Carl Honore Quotes

It's really important to recognize that family life in America has changed pretty dramatically.

In two-parent households, women have increasingly entered the workplace, and in single-parent households, there is even more of a need for the adults to work. That means parents do not fully control their own schedule and have to scramble to find high-quality after-school options.

If you have two parents who have to work, who want to work, you need to have someone to guide your child.

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.

In most places and times in human history, babies have had not just one person but lots of people around who were really paying attention to them around, dedicated to them, cared to them, were related to them. I think the big shift in our culture is the isolation in which many children are growing up.

Those days of every child having a mummy and daddy who lived at home - Daddy went to work, and Mummy stayed at home and took care of everyone - those days have almost gone, and it's so much more unconventional now.

Sometimes, having a mom stay home is a big help. On the other hand, when a mother works outside the home, her husband generally does more child care and has higher parental knowledge about his childrens' friends, routines, and needs, cutting across the tendency for fathers to be second-string parents at home.

My daughter does not travel with me. She has a much more stress-free life at home with her daddy.

The deepest change begins with men raising children as much as women do and women being equal actors in the world outside the home.

Father or stepfather - those are just titles to me. They don't mean anything.

Fathers in today's modern families can be so many things.

As a society, we've evolved, and we've recognized that the American family structure has undergone enormous changes. Divorce is all around us, and who among us doesn't know someone who is divorced or has been impacted by divorce. It's not as scandalous as it was.

What we should notice is that studies show that fathers' presence in their children's lives has a marked effect on how well their kids do later in life, so why aren't we asking how we can better liberate men from the workplace to be home with their kids more often?

It is obvious that the role of the father as the central authority in the family has been considerably challenged in Western societies. Parental responsibilities, and I knowingly use the term responsibility instead of the term authority still used in the French Civil code, are nowadays shared equally between both parents.

We are redefining the concept of marriage to say that fathers are optional.

My father had to play the role of mother and father.

During my last days at Florida State, 65 to 70 percent of my boys did not have a daddy at home. They're raised by mommas. Thank God for them mommas, or grandmommas. Or big sister or aunt.

Contrary to myth, 'The Feminine Mystique' and feminism did not represent the beginning of the decline of the stay-at-home mother but a turning point that led to much stronger legal rights and 'working conditions' for her.

Things began to improve when I went to Rangoon. To begin with, my father was promoted, which meant he was at home more. The matriarchal society was ended, and for the first time, I went to a boys' school.

Cohabitation itself doesn't cause ineffective parenting.

Cars let us out of the barn and, while they were at it, destroyed the American nuclear family. As anyone who has had an American nuclear family can tell you, this was a relief to all concerned.

Some may look on my work as being corny or old hat and wonder if my observations on the typical family are passe, what with the single-parent family and mixed family units.

When fathers are not present, government becomes the 'baby daddy' and conservative social values are harder to pass on to the next generation.

Blacks as a group will never be equal while they have this situation going on, where the vast majority of children do not have fathers in the home married to their mother, involved in their lives, investing in them, investing in the next generation.

In our culture, when the parents are having a tough time, the grandparents take care of the kids.