Parental Manipulation Quotes

I personally always find something really scary about watching little girls learning to manipulate their dads by baby talking. Then they grow up and use the same technique on their boyfriends or husbands. That scares me because it's just so sick on so many levels.

Jane was my wicked stepmother: she was generous, affectionate and resourceful; she salvaged my schooling and I owe her an unknowable debt for that. One flaw: sometimes, early on, she would tell me things designed to make me think less of my mother, and I would wave her away, saying, 'Jane, this just backfires and makes me think less of you.'

Perhaps my children will one day pledge their loyalty to the Republican Party. Or perhaps they'll dismiss my liberalism as mild pap, and become anarchists. Either way may well be a reaction to my manipulation, my values. We are all the product of the indoctrination we received at the hands of our parents, even when we are repudiating that ideology.

Anybody that lives in America and has parents with a moderate amount of wealth can be spoiled. I see it every day - kids who are just running their parents over to get what they want because kids are smart, and they know they can manipulate their parents.

In my family, as in all dysfunctional families, instead of parents who act as strong and nurturing role models for their children, you get these needy people who use their children. I was the kid who tried to take on the marriage.

Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave when they think that their children are naive.

Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it. The children very quickly figure it out and then practice deception themselves.

My father didn't want to ski alone, so he took me up to the mountains in order to basically bribe my mom to come with him.

I wonder how many ways there are for a mother to produce that wreckage in her own daughter, and my muscles tense as I think of them.

Possessive parents rarely live long enough to see the fruits of their selfishness.

All possible means were used by the infatuated parents to conclude the bargain; and deception put an end to these usual artifices.

I had my kids convinced it was a civics lesson rather than child abuse.