Walt Handelsman Quotes

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.

We are the only animals that let our kids come back home.

Who will take responsibility for raising the next generation?

All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me, and I'd worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them: 'Don't hide these things from me. I'd rather you ask me these things straight out, and I'll answer all your questions.'

I feel that you always pay when you are a child.

I'm so blessed to have such enlightened parents. It must have been very hard to watch their able-bodied son lock himself up in his old room for most of his 20s.

It is a parent's responsibility to preserve the connection with their children, to preserve the relationship, so that the children can let go and become their own selves.

In the summer of 2009, in the wake of a crisis in her life, my mother moved from San Diego to San Francisco to live with my 16-year-old daughter and me. My mother was 77. I was 51. Despite a chorus of skepticism from friends - who knew about my upbringing - I was determined to do what I could to help my mother.

I got married very early, and in no time at all, we had three children. And it seemed to me I had an obligation to support them.

My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God - I thank God every time I think of it - I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult.

I grew up in a single-wide, three-bedroom mobile home with my family. And now I see them, like, half a dozen times a year. Figuring out how to come home and talk to them again and feel like myself has probably been the greatest challenge.

My son Cooper has just turned ten and the sarcasm fairy has already started to take up residence inside his body. Not only am I living with my mother - again! - but I've also got her mini-me to contend with.

Anticipating a boomerang child seems the odds-on thing to do. Think about furnishing - hello, sleeper sofa - with this in mind.

As a parent I provide all I can, but I think in the best possible scenario you need to have a man.

Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home.

Children, a lot of times, can't make their parents wrong because they have to live with them, because they have to love them. And when you're young, you can't get on your Big Wheel and go down to the Best Western. You've got to live there and you've got to figure it out.

Dad was a retired chemist who, in his 60s, fathered and fed me and my two sisters while Mum worked as a secretary. He made us curries, Chinese meals and strange concoctions. He was often unsuccessful.

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.

Most moms and dads, they want to be good moms and dads. But it's an incredibly hard job when you are stressed out, when you are poor, when your life is in chaos. And giving them some of the tools to be better parents, to whittle away at that parenting gap, gives those kids a much better starting point in life.

My daughter lived with my wife being ill since she was 2.

I may have managed to build a successful technology startup that had gone public by the time my three kids hit their 13th birthdays, but don't think that bought my wife and me any special respect from our teenagers.

My priority is to take care of my daughter and my family.

My son's birth was pretty life-shattering, in good ways and bad ways. I realized that I needed a doula because I'm not close to my mom, and I don't have a lot of people in New York.

Everyone in our family just kind of leans on my mum.

But for me it's loads of pressure. Like, my mum is a strong independent woman, but obviously she relies on me a little bit. My little brother has his own job but he relies on me.