Quotes About Parenting

People don't say, 'I just had a kid and I hope it turns out to be a factory worker.'

Believe it or not, we will actually be better and happier workers if we are allowed to be better parents. We might even rediscover our capacity for fun.

My parents were very well-off, but we didn't have a crazy-huge house. We didn't have thousands of workers and staff; it was just my mum doing the majority of the housework. We didn't have nannies. I wasn't brought up in any sort of extravagant way.

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.

When I'm not working, you'll find me down the play park or on the Tube with my Converse on and a muslin cloth in my hand, wiping my boy's snotty nose.

I was 17 and out of school, living with my mom, starving, not eating, getting locked up, no focus, no guidance. When you ain't got no guidance, you can't do too much. But then I had my first son and started working. I got the right people around me.

It wasn't so long ago that I was a working mom myself. And I know that sometimes, much as we all hate to admit it, it's just easier to park the kids in front of the TV for a few hours, so we can pay the bills or do the laundry or just have some peace and quiet for a change.

All Pro Dad is an organization that started down in Tampa in 1997. And it was just a group of us who felt like we weren't doing as good a job as our fathers did in connecting with kids and being there and being involved in their lives, working and coaching and spending all the time we had to. We just felt badly.

I never met a person as determined as my mother. From working hard for six kids to just trying to keep the household down or maintain my father's discipline, my dad, I'm so much like my father too. My father was so introverted, quiet, shy, nice. I got attributes from my father and mother.

My parents were serious working musicians, but they were not stars - not like pop stars that you have now. They had to make a living and that meant touring, working hard, going on the road - and we were roped in.

My approach to parenting is the same as my approach to life: it's all about putting in the hours and working hard.

Nobody asks a working man who looks after his children; it's always the woman who is asked.

And when the kids were born, I had that strange working-class mentality of these kids are here now, I've gotta provide for 'em.

It's been great having my little girl. It's like having a workout 24 hours a day. I don't need to go to the gym! I'm chasing after my daughter everywhere she goes.

I try to squeeze in a workout whenever I can, even if it's doing squats with my 7-month-old in the kitchen or jumping on the trampoline with my 5-year-old.

In fact, I schedule my day in a way so that I can pack in every aspect of what I enjoy, whether it's being with my kids or my workout sessions and on top of it, I will absolutely be a hands-on working person.

Figure out what you do the most in your day, then put your money toward those kinds of clothes. If I'm spending a big part of my day driving my kids to and from preschool, I'll buy loungewear or workout clothes that I feel good in.

I love 45-minute power workouts. I get in, do my thing, and then I'm able to go pick up Everly from school. It gives me energy.

A mother deserves a day off to care for a sick child or sick parent without running into hardship - and you know what, a father does, too. It's time to do away with workplace policies that belong in a 'Mad Men' episode.

What we should notice is that studies show that fathers' presence in their children's lives has a marked effect on how well their kids do later in life, so why aren't we asking how we can better liberate men from the workplace to be home with their kids more often?

In two-parent households, women have increasingly entered the workplace, and in single-parent households, there is even more of a need for the adults to work. That means parents do not fully control their own schedule and have to scramble to find high-quality after-school options.

Certainly, workers in many industries do not have the privilege of being able to balance parenting at the workplace, and we must fight especially hard to support working parents in low-wage jobs.

The basic idea that incentives can be used to motivate behavior is a powerful one. It works for employees, and it has a clear place in parenting, as anyone who has tried to potty-train a recalcitrant toddler with sticker rewards knows.

I want to be a good example for my son. That's the best way to parent - to be the example of what you want to see in them. That's definitely how my parents parented and how my grandparents parented. And it works.