghosts. X's without Y's. Y's without X's. They applied at her womb and were denied, but, meant for her and no one else, they wouldn't go away. Like tiny ectoplasmic gophers, they hunkered in her tear ducts. They shone through her sighs. Often to her chagrin, they would soften the voice she used in the marketplace. When she spilled wine, it was their playful antics that jostled the glass. They called out her name in the bath or when she passed real children in the street. The spirit babies were everywhere her companions, and everywhere they left her lonesome - yet they no more bore her resentment than a seed resents uneaten fruit. Like pet gnats, like phosphorescence, like sighs on a string, they would follow her into eternity.” - Tom Robbins

83. “Parenthood doesn’t improve one’s character, it exposes it.” - Leslie A. Gordon

84. “With a lump forming in his throat, he thoughtabout all the hopes and dreams that he had for his son. More thananything, he prayed his boy would not grow up to be a screw uplike his dad when it came to love and marriage.” - Michelle Sutton

85. “Science and discovery, especially in the field of non-abnormal pediatric mysteries, is built on the work of those who have been sneezed on before us. Causation and rationale may someday be reached, but until then it is the heartwarming and parental nature of the journey that drives us on; well, that and a fresh box of Kleenex.” - Spuds Crawford

86. “That's a parents' job, isn't it? To raise a child strong enough to leave and break our hearts?” - Beth Groundwater

87. “So, your best defense is knowledge. It really is power, as they say...The more you know, the more easily you will develop your own philosophies about child rearing. When you have your facts straight, and when you have a parenting plan, you will be able to respond with confidence to those who are well-meaning but offering contrary or incorrect advice.” - Elizabeth Pantley

88. “Time grants a unique perspective which allows us to see events through a filter of accumulated wisdom.” - Christopher Earle

89. “You could slap his wrist for saying it, but then he said it with his face, and you could spank him for making faces, but then he said it with his eyes, and there were limits to correction—no way, in the end, to penetrate behind the blue irises and eradicate a boy’s disgust.” - Jonathan Franzen

90. “I complained to a friend that although I had completed six years in therapy, my mother still wouldn’t let me go. He replied, "She’s not supposed to let you go. Your father is supposed to come and get you.” - Don Elium

91. “My parents were nonmaterialistic. They believed that money without knowledge was worthless, that education tempered with religion was the way to climb out of poverty in America, and over the years they were proven right.” - James McBride

92. “Now, the error which many parents commit in the treatment of the individual at this time(adolescense) is, insisting on the same unreasoning obedience as when all he had to do in the way of duty was, to obey the simple laws of "Come when you're called," and "Do as you're bid!" But a wise parent humours the desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and adviser when his absolute rule shall cease.” - Elizabeth Gaskell

93. “Some of the best friends you'll ever meet in your life, you'll meet though your children--mothers and fathers of their friends, parents from school. You'll see. That's the way it was for Bill and me. It's one of the many gifts of parenting.” - Michael J. Fox

94. “A challenging career suddenly seemed more productive to me because I could measure the results of my work. These precious little ones had endless needs. They were busy little sinful creatures who demanded all of my body, time, life, emotions, and attention! As much as I loved my children, I often felt like a failure. Surely someone else could do a better job with these precious ones than I. And what exactly was I supposed to be accomplishing anyway? Was I wasting my time? What had this husband, who professed to love me, done to me?” - Sally Clarkson

95. “I often must sacrifice my own needs and desires for the purpose of giving my children what they need and modeling for them the depths of Christ's love."...make myself available in the routine tasks and myriad interruptions of daily life b/c I believe it is God's will for me to serve my family through them.” - Sally Clarkson

96. “Interesting how fashion is cyclical,” Jaccob said when she came out of the store with two black plastic bags. “Goth was the look when I was young, too.” “It’s not a look,” Chuck said. “I’m just wearing my feelings on the outside.” “Uh huh.” His phone buzzed. “Hang on a second." He rolled up his sleeve to check his HUD, but the call hadn’t come through there. Huh. He had to pick up his phone and check the read-out, which listed a phone number: an old school page. “That’s funny…” “Dad, you’re doing that thing again,” Chuck said. “What thing?” Jaccob asked. “That thing where you have to check every single doohickey you carry around.” “I am not.” Jaccob took his hand out of his coat pocket, where he’d been reaching to check his police scanner or music player (he hadn’t decided which to use first).” - Erik Scott de Bie

97. “Our greatest duty to our children is to love them first.  Secondly, it is to teach them.  Not to frighten, force, or intimidate our children into submission, but to effectively teach them so that they have the knowledge and tools to govern themselves.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

98. “So much is asked of parents, and so little is given.” - Virginia Satir

99. “When I ask French parents what they most want for their children, they say things like "to feel comfortable in their own skin" and "to find their path in the world." They want their kids to develop their own tastes and opinions. In fact, French parents worry if their kids are too docile. They want them to have character. But they believe that children can achieve these goals only if they respect boundaries and have self-control. So alongside character, there has to be cadre.” - Pamela Druckerman

100. “A stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is SPARKY” - Roald Dahl

101. “My mothering needed a tad more Mother Theresa and a lot less Lizzy Borden.” - Irene Tomkinson

102. “I've found what makes children happy doesn't always prepare them to be courageous, engaged adults.” - Brené Brown

103. “The greatest source of security our children have in this world is a God-honoring, Christ-centered marriage between their parents.” - Voddie T. Baucham Jr.

104. “The key is to understand that our children don't belong to us—they belong to God. Our goal as parents must not be limited by our own vision. I am a finite, sinful, selfish man. Why would I want to plan out my children's future when I can entrust them to the infinite, omnipotent, immutable, sovereign Lord of the universe? I don't want to tell God what to do with my children—I want Him to tell me!” - Voddie T. Baucham Jr.

105. “But I think parents aren't teachers anymore. Parents -- or a whole lot of us, at least -- lead by mouth instead of by example. It seems to me that if a child's hero is their mother or father -- or even better, both of them in tandem -- then the rough road of learning and experience is going to be smoothed some. And every little bit of smoothing helps, in this rough old world that wants children to be miniature adults, devoid of charm and magic and the beauty of innocence.” - Robert R. McCammon

106. “It’s not an easy time for any parent, this moment when the realization dawns that you’ve given birth to something that will never see things the way you do, despite the fact that it is your living legacy, that it bears your name.” - Richard Russo

107. “Everyone over 50 in America feels like a refugee. In the Old America there were a lot of bad parents. There always are, because parenting is hard. Inadequate parents could say, 'Go outside and play in the culture,' and the culture -- relatively innocent, and boring -- could be more or less trusted to bring the kids up. Grown ups now know that you can't send the kids out to play in the culture, because the culture will leave them distorted and disturbed.” - Peggy Noonan

108. “My heart filled with Nick's smile, with the look of sheer adoration he gave me as he lugged the bucket. In the space of an instant, I felt it again—the crumbling of an old part of me, the growth of something new. The changing of my heart into a mother's heart. It happened at the strangest times, in the most unexpected ways. Nick looked at me, and the love I felt for him was almost painful in its intensity. I'd never known I had it in me, the capacity to love this way. ... But when Nick looked at me, my mind tumbled through nights and mornings, seasons and years in the future. ... I saw a future like none I'd ever imagined. I wanted it, every minute of it.” - Lisa Wingate

109. “If one were to list all the cruelties and maltreatments, both physical and emotional, that parents and adults inflict on children under the guise of love, the list would be a long one. But, going beyond such sinister examples, even kissing and hugging may or may not convey to a child that he is loved.Love is a feeling, an emotional state. Artists, writers, philosophers, poets have tried to define it. Marcel Proust says, "Love is space and time measured by the heart." What is space and time? It is the here and now. It is you.As unfortunately I am no poet, I will try to recall from my own experience how it feels to be truly loved by someone. It makes me feel good, it opens me up, it gives me strength, I feel less vulnerable, less lonely, less helpless, less confused, more honest, more rich; it fills me with hope, trust, creative energy and it refuels me.How do I perceive the other person who gives me these feelings? As honest, as one who sees and accepts me for what I really am, who objectively responds without being critical, whose authenticity and values I respect and who respects mine, who is available when needed, who listens and hears, who looks and sees me, who shares herself - who cares. Cares. To care is to put love in action. The way we care for our babies is then how they experience our love.” - Magda Gerber

110. “A yummy mummy is a dedicated and loving mom who embodies a healthy lifestyle while retaining a sense of the person she was before having kids.” - Marina Delio

111. “The greatest challenge of parenting is in the inner work it requires: the strength and confidence in believing that we are not in control of, but the answer for our children.” - Kelly Bartlett

112. “I think . . . you should have children, John." At least he's no longer talking about bugs."I'm too young, Dad.""It's the most important thing . . . I've done in . . . my life.” - Ursula Hegi

113. “For a child, it is in the simplicity of play that the complexity of life is sorted like puzzle pieces joined together to make sense of the world.” - L.R. Knost

114. “As we embrace the mystery of love, we see that it contains not an absence of error, but the presence of grace. It contains not the absence of anger or pain, but the presence of forgiveness and healing. Not the absence of disharmony or confusion, but the presence of peace and clarity.To make a home into a sanctuary, we must be willing to make room in our hearts for one another's limitations, as well as our gifts. For it is here in this sacred space of the home and family, so brimming with life, so full of every emotion available to our hearts, that we learn what it means to love within all the nuances of an intimate relationship.” - Shea Darian

115. “The best gift you can give to your kids is a happy marriage.” - Ricky Shetty

116. “If our goal is to be tolerant of people who are different than we are, Chase, then we really are aiming quite low. Traffic jams are to be tolerated. People are to be celebrated.” - Glennon Melton