Frank Pittman Quotes About Children

Quotes about: Children

• The guys who fear becoming fathers don't understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man. The end product of child-raising is not the child but the parent.

  Frank Pittman

  Children, Dad, Father

  "Man Enough: Fathers, Sons, and the Search for Masculinity". Book by Frank Pittman, www.today.com. 1993.

• Fathering makes a man, whatever his standing in the eyes of the world, feel strong and good and important, just as he makes his child feel loved and valued.

  Frank Pittman

  Strength, Strong, Children

• Fathers who compete hard with their kids are monstrous. The father, for a throw-away victory, is sacrificing the very heart of hischild's sense of being good enough. He may believe he is making his son tough, as he was made tough by a similarly contending father, but he is only making his child desperate and mean like himself. Fathers must let their sons (and daughters) have their victories.

  Frank Pittman

  Daughter, Children, Father

• Once women invented farming, and began to keep and breed animals, they discovered the crucial function of the rooster and the henhouse. Fathers suddenly gained a function, and could do what only women had been able to do for all those millions of years--point at a child and say, "That is my son," "That is my daughter." Patriarchy quickly followed, beginning about five thousand years ago; a very short time in the development of our species, but covering all of recorded history.

  Frank Pittman

  Daughter, Children, Father

• Mothers who are strong people, who can pursue a life of their own when it is time to let their children go, empower their childrenof either gender to feel free and whole. But weak women, women who feel and act like victims of something or other, may make their children feel responsible for taking care of them, and they can carry their children down with them.

  Frank Pittman

  Mother, Strong, Children

• It is necessary but insufficient to stay married for the children's sake. It is also
  necessary to stay happily married for the children's sake. I'm so glad someone
  noticed that marriage doesn't have to make you miserable. It is just so easy to
  be happy I don't understand why it isn't more popular.

  Frank Pittman

  Marriage, Children, Sake

• Men who have been raised violently have every reason to believe it is appropriate for them to control others through violence; they feel no compunction over being violent to women, children, and one another.

  Frank Pittman

  Children, Believe, Men

• Parents have to get over the idea that their children belong just to them; children are a family affair.

  Frank Pittman

  Family, Children, Ideas

• Mother love has been much maligned. An over mothered boy may go through life expecting each new woman to love him the way his mother did. Her love may make any other love seem inadequate. But an unloved boy would be even more likely to idealize love. I don't think it's possible for a mother or father to love a child too much.

  Frank Pittman

  Family, Mother, Children

• The great passion in a man's life may not be for women or men or wealth or toys or fame, or even for his children, but for his masculinity, and at any point in his life he may be tempted to throw over the things for which he regularly lays down his life for the sake of that masculinity. He may keep this passion secret from women, and he may even deny it to himself, but the other boys know it about themselves and the wiser ones know it about the rest of us as well.

  Frank Pittman

  Children, Passion, Boys

• Parents offer an open womb. More than anyone else in your life, mothers, and sometimes fathers, can kiss it, and make it well whentheir grown children need to regress and repair. More than anyone else in your life, mothers, and sometimes fathers, can catch you when you start to fall. When you are in disgrace, defeat, and despair, home may be the safest place to hide.

  Frank Pittman

  Mother, Children, Father

• Early on, girls begin to menstruate, which is dramatic but not obvious to their playmates. They grow taller and rounder, but underneath their makeup they are still recognizably themselves. For boys it is far more disorienting. Puberty comes later, sometimes much later, and its delay is humiliating. While the tall round girls are getting themselves up like grown women, the prepubertal boys, with their featureless, hairless bodies, are just dirty little kids who could pass for the children of the hypermature girls.

  Frank Pittman

  Girl, Children, Dirty

• The child who would be an adult must give up any lingering childlike sense of parental power, either the magical ability to solveyour problems for you or the dreaded ability to make you turn back into a child. When you are no longer hiding from your parents, or clinging to them, and can accept them as fellow human beings, then they may do the same for you.

  Frank Pittman

  Children, Giving Up, Growing Up

• Most of us have felt barriers between ourselves and our fathers and had thought that going it alone was part of what it meant to be a man. We tried to get close to our children when we became fathers, and yet the business of practicing masculinity kept getting in the way. We men have begun to talk about that.

  Frank Pittman

  Children, Father, Men

• In considering the ledger equal, understand the greatest gift you have given your parents is the opportunity to raise you. The things a child gets from parents can't compare to the things a parent gets from raising a child. Only by experiencing this can you understand the degree to which children give meaning to parents' lives.

  Frank Pittman

  Children, Opportunity, Giving

  "How to Manage Mom & Dad" by Frank Pittman, www.psychologytoday.com. November 1, 1994.

• A man doesn't have to have all the answers; children will teach him how to parent them, and in the process will teach him everything he needs to know about life.

  Frank Pittman

  Children, Men, Parent

• There are great advantages to seeing yourself as an accident created by amateur parents as they practiced. You then have been left in an imperfect state and the rest is up to you. Only the most pitifully inept child requires perfection from parents.

  Frank Pittman

  Children, Perfection, Parent

• Character, not passion keeps marriages together long enough to do their work of raising children into mature, responsible, productive citizens.

  Frank Pittman

  Children, Passion, Character

• The end product of child raising is not the child but the parent.

  Frank Pittman

  Children, Parent, Being A Father

  "Man Enough: Fathers, Sons, and the Search for Masculinity". Book by Frank Pittman, www.today.com. 1993.

• However patriarchal the world, at home the child knows that his mother is the source of all power. The hand that rocks the cradlerules his world. . . . The son never forgets that he owes his life to his mother, not just the creation of it but the maintenance of it, and that he owes her a debt he cannot conceivably repay, but which she may call in at any time.

  Frank Pittman

  Mother, Children, Home

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