No matter how much time you spend reading books or following your intuition, you’re gonna screw it up. Fifty times. You can’t do parenting right. – Alan Arkin
Parents should not smoke in order to discourage their kids from smoking. A child is more likely to smoke when they have been raised in the environment of a smoker. – Christy Turlington
When it comes right down to it, developing a critical sensibility about parenting isn’t really about disapproval; it’s about honing your own sensibilities, figuring out how you want to parent. – Adam Mansbach
I think I’m going to have to live vicariously through my daughter’s rebellion because I certainly never did go through adolescence. – Brooke Shields
Childhood obesity is best tackled at home through improved parental involvement, increased physical exercise, better diet and restraint from eating. – Bob Filner
I would like to do another piece of fiction dealing with a number of issues: Lesbian parenting, the 1960’s, and interracial relationships in the Lesbian and Gay community. – Audre Lorde
Children should have enough freedom to be themselves – once they’ve learned the rules. – Anna Quindlen
The way I was parented did affect my parenting – probably in the reverse. My dad was pretty strict, and the next generation probably wants to be less strict. – Alan Thicke
I learned that life is about the people around you and the people you give back to. That’s what parenting is: You’re not there for yourself; you’re there for your offspring and everyone else around you. – Conrad Anker
For decades, parents were told by so-called parenting ‘experts’ that offspring would be best raised on the belief each is special and entitled to all life has to offer. – Bob Barr
A child who is allowed to be disrespectful to his parents will not have true respect for anyone. – Billy Graham
Parenting is the hardest thing I have ever done. I tried to find the balance between the strict, traditional Chinese way I was raised, which I think can be too harsh, and what I see as a tendency in the West to be too permissive and indulgent. If I could do it all again, I would, with some adjustments. – Amy Chua
It’s difficult to keep that perspective, I think, as a parent: to know your boundaries as to what’s good parenting or just projecting your own expectations on your kids. That’s the hardest. – Anthony Edwards
I’m not a parenting expert. In fact, I’m not sure that I even believe in the idea of ‘parenting experts.’ I’m an engaged, imperfect parent and a passionate researcher. I’m an experienced mapmaker and a stumbling traveler. Like many of you, parenting is by far my boldest and most daring adventure. – Brene Brown
My husband’s a pediatrician, so he and I talk about parenting all the time. You can’t raise children who have more shame resilience than you do. – Brene Brown
There are times as a parent when you realize that your job is not to be the parent you always imagined you’d be, the parent you always wished you had. Your job is to be the parent your child needs, given the particulars of his or her own life and nature. – Ayelet Waldman
If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people’s choices. If I feel good about my body, I don’t go around making fun of other people’s weight or appearance. We’re hard on each other because we’re using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived deficiency. – Brene Brown
It’s a huge change for your body. You don’t even want to look in the mirror after you’ve had a baby, because your stomach is just hanging there like a Shar-Pei. – Cindy Crawford
It’s hilarious to me that by writing an obscene fake children’s book I am mistaken for a parenting expert. – Adam Mansbach
Parenthood and family come first for me, and when I’m not working I’m cool with the Teletubbies. – Clive Owen
It’s a great mistake, I think, to put children off with falsehoods and nonsense, when their growing powers of observation and discrimination excite in them a desire to know about things. – Anne Sullivan
I told my kids when they were little, ‘Look, kids, your mother and I are screwing you up somehow. We don’t understand how, or we wouldn’t do it. But we’re parents. So somehow we’re damaging you, and I want you to know that early. So just ignore me when I go to that part of my parenting.’ – Pat Conroy
I have this blanket thing about giving parenting advice to parents, and that’s: ‘Don’t take other people’s advice on parenting.’ – Drew Lachey
Parenting classes should be mandatory, whether you are adopting or not, and would include an evaluation of your current physical, mental and financial state as well as how ready you are to take on the rigors of parenthood. Our children are our most precious natural resource, and there is absolutely no other way to parent but to put them first. – Dale Archer
The thing about parenting rules is there aren’t any. That’s what makes it so difficult. – Ewan McGregor
There’s this constant guilt that comes with parenting. You always feel like you’re never enough. If you’re confident in your parenting, you probably suck at it. – Nia Vardalos