Pamela Druckerman Quotes

Ultimately, very few people parent their kids in ways that strike anybody else as reasoned, appropriate or sane.

The '70s were a different time as far as parenting was concerned. People left their kids in the car with the windows cracked while they went to the grocery store.

America's parenting customs can shock foreigners.

My guess is that good and bad parenting is spread fairly evenly across different social groups. But can you imagine Tony Blair lecturing the middle class on how to bring up their children? He is far more comfortable as a latter-day exponent of the Poor Law mentality.

To be honest, I know that a lot of Asian parents are secretly shocked and horrified by many aspects of Western parenting.

We're living in a time when parenting is not at all mirroring the way I was parented. For me, I just followed my parents around on their errands; when they were busy on the phone, I was quiet. It's a different kettle of fish these days: They run the house, and you listen to their music, and you go to their appointments.

People discuss parenting the way they talk about denominations of faith.

When I tell French parents that I know lots of American kids who will eat only pasta or only white rice, they can't believe it. I mean, they can understand how the kid left to his own devices might do that, but they can't imagine that parents would allow that to happen.

There was kind of a no-nonsense parenting style that my parents had that was true of the time. Everything now... there are books, and there are websites, and there are blogs, and you're reading, and there's research. We're such an interconnected world now, and half the stuff they did was pretty terrible, but we somehow turned out fine.

I think there's different parenting styles.

Growing up, I've always felt I was from two different worlds. I was born in the U.S., but my parents were born in Vietnam, and they raised my sisters and I with the parenting methods of the Vietnamese culture.

For all my proclivities for thuggery, I am a typical middle-class dad. I'm a gangsta rap suburban father!

Don't be ridiculous, Charlie, people love the parents who beat their kids in department stores. It's the ones who just let their kids wreak havoc that everybody hates.

Everything depends on upbringing.

Nowadays you can't even spank your kids. No, gotta give 'em a time out. My dad would take time out of his busy day... to whip our ass.

If you're bringing up kids, you just want to smother them with love and praise and enthusiasm. So I don't think you can mollycoddle your kids too much really.

Mother was the disciplinarian, but it was Daddy who could turn me into an angel with just one look.

True up-bringing is restricted to two types of welfare; the welfare of the body and that of the mind.

And my daughter said, 'Why are you yelling at us?' and I said, 'I'm trying to discipline you!' And then she looked up at me with her tear-stained eyes and said, 'This is how you teach children, by making them cry.' And it was such a clenching reminder - she won not only the argument, but she won life with that statement. I just burst out laughing, and I think they were so surprised that I burst out laughing, that they did too.

What kind of life am I setting up for her (her = daughters)?...It's not just about making them, like, not be assholes, which is what I think any parent would do.

You have to do all you can as a parent to stop your kid from doing all the craziness that's going on in the world. And although I still have music that's saying one thing, I still let them know what it is, and I'm not doing anything in my music that I wouldn't tell my kids about.

We played in an era where you were taught to hate your opponent. But life changes. I raise my kids differently than my mom and dad raised their kids.

Instead of just saying, "I love my baby and I pick him up because he's adorable and it's so nice to cuddle with him," we practice attachment parenting. We let our children play outside and have age-appropriate freedoms and are labeled free-range parents.

In the end, the type of parent you are is going to be something that you carry with you. ... Having multiple kids, it's been a gift in a way. It's keeping the priorities straighter.

Today's parents grew up with the silly notion that music was meant to be heard.