Parenting Evolution Quotes

This goes across all racial lines, ethnicities, religious backgrounds. People believe in disciplining their children... It's the 21st century. My mom was wrong. She did the best she could, but she was wrong about some of that stuff she taught me. And I promised my kids, I won't teach that mess to them.

There was kind of a no-nonsense parenting style that my parents had that was true of the time. Everything now... there are books, and there are websites, and there are blogs, and you're reading, and there's research. We're such an interconnected world now, and half the stuff they did was pretty terrible, but we somehow turned out fine.

It's funny what happens when you become a grandparent. You start to act all goofy and do things you never thought you'd do. It's terrific.

I think a generation ago, dads went to work, they came home, and they had their dinner, had a drink, and then went to bed. I don't know what it was like in your house, but that is how it was in mine. I think it is cool to have the dads in the trenches and doing the real parenting work.

Mothering is just so different now from the way it was before. Especially with my mom. She was like the anti-helicopter mom. She was like an inflatable-tube, blow-up-flamingo-in-the-pool mom. Her philosophy was, the situation will declare itself.

The rules of parenting have changed. By the modern definition, we were a generation of neglected children.

It is true that all mothers do things differently from their own mothers, but they don't necessarily do them better.

There are great parents of small children - they keep their little hair in bows - but those parents are not always good parents of young adults. As soon as their children get up to some size, it's "Shut up, sit down, you talk too much, keep your distance, I'll send you to Europe!" My mom was a terrible parent of small children but a great parent of young adults. She'd talk to me as if I had some sense.

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.

I've become sort of an accidental advocate for attachment parenting, which is a style of parenting that... basically, the way mammals parent and the way people have parented for pretty much all of human history except the last 200 years or so.

Now, we've made the revolutionary discovery that children have two parents. A decade ago even the kindly Dr. Spock held mothers solely responsible for children.