Kaylynn Pittman Quotes

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

Nothing is quite so horrifying and paralyzing as to win the Oedipal struggle and to be awarded your mother as the prize. ~ Frank Pittman

Bad marriages don't cause infidelity; infidelity causes bad marriages. ~ Frank Pittman

Happy people learn that happiness, like sweat, is a by-product of activity. ~ Frank Pittman

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

If fathers who fear fathering and run away from it could only see how little fathering is enough. Mostly, the father just needs to be there. ~ Frank Pittman

As a guy develops and practices his masculinity, he is accompanied by an invisible male chorus of all the other guys, who hiss orcheer as he attempts to approximate the masculine ideal, who push him to sacrifice more of his humanity for the sake of his masculinity, and who ridicule him when he holds back. The chorus is made up of all the guy's comrades and rivals, his buddies and bosses, his male ancestors and his male cultural heroes
and above all, his father, who may have been a real person in his life, or may have existed only as the myth of the man who got away. ~ Frank Pittman

Marriage isn't supposed to make you happy -
it's supposed to make you married. ~ Frank Pittman

In time, after a dozen years of centering their lives around the games boys play with one another, the boys' bodies change and that changes everything else. But the memories are not erased of that safest time in the lives of men, when their prime concern was playing games with guys who just wanted to be their friendly competitors. Life never again gets so simple. ~ Frank Pittman

Marriage, like a submarine, is only safe if you get all the way inside. ~ Frank Pittman

The most likely cause of a man's depression is his failure to be the man he thinks he should be ~ Frank Pittman

Did your parents have any children that weren't retarded, or were you just repeatedly dropped on your head? ~ Brien Pittman

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

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

At the heart of the matter of masculine excess is a great longing for the love and approval of a father, a man who can tell another man that his masculinity is splendid enough and he can now relax. ~ Frank Pittman

Anxiety is a complex emotional response that's similar to fear. Both arise from similar brain processes and cause similar physiological and behavioral reactions; both originate in portions of the brain designed to help all animals deal with danger. Fear and anxiety differ, however, in that fear is typically associated with a clear, present, and identifiable threat, whereas anxiety occurs in the absence of immediate peril. ~ Catherine M. Pittman

Patriotic to the point of arrogance, quick to take offense at any seeming slight of his beloved country and government ~ Craig Pittman

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

I hope when I die, they won't put on my tombstone, 'He wrote Miss Jane Pittman.' Put anything else, but don't put just that. ~ Ernest J. Gaines

Masculinity varies from time to time and place to place. But it doesn't exist just in the mind of a single guy: it is shared withthe other guys. It is a code of conduct that requires men to maintain masculine postures and attitudes (however they are defined) at all times and in all places. Masculinity includes the symbols, uniforms, chants, and plays that make this the boys' team rather than the girls' team. ~ Frank Pittman

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

In the end, there is nothing a man can do that a woman can't, except be a father. ~ Frank Pittman

Family life in Western society since the time of the Old Testament has been a struggle to maintain patriarchy, male domination, and double standards in the face of a natural drift towards monogamous bonding. Young men have been called upon to prove their masculinity by their willingness to die in warfare, and young women have been called upon to prove their femininity by their willingness to die for their man. Women have been asked to appear small, dumb, and helpless so men would feel big and strong, brave, and clever. It's been a trick. ~ Frank Pittman

At the heart of male bonding is this experience of boys in early puberty: they know they must break free from their mothers and the civilized world of women, but they are not ready yet for the world of men, so they are only at home with other boys, equally outcast, equally frightened, and equally involved in posturing what they believe to be manhood. ~ Frank Pittman

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

I'm not suggesting that all men are beautiful, vulnerable boys, but we all started out that way. What happened to us? How did we become monsters of feminist nightmares? The answer, of course, is that we underwent a careful and deliberate process of gender training, sometimes brutal, always dehumanizing, cutting away large chunks of ourselves. Little girls went through something similarly crippling. If the gender training was successful, we each ended up being half a person. ~ Frank Pittman

Common courtesy plays a big role in happy marriages. People who are permanently married are polite to one another. They don't want to hurt one another's feelings, and they don't try to make the other one feel humiliated. People who are married for life are extremely kind to one another. ~ Frank Pittman

Why do otherwise sane, competent, strong men, men who can wrestle bears or raid corporations, shrink away in horror at the thought of washing a dish or changing a diaper? ~ Frank Pittman

The mother must teach her son how to respect and follow the rules. She must teach him how to compete successfully with the other boys. And she must teach him how to find a woman to take care of him and finish the job she began of training him how to live in a family. But no matter how good a job a woman does in teaching a boy how to be a man, he knows that she is not the real thing, and so he tends to exaggerate the differences between men and women that she embodies. ~ Frank Pittman

The very worst aspect of poverty in the United States is the realization that - No one gives a shit whether you live or die.
The federal government, the state government couldn't care less. They're busy maintaining the status quo, and poverty is a big part of the economic balancing act. Hell, the economy would collapse if poverty was solved. The medical and health insurance industries; if they can't make any money off of you you're already dead to them. They couldn't care one iota if you live a life of physical pain and suffering.
And the citizens' hmmph, they're too busy stepping all over one another trying to avoid poverty.

What an insult and spit in the face of humanity to call all of this insanity civilized. ~ Brien Pittman

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