Frank Pittman Quotes About Parents

Quotes about: Parents

• 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.

• Each generation's job is to question what parents accept on faith, to explore possibilities, and adapt the last generation's system of values for a new age.

  Frank Pittman

  Jobs, Parent, Age

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

• Fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man.

  Frank Pittman

  Men, Perfect Parents, Being A Parent

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

• Parents have subtle ways of humbling you, of reminding you of your origins, perhaps by showing up at the moment of your greatest glory and reminding you where you came from and demonstrating that you still have some of it between your toes.

  Frank Pittman

  Parent, Way, Showing Up

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

• Parents vary in their sense of what would be suitable repayment for creating, sustaining, and tolerating you all those years, andwhat circumstances would be drastic enough for presenting the voucher. Obviously there is no repayment that would be sufficient . . . but the effort to call in the debt of life is too outrageous to be treated as anything other than a joke.

  Frank Pittman

  Years, Creating, Effort

• Parents can make us distrust ourselves. To them, we seem always to be works-in-progress.

  Frank Pittman

  Parent, Progress, Distrust

• Some parents were awful back then and are awful still. The process of raising you didn't turn them into grown-ups. Parents who were clearly imperfect can be helpful to you. As you were trying to grow up despite their fumbling efforts, you had to develop skills and tolerances other kids missed out on. Some of the strongest people I know grew up taking care of inept, invalid, or psychotic parents--but they know the parents weren't normal, healthy, or whole.

  Frank Pittman

  Growing Up, Kids, Skills

• No one, however powerful and successful, can function as an adult if his parents are not satisfied with him.

  Frank Pittman

  Powerful, Successful, Parent

• In colonial America, the father was the primary parent. . . . Over the past two hundred years, each generation of fathers has hadless authority than the last. . . . Masculinity ceased to be defined in terms of domestic involvement, skills at fathering and husbanding, but began to be defined in terms of making money. Men had to leave home to work. They stopped doing all the things they used to do.

  Frank Pittman

  Father, Home, Past

• 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

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

  Frank Pittman

  Family, Children, Ideas

• We never really are the adults we pretend to be. We wear the mask and perhaps the clothes and posture of grown-ups, but inside ourskin we are never as wise or as sure or as strong as we want to convince ourselves and others we are. We may fool all the rest of the people all of the time, but we never fool our parents. They can see behind the mask of adulthood. To her mommy and daddy, the empress never has on any clothes--and knows it.

  Frank Pittman

  Wise, Strong, Growing Up

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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.

• Parents can fail to cheer your successes as wildly as you expected, pointing out that you are sharing your Nobel Prize with a couple of other people, or that your Oscar was for supporting actress, not really for a starring role. More subtly, they can cheer your successes too wildly, forcing you into the awkward realization that your achievement of merely graduating or getting the promotion did not warrant the fireworks and brass band.

  Frank Pittman

  Couple, Cheer, Brass Bands

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