Emma McLaughlin Quotes

It now costs more to amuse a child than it once did to educate his father.

OK, so my parents were married in 1955 and my mom knew my dad was gay and my dad knew he was gay and so I was, like, 'Why in the heck did you get married?' Like, what was going on? What was that time? It's like this crazy paradox that my whole life is based on, or my family's based on. So I spent a lot of time trying to understand '55.

You don't want to be that parent - the one who dresses his kid in a cloth sack when all the other kids are in Armani cloth sacks - especially in a time like ours, when materialism is not only rampant and ascendant but is fast becoming the only game in town.

I wasn't like a Fifties dad.

With social media, people share mostly their best moments. Don't feel like you're not doing enough when you see a mom posting about making applesauce after you bought it. Ha ha! It's fine! Just for raising a little human being, you should be commended.

In parenthood, there's so much fear around parenting in this day and age, and there's so much fear around technology.

I don't go to celebrity parties a lot. I don't really enjoy them because I really like going for it in parties. And sometimes at celebrity parties, there is no dancing on tables because people... it can be a little judgmental at times. So I tend not to go unless it is Taylor Swift's birthday party; then it's amazing.

In terms of parenthood, I think the pressure has amped up massively too. Some parents are setting the bar ludicrously high in terms of doing things "right," and seeing children more as products to be perfected than simply children.

Women all live a double standard.

It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession

The ticket out of the Depression was an education, a college degree. It really didn't matter if you knew anything. You just had to have the degree. My dad, up until the last two years of his life, thought he had failed miserably with me 'cause I didn't go to college. I mean, you've seen postgame interviews with the star of the game and the players always talk about how proud his parents are because he's the first guy in his family ever to attend college. I'm the first in my family not to! I'm the first of my family not to have a degree. It's thrown everybody for a loop.

This thing in society that you have to be a stick will always be in my mind, but that's just something I have to deal with.

We spoke of ourselves as "emancipated" when we got the vote. Yet we are still slaves to the superficial and the superfluous. We are concerned with the length of our skirts, with the latest lipstick, with the newest thrill in hats. We are impressed by advertisements that insist we must be alluring; we must adopt a time-consuming coiffure, we must spend hours with the "beautician," we must attend fashion shows. As long as women are preoccupied with nonessentials we shall be afflicted with infantilism, passivity, and the eventual disillusionment that results from trivial, unproductive lives.

when your child is in trouble, the first thing you do is blame yourself.

Keeping up with the Joneses was a full-time job with my mother and father. It was not until many years later when I lived alone that I realized how much cheaper it was to drag the Joneses down to my level.

We're a nation of exhausted and over-stressed adults raising over-scheduled children.

Tolerably early in life I discovered that one of the unpardonable sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to go about unlabeled. The world regards such a person as the police do an unmuzzled dog.

No longer can a young woman feel at ease; for she is ever concerned with the impression that she may be making on others.

Oh, Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz - My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.

I think part of being a parent is trying to kill your kids.

Oh God. valentine's Day tomorrow. Why? Why? Why is (the) entire world geared to make people not involved in romance feel stupid when everyone knows romance does not work anyway. Look at (the) royal family. Look at Mum and Dad.

Culture is everything you don't have to do.

Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.

If you're 25 years old dressed up like Superman at a comic book convention, that's great. If you're 78 and you're doing it, something's wrong.

It makes people nervous for one to step out of one's role.