Louis Auchincloss Quotes

The happy marriage, which is the only proper nursery, is indissoluble. The unhappy marriage, which perpetually tells the child a bogey-man story about life, ought to be dissolved.

If you see in your children most of your own faults, you have failed as a parent, but succeeded as a neurotic.

If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.

What usually has the strongest psychic effect on the child is the life which the parents have not lived

As the family goes, so go the children.

The child is thinking and receiving vibrational thought from you on the day that he enters your environment. That is the reason that beliefs are transmitted so easily from parent to child.

My son's dad is committed, and involved, and amazing. We're actually really good friends. But I think it's dangerous to speak negatively to the child about your ex or the absent parent, because, believe it or not, they learn very quickly who the other parent is. And it's important that they develop their own attitudes and opinions about that other parent based on their experiences, not based on what someone has said about them.

Since no one is always right, always being right is really a role model for his children feeling inadequate.

All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped.

Some people say that parents don't matter, and that's not true at all. The irony is that we pay attention to all these things that don't matter, and not to what does matter, such as parents having enough resources to provide an environment where their children have both security and freedom.

The children of childish parents age quickly.

He saw the cause of his unhappiness in the family--the family as a social institution, which does not permit the child to become an independent individual at the proper time.

One has very little influence upon one's children. Their characters are what they are and one can do nothing to change them.

Adult helplessness destroys children. Or it forces them to become tiny adults of their own.

Fathers. Mothers. With all their caring and attention. They will fuck you up, every time.

The most serious point in the case is the disposition of the child." What on earth has that to do with it?" I ejaculated. My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining insight as to the tendencies of a child by the study of the parents. Don't you see that the converse is equally valid. I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.

What assurance do I have that your parenting isn't screwing me up?

Children are sensitive and receptive to the thoughts of others about them, and often outpicture the fears of their parents.

The most important influence on a child is the character of its parents, rather than this or that single event.

Why do our parents have the ability to make us feel like children even when our hair is graying and we have a mortgage that feels like a Third World debt? (135)

Children accept their world as the world. I grew up like kids that I went to school with. Their parents were either shrinks or actors.

Each of us owes it to our spouse, our children, our friends, to be as happy as we can be. And if you don't believe me, ask a child what it's like to grow up with an unhappy parent, or ask parents what they suffer if they have an unhappy child.

I was always brutally teased for being George Harrison's son. That was from the age of about four or five, before I even knew who he was. And for seven years people would follow me about school singing 'Yellow Submarine.' I still can't listen to that song to this day.

Children are very quick observers; very quick in seeing through some kinds of hypocrisy, very quick in finding out what you really think and feel, very quick in adopting all your ways and opinions. You will often discover that, as the father is, so is the son.

In a famous Middletown study of Muncie, Indiana, in 1924, mothers were asked to rank the qualities they most desire in their children. At the top of the list were conformity and strict obedience. More than fifty years later, when the Middletown survey was replicated, mothers placed autonomy and independence first. The healthiest parenting probably promotes a balance of these qualities in children.