Parental Quotes

When I grew up, there were locked cabinets in public libraries. You needed parental permission if you were under eighteen. I was let down by the overblown reputations of some hardcore fictional works. ~ Allan Gurganus

Spockian parents feel it's their responsibility to make their child into the most all-around perfect adult possible, and although what this leads to may look like "permissiveness," it's actually more totalitarian, for the child no longer has a private sphere. His entire being has been taken over by parental aspirations.

. ~ Philip Slater

As a parent who raised his children in dysfunction, I know the parental wounds my children received were not intentional; often they were my best expression of love, sometimes coming out sideways, not as I intended. ~ David W. Earle

The real problem devolves around class lines once again: it's the street hormones that folks without insurance, or folks who are too young for prescriptions without parental okay, use. Sometimes those hormones can be pretty rough. ~ Kate Bornstein

Rachel looked uncomfortable. "My father is rarely around," she said, "but that doesn't mean he doesn't like to keep an eye on me. Last year, he put this parental spy software on all the home computers so he could monitor what I was doing." Ema said, "Yuck." "I know, right?" Ema shook her head and said, "Parents." I could see a softening between the two. It wasn't much. Softening might be too strong a word. Thawing might be more accurate. But it was there. "But the thing is, ~ Harlan Coben

I only hope that one day I can frighten my daughter this much. Right now, she's not scared of my husband or me at all. I think it's a problem. I was a freshman home from college the first time my dad said, "You're going out at ten p.m.? I don't think so," and I just laughed and said, "It's fine." I feel like my daughter will be doing that to me by age six.
How can I give her what Don Fey gave me? The gift of anxiety. The fear of getting in trouble. The knowledge that while you are loved, you are not above the law. The Worldwide Parental Anxiety System is failing if this many of us have made sex tapes. ~ Tina Fey

Having known my parents for a little over eleven years, I began to wonder why either of them ever had children. As an almost twelve-year-old, I was clear that this was not the normal pondering of a child. I began to have doubts that I was loved. I began to see a pattern of me being the one who always seemed to be in the way. I began to believe that I really was a burden. I was the problem. ~ Lockey Maisonneuve

When a child reaches adolescence, there is very apt to be a conflict between parents and child, since the latter considers himself to be by now quite capable of managing his own affairs, while the former are filled with parental solicitude, which is often a disguise for love of power. Parents consider, usually, that the various moral problems which arise in adolescence are peculiarly their province. The opinions they express, however, are so dogmatic that the young seldom confide in them, and usually go their own way in secret. ~ Bertrand Russell

I am trying to imagine under what novel features despotism may appear in the world. In the first place, I see an innumerable multitude of men, alike and equal, constantly circling around in pursuit of the petty and banal pleasures with which they glut their souls. Each one of them, withdrawn into himself, is almost unaware of the fate of the rest….

Over this kind of men stands an immense, protective power which is alone responsible for securing their enjoyment and watching over their fate. That power is absolute, thoughtful of detail, orderly, provident, and gentle. It would resemble parental authority if, fatherlike, it tried to prepare charges for a man's life, but on the contrary, it only tries to keep them in perpetual childhood. It likes to see the citizens enjoy themselves, provided that they think of nothing but enjoyment. It gladly works for their happiness but wants to be sole agent and judge of it. It provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasure, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, makes rules for their testaments, and divides their inheritances. Why should it not entirely relieve them from the trouble of thinking and all the cares of living?

Thus it daily makes the exercise of free choice less useful and rarer, restricts the activity of free will within a narrower compass, and little by little robs each citizen of the proper use of his own faculties. Equality has prepare ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

If you feel your school is failing you, the question is why. Is it a lack of parental involvement, large classes, school violence, poor learning environment? Are there any standards to determine where problems are? Are there tutoring or mentoring programs? If the school is still failing after 3 years then what are your options? ~ John Rowland

You don't need to remind me how easy it is to slough off and become lazy. Oh, I know how sweet the temptation is.
So modernity has brought with it an endless internal mental conflict between stern, rather parental inner voices and lazy childish ones. Unfortunately, these two voices, which have functioned as opposites, checking each other for centuries, have been confounded into idiotic agreement and collusion with the appearance of digital network technology. ~ Jaron Lanier

Differentiating from parental introjects and psychological defences based on the emotional pain of childhood is essential not only for neurotic or seriously disturbed individuals; it is a central developmental issue in every person's life. ~ Lisa Firestone

It is the institutions of society, not parental genes, that bestow the blessings of ownership of productive capital. ~ Louis O. Kelso

And the Clave wants to meet Clarissa. You know that, Jace."
"The Clave can screw itself."
"Jace," Maryse said, sounding genuinely parental for a change. "Language."
"The Clave wants a lot of things," Jace amended. "It shouldn't necessarily get them all. ~ Cassandra Clare

For most of recorded history, parental violence against children and men's violence against wives was explicitly or implicitly condoned. Those who had the power to prevent and/or punish this violence through religion, law, or custom, openly or tacitly approved it ... The reason violence against women and children is finally out in the open is that activists have brought it to global attention. ~ Riane Eisler

It was not until I had graduated from college that I made a professional commitment to it. Frankly, I didn't think it wise. I was my own interior parental force, and it's very difficult to justify a profession as a dancer. ~ Twyla Tharp

I regard the effort to introduce women into colleges for young men as very undesirable, and for many reasons. That the two sexes should be united, both as teachers and pupils, in the same institution seems very desirable, but rarely in early life by a method that removes them from parental watch and care, and the protecting influences of a home. ~ Catharine Beecher

There's no shortage of orphans in 19th-century literature, but it's hard to find a single happy, communicative, functional parental relationship in the whole of 'Great Expectations,' even among the minor characters. ~ David Nicholls

When families are strong and stable, so are children - showing higher levels of wellbeing and more positive outcomes. But when things go wrong - either through family breakdown or a damaged parental relationship - the impact on a child's later life can be devastating. ~ Iain Duncan Smith

Even the humblest mammal's strong sexual, parental, and social instincts give rise to 'do unto others as yourself' and 'love thy neighbor as thyself'. ~ Charles Darwin

The primary culprit is assumed to be peer rejection: shunning, exclusion, shaming, taunting, mocking, bullying. The conclusion reached by some experts is that peer acceptance is absolutely necessary for a child's emotional health and well-being, and that there is nothing worse than not being liked by peers. It is assumed that peer rejection is an automatic sentence to lifelong self-doubt. Many parents today live in fear of their children's not having friends, not being esteemed by their peers.

This way of thinking fails to consider two fundamental questions: What renders a child so vulnerable in the first place? And why is this vulnerability increasing? It is absolutely true that children snub, ignore, shun, shame, taunt, and mock. Children have always done these things when not sufficiently supervised by the adults in charge. But it is attachment, not the insensitive behavior or language of peers, that creates vulnerability. The current focus on the impact of peer rejection and peer acceptance has completely overlooked the role of attachment.

If the child is attached primarily to the parents, it is parental acceptance that is vital to emotional health and well-being, and not being liked by parents is the devastating blow to self-esteem. The capacity of children to be inhumane has probably not changed, but, as research shows, the wounding of our children by one another is increasing. If many kids are damaged these days by the insensitivity of their pee ~ Gabor Mate

Faith can be very very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong. ~ Richard Dawkins

Reporters insist on portraying me as a curiosity. Rather like a talking horse."
"You're an unusual woman."
"Not really. Many thousands of women have the minds and temperaments to practice medicine. However, no medical school here will admit a female, which is why I had to study and train in France. I was fortunate enough to become certified before the British Medical Association closed the loopholes to prevent other women from doing the same."
"What did your father say about it?"
"At fist he was against the idea. He thought it indecent for a woman to have such an occupation. Viewing unclothed people, and so forth. However, as I pointed out to him, if we're made in God's image, there can be nothing wrong with the study of the human body. ~ Lisa Kleypas

All of us wish we'd had perfect childhoods, with a mother and father who modeled ideal parental attitudes and taught us to internalize the tenets of self-love. Many of us, however, did not. ~ Marianne Williamson

Oh, go ahead and giggle," Lady Danbury sighed. "I've found that the only way to avoid parental frustration is to view him as a source of amusement. ~ Julia Quinn

As well as the factory euthanasia and mass poisoning of undesirables and sicklies and uglies, it was the policy of all Earth system settlements that all newborn babies should be carefully scrutinised. And any infant which didn't get the requisite number of ticks on his or her Future Citizen's Examination (with categories including pre-natal health, birth weight, potential IQ, and parental DNA mix) would be terminated. Abortion was, in fact, a thing of the past; infanticide was now considered to be a much fairer method of quality control. ~ Philip Palmer

One of the most difficult parental challenges is to appropriately discipline children. Child rearing is so individualistic. Every child is different and unique. What works with one may not work with another. ~ James E. Faust

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

Okay. Fine. Just be careful, okay? Whatever. I'm going to go get a drink.
And just like that, her parental energies were expended. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

I never imagined a love so pure, nor a hate that could be so cruel. ~ Donna Lynn Hope

The role of the parents is not to become the child, but to provide guidance to it, to walk it through the same abyss the parents walked through but with the help of a light called parental guidance. - On Parenting. ~ Lamine Pearlheart

Love, whether sexual, parental, or fraternal, is essentially sacrificial, and prompts a man to give his life for his friends. ~ George Santayana

think you need a hug. A nice warm, dripping-wet one."

Keenan started clapping while Brecken gave me a warning look. "I've got your son on my shoulders. I can't run away from you."

I gave an overdone smile then lunged. "Exactly," I exclaimed, winding my arms around him and wiggling the rest of my wet self against him.

Brecken let out a drawn-out groan, but he stood there and took it, hanging on to Keenan while I hung on to him. "Mature. So mature." He sighed all dramatic-like. "Wonderful example you're setting for your son here."

I tipped my head up, eyebrow raised. "This coming from the man who mixed Frosted Flakes and Cocoa Puffs this morning?"

His eyebrows lifted. "I'm setting the example of how to behave like a proper five-year-old. You're the parent. You get to set the parental example. ~ Nicole Williams

I moved to Des Moines when I was 15. I asked my mother to give up costody and sign parental rights over to my grandmother, who I lived with while I went to school. I was clean and finally starting to figure myself out. I can only say that now without laughing. I was still very out of my own place, and I didn't even know what that place was. All I knew was that I could write music, that I had no idea what that could mean and that I was still surrounded by people I couldn't relate to. I hadn't found my tribe yet. ~ Corey Taylor

The most effective weapon a parent has to control a child is the withdrawal of love or its threat. A young child between the ages of three and six is too dependent on parental love and approval to resist this pressure. Robert's mother, as we saw earlier, controlled him by "cutting him out." Margaret's mother beat her into submission, but it was the loss of her father's love that devastated her. Whatever the means parents use, the result is that the child is forced to give up his instinctual longing, to suppress his sexual desires for one parent and his hostility toward the other. In their place he will develop feelings of guilt about his sexuality and fear of authority figures. This surrender constitutes an acceptance of parental power and authority and a submission to the parents' values and demands. The child becomes "good", which means that he gives up his sexual orientation in favor of one directed toward achievement. Parental authority is introjected in the form of a superego, ensuring that the child will follow his parents' wishes in the acculturation process. In effect, the child now identifies with the threatening parent. Freud says, "The whole process, on the one hand, preserves the genital organ wards off the danger of losing it; on the other hand, it paralyzes it, takes its function away from it. ~ Alexander Lowen

Ish #211 Your child is your parental obligation, not friend. ~ Regina Griffin

I'll be your friend until you find a better one. ~ Carla H. Krueger

The traditional hospital practice of excluding parents ignored the importance of attachment relationships as regulators of the child's emotions, behaviour and physiology. The child's biological status would be vastly different under the circumstances of parental presence or absence. Her neurochemical output, the electrical activity in her brain's emotional centres, her heart rate, blood pressure and the serum levels of the various hormones related to stress would all vary significantly. Life is possible only within certain well-defined limits, internal or external.

We can no more survive, say, high sugar levels in our bloodstream than we can withstand high levels of radiation emanating from a nuclear explosion. The role of self-regulation, whether emotional or physical, may be likened to that of a thermostat ensuring that the temperature in a home remains constant despite the extremes of weather conditions outside. When the environment becomes too cold, the heating system is switched on. If the air becomes overheated, the air conditioner begins to work.

In the animal kingdom, self-regulation is illustrated by the capacity of the warm-blooded creature to exist in a broad range of environments. It can survive more extreme variations of hot and cold without either chilling or overheating than can a coldblooded species. The latter is restricted to a much narrower range of habitats because it does not have the capacity to self-regulate the internal environm ~ Gabor Mate

Children naturally believe without question and absorb knowledge at an incredible rate; since there is no other frame of reference; they believe their parental reality, true or false. ~ David W. Earle

In just two years, CSAS ignited the flame Grandmother lit years before. Carl would never succeed in his attempts to extinguish it. But his parental authority was able to keep it dormant and unthreatening for several years. At Ooltewah High School, I was like a lion forced into captivity after a liberating romp in the jungle. Nothing challenged me. Nothing motivated me. Nothing moved me. My claustrophobia itched to the point where clawing at my own skin seemed to be my only method of relief. With no social outlets and no intellectual nourishment, I caved into self-destruction. My bulimia amplified from throwing up obligatory family dinners to driving to grocery stores, Dollar Generals, and gas stations, shoving junk food into my purse in between security camera reach, devouring the calories in the corners of desolate parking lots, and scurrying into remote public restrooms in the outskirts of town. My knees would rest on the cold, sticky tile floors as I wrapped my arms around bleach-scented toilets as if embracing an old friend. ~ Maggie Georgiana Young

When people are kids their parents teach them all sorts of stuff, some of it true and useful, some of it absurd hogwash (example of former: don't crap your pants; example of latter: Columbus discovered America). This is why puberty happens. The purpose of puberty is to shoot an innocent and gullible child full of nasty glandular secretions that manifest in the mind as confusion, in the innards as horniness, upon the skin as pimples, and on the tongue as cocksure venomous disbelief in every piece of information, true or false, gleaned from one's parents since infancy. The net result is a few years of familial hell culminating in the child's exodus from the parental nest, sooner or later followed by a peace treaty and the emergence of the postpubescent as an autonomous, free-thinking human being who knows that Columbus only trespassed on an island inhabited by our lost and distant Indian relatives, but who also knows not to crap his pants. ~ David James Duncan

I can think of no more dangerous a position than to learn to tolerate evil in order to become accustomed to reality. ~ Sarah Mally

In Los Angeles, parenting is a competitive sport. From Beverly Hills baby boutiques to kids' yoga classes, L.A. fuses high style, industrial-strength materialism, and parental outsourcing into our own unique version of child-rearing. ~ Shawn Amos

I start trembling at the very thought of the unplanned and unknown, but inevitable and unstoppable force with which parents leave traces in their children that, like traces of branding, can never be erased. The outlines of parental will and fear are written with a white-hot stylus in the souls of the children who are helpless and ignorant of what is happening to them. We need a whole life to find and decipher the branded text and we can never be sure we have understood it. ~ Pascal Mercier

Thus I must contradict you when you go on to argue that men are completely unable to do without the consolation of the religious illusion, that without it they could not bear the troubles of life and the cruelties of reality. That is true, certainly, of the men into whom you have instilled the sweet -- or bitter-sweet -- poison from childhood onwards. But what of the other men, who have been sensibly brought up? Perhaps those who do not suffer from the neurosis will need no intoxicant to deaden it. They will, it is true, find themselves in a difficult situation. They will have to admit to themselves the full extent of their helplessness and their insignificance in the machinery of the universe; they can no longer be the centre of creation, no longer the object of tender care on the part of a beneficent Providence. They will be in the same position as a child who has left the parental house where he was so warm and comfortable. But surely infantilism is destined to be surmounted. Men cannot remain children for ever; they must in the end go out into 'hostile life'. We may call this 'education to reality. Need I confess to you that the whole purpose of my book is to point out the necessity for this forward step? ~ Sigmund Freud

Children are lovable and adorable. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I would like to devote myself to the cause of parental alienation. ~ Alec Baldwin

Apart from these parental physical jerks, he did not train his body; he merely inhabited it. A friend had once shown what he called gymnastics for the intelligentsia. You took a box of matches and threw its contents on the floor, then bent down and picked them up, one by one. The first time he tried it himself, he lost patience and stuffed all the matches back in handfuls. He persevered, but the next time, just as he was bending down, the telephone went, and he was needed at once; so the housekeeper was detailed to pick up the matches instead. ~ Julian Barnes

The human body represents to me the same universal innocence, timelessness and purity of all seed pods, suggesting the mother as well as the child, the parental as well as the descendant, conceived according to nature's longings. ~ Ruth Bernhard

Mr Babbington,' he said, suddenly stopping in his up and down. 'Take your hands out of your pockets. When did you last write home?' Mr Babbington was at an age when almost any question evokes a guilty response, and this was, in fact, a valid accusation. He reddened, and said, 'I don't know, sir.' 'Think, sir, think,' said Jack, his good-tempered face clouding unexpectedly ... 'Never, mind. Write a handsome letter. Two pages at least. And send it in to me with your daily workings tomorrow. Give your father my compliments and tell him my bankers are Hoares.' For Jack, like most other captains, managed the youngsters' parental allowance for them. 'Hoares,' he repeated absently once or twice, 'my bankers are Hoares,' and a strangled ugly crowing noise made him turn. Young Ricketts was clinging to the fall of the main burton-tackle in an attempt to control himself, but without much success. ~ Patrick O'Brian

It is time to teach society on how to be empathetic with people grieving. ~ Nathalie Himmelrich

You're being parental', I said. 'Go find that squid'. ~ Daryl Gregory

I believe that parents who love their children do everything for them with love, even discipline. ~ Ellen J. Barrier

He knew what it was like to lose a parental anchor in life. ~ Brandon Shire

In some ways, no one is tougher on one another than sisters. Like parents, they're hyperaware of another's past foibles and faults; but, without the infinite parental capacity for love and forgiveness, they judge one another far more harshly for them.
I swear there are times when they really might kill one another. Until, of course, one of them is in trouble or threatened by an outside agent, in which case they band together into an unbreakable front.
Internally fractured yet externally united. The world over, it's the very definition of sisterhood. ~ Brad Parks

We're constantly judging and grading other parents, just to make sure that they aren't any better than us. I'm as guilty as anyone. I see some lady hand her kid a Nintendo DS at the supermarket and I instantly downgrade that lady to Shitty Parent status. I feel pressure to live up to a parental ideal that no one probably has ever achieved. I feel pressure to raise a group of human beings that will help America kick the shit out of Finland and South Korea in the world math rankings. I feel pressure to shield my kids from the trillion pages of hentai donkey porn out there on the Internet. I feel pressure to make the insane amounts of money needed for a supposedly 'middle-class' upbringing for the kids, an upbringing that includes a house and college tuition and health care and so many other expenses that you have to be a multimillionaire to afford it. PRESSURE PRESSURE PRESSURE. ~ Drew Magary

Thus bound together, they sheltered the child from the cold, dark night, enveloping him in warmth. ~ Seth Adam Smith

When fast food is not a treat but a dietary staple, the children surf the internet all day in dark corners of the room and are bombarded with latest gadgets. Things replace parental standards. ~ Diane Abbott

They will grow up knowing that they should be only proud about being adopted. I will consider it a parental failure if our daughters ever try to use it as some kind of excuse. ~ Scott Simon

Of the contributions made during the essayist period three call for notice: Weismann deserves mention for his useful work in asking for the proof that "acquired characters" or, to speak more precisely, parental experience can really be transmitted to the offspring. The ocurrence of progressive adaptation by transmission of effects of use had seemed so natural to Darwin and his contemporaries that no proof of the physiological reality of the henomenon was thought necessary. Weismann's challenge revealed the utter inadequacy of the evidence on which the beliefs were based. They are doubtless isolated observations which may be interpreted as favouring the belief in these transmissions, but such meagre indications as exist are by general consent admitted to be too slight to be of much assistance in the attempt to understand how the more complex adaptive mechanisms arose. ~ William Bateson

You and I. Hand in hand. An endless story of love. A love that grew in me for 9 months and only grows bigger each day.

You and I. Hand in hand. An endless journey. Countless steps. One destination - your happiness.

You and I. Hand in hand. My heart and blood. I'll share it all - take it - my whole life is you. ~ Veronika Jensen

The most basic parental bond is maternal. Equal parenting is great--it has forced men to get off their duffs--but women, from breast to cradle to cuddle, can nurture in ways that men cannot. ~ Charles Krauthammer

Look round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organized, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind Nature, inpregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children. ~ David Hume

Social expectations about what constitutes a good or a bad mother haunt every decision, and the rise of the parental advice industry ensures that moms and dads feel inadequate at every turn. ~ Jessica Valenti

Relentless criticism in childhood can internalize a parental scorn that no amount of success will silence. ~ Bruce Watson

Golden sees parental uninterest in collective solutions as part of a larger "decline in the social contract" ... "As a scholar, I'm very disturbed that we have more [media] articles about toxins in the home than the fact that we don't have universal prenatal care, she says. "We've moved from collective concern about infant and child welfare into this very privatized focus on "my child" and this intensive child-rearing. ~ Emily Matchar

Just as men must give up economic control when their wives share the responsibility for the family's financial well-being, women must give up exclusive parental control when their husbands assume more responsibility for child care. ~ Augustus Y. Napier

Without warning he had become witness to something that stretched back through the eons, ties both elastic and enduring, surpassing death, surpassing life. She was his child. It was as simple as that and that complex. ~ Kim Harrison

My theory is that one needs to be loved completely, unconditionally, and unfettered by parental disapproval, if one is to get happily through life which, after all, presents its own hurdles. ~ Arabella Weir

As Newman struggled free of parental domination, he achieved a less constricted morality and became more comfortable with himself. In that greater comfort, he moved toward a greater comfort with, and willingness to be responsible for, others. None of the great psychologists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including Freud and William James, had had anything to say about adult maturational processes like this. But over the decades, we at the Grant Study have watched fascinated as Adam Newman and his fellows changed and grew. ~ George E. Vaillant

Well, sir, do you mean to remain there, commending my father's taste in wine, or do you mean to accompany me to Ashtead?"
"Set off for Ashtead at this hour, when I have been traveling for two days?" said Sir Horace. "Now, do, my boy, have a little common sense! Why should I?"
"I imagine that your parental feeling, sir, must provide you with the answer! If it does not, so be it! I am leaving immediately!"
"What do you mean to do when you reach Lacy Manor?" asked Sir Horace, regarding him in some amusement.
"Wring Sophy's neck!" said Mr. Rivenhall savagely.
"Well, you don't need my help for that, my dear boy!" said Sir Horace, settling himself more comfortably in his chair. ~ Georgette Heyer

Adolescence is a tough time for parent and child alike. It is a time between: between childhood and maturity, between parental protection and personal responsibility, between life stage- managed by grown-ups and life privately held. ~ Anna Quindlen

In one hour, the highest SES children heard an average of two thousand words, while children of welfare families heard about six hundred. Differences in parental responses to children were also striking. Highest SES parents responded to their children about 250 times per hour; lowest SES parents responded to their children fewer than 50 times in the same period. But the most significant and most concerning difference? Verbal approval. Children in the highest SES heard about forty expressions of verbal approval per hour. Children in welfare homes, about four. ~ Dana Suskind

Earthly families all look different. And while we do the best we can to create strong traditional families, membership in the family of God is not contingent upon any kind of status - marital status, parental status, financial status, social status, or even the kind of status we post on social media. ... ~ Carole M. Stephens

When I was young, my mother [folk singer Kate McGarrigle] brought home this recording of Verdi's Requiem and we listened to it from top to bottom. By the end of it, I was a completely different person. It was literally a requiem mass for my former self. I was about 12 or 13. The Requiem just totally hooked into what I was going through emotionally - discovering my sexuality right at the time when AIDS was devastating my community and dealing with intense parental situations. ~ Rufus Wainwright

Readers acquainted with the recent literature on human sexuality will be familiar with what we call the standard narrative of human sexual evolution, hereafter shortened to the standard narrative. It goes something like this:

1. Boy Meets girl,

2. Boy and girl assess one and others mate value, from perspectives based upon their differing reproductive agendas/capacities. He looks for signs of youth, fertility, health, absence of previous sexual experience and likelihood of future sexual fidelity. In other words, his assessment is skewed toward finding a fertile, healthy young mate with many childbearing years ahead and no current children to drain his resources.

She looks for signs of wealth (or at least prospects of future wealth), social status, physical health and likelihood that he will stick around to protect and provide for their children. Her guy must be willing and able to provide materially for her (especially during pregnancy and breastfeeding) and their children, known as "male parental investment".

3. Boy gets girl. Assuming they meet one and others criteria, they mate, forming a long term pair bond, "the fundamental condition of the human species" as famed author Desmond Morris put it. Once the pair bond is formed, she will be sensitive to indications that he is considering leaving, vigilant towards signs of infidelity involving intimacy with other women that would threaten her access to his resources and protection w ~ Cacilda Jetha

I think great businessmen are more likely made than born. I don't know if it's from your upbringing, your parental background, the struggles you go through. In my own particular situation, I left school at 15 and I was struggling to survive in the jungle and that was a great education. So I think just getting out there, hands on, learning to survive teaches you a lot. ~ Richard Branson

The essential thing about mothers is that one needs to know that they are there, particularly at that age when, paradoxically, one is trying so hard to break away from parental influence. ~ Margot Fonteyn

One of the most consistent findings about low performing schools and students is that "home variables" (parental income and education, etc.) are more predictive than "school variables." But, having said that, we as a society can have much more effect on the school variables than on the home variables, so it's important and valuable to focus on the question of which interventions in schools are most effective and which are least effective. ~ Nicholas Lemann

A method of child-rearing is not
or should not be
a whim, a fashion or a shibboleth. It should derive from an understanding of the developing child, of his physical and mental equipment at any given stage, and, therefore, his readiness at any given stage to adapt, to learn, to regulate his behavior according to parental expectations. ~ Selma Fraiberg

I mean what else is there for a woman to do if she doesn't want to go from the parental to the marital home with nothing in between? 'An educated woman,'Millie amended. 'An educated woman,' Ursula agreed. ~ Kate Atkinson

I'm not sure I handled it well," he sais,his face so open,gaze filled with such raw regret,my heart aches on his behalf.
"Considering the circumstances, I think you did fine.Besides,it's not like you stood a chance,her mind was make up the moment she saw you."
Dace jerks back,his expression slighted,voice unsure when he says, "I don't understand ... "
I fumble with my lunch sack,wondering why I can never say the right thing around him.Having no way to explain in a way that won't sound completely embarrassing,when Xotichl steps in.
"What's not to get? You're hot-Daire's gorgeous-it's a recipe for parental distress if there ever was one. ~ Alyson Noel

We belong to that order of mammals, the primates, distinguished by its propensity for repeated single litters, intense parental care, long life-spans, late sexual maturity, and a complex and extensive social existence ... Our protracted biological and psychological helplessness, which extends well into the third year of life, intensifies the bond between infant and parents, making possible a sense of generational continuity. In contrast to other primates these bonds are not obliterated after sexual maturity. ~ Louise J. Kaplan

The manufacturing corporation, except in comparatively few instances, no longer represents a protecting care, a parental influence, over its operatives. It is too often a soulless organization; and its members forget that they are morally responsible for the souls and bodies, as well as for the wages, of those whose labor is the source of their wealth. ~ Harriet Hanson Robinson

Unconditional parental love is the indespensible nutrient for the child's healthy emotional growth. The first task is to create space in the child's heart for the certainty that she is precisely the person the parents want and love. She does not have to do anything or be any different to earn that love - in fact, she cannot do anything, since that love cannot be won or lost ... The child can be ornery, unpleasant, whiny, uncooperative, and plain rude, and the parent still lets her feel loved. Ways have to be found to convey the unacceptability of certain behaviors without making the child herself feel unaccepted. She has to be able to bring her unrest, her least likable characteristics to the parent and still receive the parent's absolutely satisfying, security-inducing unconditional love. ~ Gordon Neufeld

For the Christian, parental authority does not come from God placing us over our children. It comes from God having given us the responsibility to serve His children whom He, for a time, has entrusted to our care. ~ Greg And Lisa Popcak

For me, my 'X' replaced the white slave master name of 'Little' which some blue-eyed devil named Little had imposed on my parental forebears. ~ Malcolm X

There are more ways to choose a profession. One can choose it by
intention, by strong parental influence or even by accident. ~ Eraldo Banovac

Jeremy takes the money and heads toward the back bedroom to get dressed.
"Chinese? I'll come with," Henry calls, but then pauses to look at us, one eyebrow raised.
Harlin laughs and puts his arm around me. "Don't even say it," he warns. "You'll embarrass her." But he always says it.
"Charlotte," Henry begins in a mock parental tone, "when two people love each other, they may have certain urges. Protection is an important - "
"Oh my God!" I cover my ears and laugh. I wait until his lips have stopped moving before I drop my arms. ~ Suzanne Young

We're underground here - almost the whole colony is underground, safely shielded because radiation is not your friend. Every angle is calculated, every line efficient.
I think my parents wish they could plan me just as carefully, no part of me without a purpose, no part of me wasted. Maximum return for their efforts. ~ Amie Kaufman

The father, Trevor, was an asthmatic, but what he lacked in being able to breath quietly, he more than made up for with parental skills. ~ Alan Partridge

Fear is a subject that I have become increasingly aware of - the result of a period that I call post-divorce. Admittedly aware of the general concerns about "falling" too, I am more concerned about the burdens of a non-custodial - the dilemma of parental alienation with absolute liability for financial support. If any 'positive' aspect could be extracted from the non-custodial lifestyle, it is the accelerated-track toward financial distress and familial disparity. What may have occurred in the 1930s in a mass economic-downward spiral of society has similarity to the consequences of the divorce - as I see it. ~ H. Kirk Rainer

The parental relationship sits outside the
the logic of meritocracy and is the closest humans come to grace. ~ David Brooks

For some small number of people, a parental loss appears to be, ultimately, a desirable difficulty - again, not a large number. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

I have seen this happen before, how one act of parental kindness across a history of cruelty can make a kid in here forgive everything that came before simply because they have been deprived of kindness for so long. ~ Kerry Kletter

This was the elasticity and permanence of parental love; everything vile about your children was to some degree something vile about yourself, and disowning your child for their failings could only compound your own. ~ Jennifer DuBois

I would say that by virtue of your not acting parental up to this point, you've relinquished your ability to wield any power now. Sam and I are together. It's not an option. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Give ten children a toy box, and watch them select ten different toys, regardless of gender or religion or parental expectations. Children have preferences. The danger comes when they, as with any human, are denied those preferences for too long. ~ Seanan McGuire

Like Abraham, parents should command their households after them. Let obedience to [143] parental authority be taught and enforced as the first step in obedience to the authority of God. ~ Ellen G. White

Children see beauty in everything. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita