Parental Decisions Quotes

I would never hold my children back from that. I would never want them to resent me for holding them back from their father's wedding.

My biggest fear in life is living Nativity scenes. I hide in cars and drive around looking at them. Something about it is really scary to me. What parent would put their child in there with mules and camels and straw?

The main thing I've done for my children is not to give them a stupid name, like actors do.

Now I tell my mom, I go, 'Mom, you know when I was a kid and you told me to turn off the television and go outside and play?' I'd be like, 'You literally were hurting my career when you did that. You literally stopped me from doing now, what I do for a living.'

When I was a kid my family was really poor and I remember one Halloween I wanted to dress up really scary and my parents came home with a duck costume. I wore that costume for years! I hated it.

I'm not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.

My son's full real name is Duncan Zowie Haywood. As a toddler, he was called by his second name Zowie. But it was such an identifiable name during the Seventies that if I called him loudly in public places, everyone would turn to stare, so I started calling him Joey to take the pressure off.

Whenever I hear about a child needing something, I ask myself, 'Is it what he needs or what he wants?' It isn't always easy to distinguish between the two. A child has many real needs which can and should be satisfied. His wants are a bottomless pit. He wants, for example, to sleep with his parents. He needs to be in his own bed. At Christmas he wants every toy advertised on television. He needs only one or two.

I've made decisions along the way so I would be there for my kids, and it's kept me from going places I would have gone.

When you're further along in your career, you probably have more money and more means; you have to stop yourself from giving your child too much. Whereas, if you're in twenties, you might just get by.

Even before the kids are born, you've go to make these decisions. If it's a boy, do we get him circumcised? If it's a girl, do we keep her?

What's perfect for one mom might be the worst idea for another.

Entirely incidentally, a little-known fact about Shakespeare is that his father moved to Stratford-upon-Avon from a nearby village shortly before his son's birth. Had he not done so, the Bard of Avon would instead be known as the rather less ringing Bard of Snitterfield.

My parents didn't want to move to Florida, but they turned sixty and that's the law.

I wasn't a happy kid. I felt like my mum ruined our chance of a better life, because when she remarried, we went to live in Bahrain, on a compound with a swimming pool, and she ruined it all.

After I had my kids, I realized it's pretty much all about instinct - you have to do what's right for you. Everyone has an opinion, but it was all about what you do or don't do. I was so overloaded, so I let my children dictate the way things were supposed to go, and things fell into place.

Nobody ever told you that being a mother is all about making what seemed like thousands of tiny decisions.

Most men are secretly still mad at their mothers for throwing away their comic books. They would be valuable now.

I'm a smart girl. There are decisions that I make for reasons, and the most important thing is that my son is happy and he always will be. He's surrounded by love.

In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the small-pox, taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen.

Mothers and fathers do really crazy things with the best of intentions.

Perhaps selling your children, your future, just happened one bad decision at a time.

Our lifestyle was not in any way a negative. That was not the problem. That is and will remain one of the wonderful opportunities we are able to give our children.

The answer is that there is no good answer. So as parents, as doctors, as judges, and as a society, we fumble through and make decisions that allow us to sleep at night--because morals are more important than ethics, and love is more important than law.

There are really good reasons to leave the workforce or work less or take a different job when you want to be with your children. I just want women - and men - to make that choice once they have the child. Not years in advance, because... they don't get the right opportunities. They give up before they even start.