Francois Arnaud Quotes

In intimate family life, there comes a moment when children, willingly or no, become the judges of their parents.

All the time a person is a child he is both a child and learning to be a parent. After he becomes a parent he becomes predominantly a parent reliving childhood.

Each child is biologically required to have a mother. Fatherhood is a well-regarded theory, but motherhood is a fact.

Having been a father for 19 years I realise fatherhood has changed me.

While I have always had a good relationship with my father, much of the time it has been a very limited relationship until I was older. So you can't really give him credit or blame for how I turned out.

My dad, he's a great father, but he's also been one of my mentors.

For me, as much about being a parent as it is about being a child.

Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father.

Before, I used to ask permission to my parents to leave the house. Now it's - I ask permission to my children to leave the house. They own the house.

I tried to stick to my game plan, which was always being aware of what my A story was - the love story between a father and his son, and that son and his daughter.

It's hard to separate your remembered childhood and its emotional legacy from the childhoods that are being lived out in your house, by your children. If you're lucky, your kids will help you make that distinction.

Parents, you know, can be terrible.

Before, I guess, mum and dad were everything, but now, in my case, I had two new girls and all of a sudden they're completely dependent on you and there's a third generation. It's a funny shift all of a sudden. You have the babies, you have yourself and then you have your parents.

Whenever I write about motherhood - and I write about it a lot - I am drawing on my experiences as a mother and also my experiences as a daughter.

Fathers are biological necessities, but social accidents.

I had a son born to me when I was 50, and I thought, 'He needs someone to bowl to him.'

I'm a fun father, but not a good father. The hard decisions always went to my wife.

But mostly, it's a book about my relationship with my father.

My father wasn't really involved and my mom is the light in my life.

Mothers play an important role as the heart of the home, but this in no way lessens the equally important role fathers should play, as head of the home, in nurturing, training, and loving their children.

My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.

Most of us become parents long before we have stopped being children.

Babies control and bring up their families as much as they are controlled by them; in fact the family brings up baby by being brought up by him.

I do not think that I am a natural born mother... If I ever wanted to mother anyone, it was my father.

My own parents were very un-neurotic, so I never thought that I had to change enormously in order to become a parent.