Erma Bombeck Quotes

Have you ever noticed how parents can go from the most wonderful people in the world to totally embarrassing in three seconds?

I think it's the human condition to be frequently embarrassed by your parents.

Whatever your age, parents generally embarrass their children. I think that's a role we have to play.

We could improve worldwide mental health if we acknowledged that parents can make you crazy.

One of the things about parents and children is that there is no way that you go through this without there being mutual anger.

From biscuit to brides, if there is anything their children really want, parents have a problem.

There's a moment in time where kids really don't want to hear anything from their parents.

Wise parents know that fighting a teenager, like fighting a riptide, is inviting doom.

if you'd ever had a grown-up daughter you'd know that by comparison a bucking steer is easy to manage. And as to knowing what goes on inside her - well, it's much better to pretend you're the simple, innocent old fool she almost certainly takes you for.

I firmly believe, however, that if your children have never hated you, you have failed as a parent.

We are the buffoons of our children.

Don't throw away your friendship with your teenager over behavior that has no great moral significance. There will be plenty of real issues that require you to stand like a rock. Save your big guns for those crucial confrontations.

Kids never get pissed at their parents. Unheard of.

A father is very miserable who has no other hold on his children's affection than the need they have of his assistance, if that can be called affection.

I love women. I actually prefer girls, as a parent, because they disappoint at a different age. They go through that, "Dad's an idiot," which lasted a little longer than I'd like.

All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped.

Good parents have children who do terrible things and vice-versa.

I have teenage boys and I think teenage boys require a father to have eyeballs on them at all times.

Adolescence is a period of rapid changes. Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a parent ages as much as 20 years.

I know parental embarrassment usually stops somewhere at fifteen, but he just kept on giving me good reasons.

Of course, everyone's parents are embarrassing. It goes with the territory. The nature of parents is to embarrass merely by existing, just as it is the nature of children of a certain age to cringe with embarrassment, shame, and mortification should their parents so much as speak to them on the street.

Our parents are our first oppressors.

The better you are as a parent, the richer the nest you've built, the more difficult it is for your kids to leave. So they have to invent things to dislike about you. And they're brilliant at it.

Right, those relationships with your parents and family are the hardest to figure out, and the same patterns get carried into a band situation.