Quote

There's plenty to read about keeping your sanity while raising children, but it's all common-sense stuff about task division and taking breaks and the relentlessly repeated magic of date night with your spouse. What's missing is some 'tude.

Many working mothers feel guilty about not being at home. And when they are there, they wish it could be perfect. This pressure to make every minute happy puts working parents in a bind when it comes to setting limits and modifying behavior.

Some people are just self-motivated - my husband was. I also believe there are many children for whom parental involvement is key.

I'm so adamant that being a really good parent does not mean you have to be there 24/7. I find that I'm never not thinking about where they are, but instead of it stressing me out, it comforts me to know that I'm completely aware of their schedule, and they're with someone I trust.

Parents are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfill the promise of their early years.

In theory, parents are supposed to empathize with one other - find common cause in the fervent desire to preserve and protect the world for the next generation, and connect on some deep, almost mystical level that those poor souls who have not experienced this kind of all-consuming love cannot possibly comprehend.

Part of our responsibility as parents, as adults, is to set examples for children. But we have to like children in order to be really happy fulfilled adults.

I'm not a parent, but it seems to me the nature of parenting is contingent, full of unexpected challenges - which is one of the wonderful and amazing things about it.

That's what I think our jobs as parents are, to educate as much as possible... I tell them to follow their bliss. The people who follow their bliss in this world tend to be the more happier people.

Parents have no greater responsibility in this world than the bringing up of their children in the right way, and they will have no greater satisfaction as the years pass than to see those children grow in integrity and honesty and make something of their lives.