David Lammy Quotes

It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father.

Active dads make a positive contribution: they are good for children and they are good for mothers.

The mother may be doing ninety percent of the disciplining, but the father still must have a full-time acceptance of all the children. He never must say, "Get these kids out of here; I'm trying to watch TV." If he ever does start saying this, he is liable to see one of his kids on the six o'clock news.

Young people know how important it is for dads to be involved in their lives. As I travel the country and talk with students, some of them tell me that their lives would be totally different if their father was around.

Fathers matter.

If fathers aren't growing up, I would challenge them to want to be a father that is present in the home, so that their kids have that identity.

To be successful in the family the father must have the welfare of each family member at heart and his decisions and plans must be based upon what is best for them.

Interactions between fathers and children are the starting point of education.

I don't want to raise a child by myself. I could do it. But I definitely don't want to. I want to be a mother who has the original father there.

Surely no child should fear his own father - especially a priesthood father. A father's duty is to make his home a place of happiness and joy.

I am convinced that the reason why my kids have become very fulfilled and achieving human beings is because I wasn't raising them alone.

Parents do bear some of the responsibility if they don't talk to their kids, are never around, even deny their kids the love that young girls often crave when they decide to have a baby.

I didn't have a father when I was growing up, and I vowed to be there with my kids.

My parents did divorce, but my dad has always been present for me and loving me and my mom as well when she was alive.

I'm just as insufferable and useless as every other dad is. The dynamic never changes, no matter what you do for a living.

I never have really said much about the whole episode, which was endless. But his speech was a perfectly intelligent speech about fathers not being dispensable and nobody agreed with that more than I did.

We criticize mothers for closeness. We criticize fathers for distance. How many of us have expected less from our fathers and appreciated what they gave us more? How many of us always let them off the hook?

I've never read one book about my father.

What we should notice is that studies show that fathers' presence in their children's lives has a marked effect on how well their kids do later in life, so why aren't we asking how we can better liberate men from the workplace to be home with their kids more often?

Of all the rocks upon which we build our lives, … family is the most important. And we are called to recognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation.

I want to be the dad that my father never was.

We have so many young men, especially, who are growing up without their dads. We have to fill that void. We have to do a better job helping young people see what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman. And then, somehow, we have to put that family structure back together.

There's a big difference in outcomes between children who grow up without a father and children who grow up with a married set of parents.

I think a father is important for everyone. If you don't have, then maybe not so much. In the world today, it's possible that you grow up with only one parent in the family.

I enjoy the challenge of being a father... I try to do my best to be there for my children.