ethical parenting Quotes

I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children; who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage, not because he is duty-bound, but because he loves the world and loves his children...

Never teach your child to be cunning or you may be certain you will be one of the very first victims of his shrewdness.

The protection of a ten-year-old girl from her father's advances is a necessary condition of social order, but the protection of the father from temptation is a necessary condition of his continued social adjustment. The protections that are built up in the child against desire for the parent become the essential counterpart to the attitudes in the parent that protect the child.

A moral society will not set standards for becoming a parent, but it will establish irreducible minimums for maintaining that sacred status.

It's immoral to parent irresponsibly... And it doesn't help matters any when prime time tv, like "Murphy Brown", a character who is supposed to represent a successful career woman of today, mocks the importance of the father by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another "lifestyle choice." Marriage is probably the best anti-poverty program there is... Even though our cultural leaders in Hollywood, network TV, the national newspapers routinely jeer at [such values] I think most of us in this room know that some things are good, and other things are wrong.

At the snowy summit of all these things, however, is the fact that you simply cannot go about locking your siblings in towers when they misbehave. It is unseemly and betrays a sad lack of creativity.

You cannot sacrifice the world for your children.

The vilest abortionist is he who attempts to mould a child's character.

Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.

I'm in a no-win situation. If I have my kids in the show, I'm exploiting them. If I don't, people will think I'm not a hands-on mom.

I don't forget what I used to do and so I can't justifiably say to my kid, "Don't you do that," when I used to do it myself.

I'm just writing what I feel, and I really don't think I've done anything wrong that I need to hide. The biggest thing, and I don't even like to bring it up, is my children - you know, you've gotta protect them.

In general it's good to give children as wide a choice as possible, and there is no harm in encouraging children to play with 'typical' toys for the opposite sex. But whether they should be trying to change children is a more ethical decision; I think we should be supporting a child's interests, whatever they are.

It's very irresponsible as a parent to follow Tipper Gore or the Religious Right's advice and just take the offending CD or game away from the kid without discussing it.