I think humans have always been desperate. I think it has always been about doing something awful if it might help, when the only other option is death. Maybe that's what being a parent is supposed to feel like.

You don't need to be primary caregiver of your children to be of primary influence in their lives. What you do for them behind the scenes in your own unique way is what makes the true difference in the long run.

I complained to a friend that although I had completed six years in therapy, my mother still wouldn’t let me go. He replied, "She’s not supposed to let you go. Your father is supposed to come and get you.

*marissa tries to get her single, working mother's attention by suggesting something outrageous, to which mom replies:*'You're a smart girl. Use your head and avoid any guy who reminds you of your father.

We try to bring up our children so that they are protected from the world's evils, only to find we've raised a pack of innocents who seem to be about to stumble into them at every turn just from sheer stupidity!

With a lump forming in his throat, he thoughtabout all the hopes and dreams that he had for his son. More thananything, he prayed his boy would not grow up to be a screw uplike his dad when it came to love and marriage.

We can best help our children not by sacrificing ourselves for them, but by trying to fulfill our own lives. When we are involved in an honest pursuit of our own goals, we serve as positive role models for our children.

If I had to make a general rule for living and working with children, it might be this: be wary of saying or doing anything to a child that you would not do to another adult, whose good opinion and affection you valued.

Even though our journey as parents of a medically fragile child began with emotional turmoil, it has since become a purposeful odyssey that brings meaning and depth to our lives. This is the road we were born to travel.

The greatest lessons I learned from my father didn't come from lectures or discipline or even time spent together. What has stuck with me is his example. From watching, I chose whether to be or not to be like him.

This was our language: half-truths, obvious lies, accusations neither one of us would ever make. It was a system eery bit as complicated as Morse code or the dancing of bees. Don't ask, don't tell, stay civil.

My parents were nonmaterialistic. They believed that money without knowledge was worthless, that education tempered with religion was the way to climb out of poverty in America, and over the years they were proven right.

Parenting goes beyond providing foods, shelter, clothing, and other basic necessities. Nurturing a child to travel in the direction of positive enlightenment, is arguably the greatest thing that you could do for a child.

The love, loyalty, and dedication of Mary and Joseph are an example for all Christian couples, who are neither the friends nor masters of their children’s lives, but the guardians of this incomparable gift from God.

Babies don't come with instruction booklets. You'd learn the same way we all do -- you'd read up on dinosaurs, you'd Google backhoes and skidders. And you don't need a penis to go buy a baseball glove.