Never raise your hand to your children; it leaves your midsection unprotected.

Never raise your hand to your children; it leaves your midsection unprotected.

What a cunning mixture of sentiment, pity, tenderness, irony surrounds adolescence, what knowing watchfulness! Young birds on their first flight read more

What a cunning mixture of sentiment, pity, tenderness, irony surrounds adolescence, what knowing watchfulness! Young birds on their first flight are hardly so hovered around.

Children have more need of models than of critics.

Children have more need of models than of critics.

It's never too late to have a happy childhood.

It's never too late to have a happy childhood.

Better to be driven out from among men than to be disliked of children.

Better to be driven out from among men than to be disliked of children.

I like trying [to get pregnant]. I'm not so sure about childbirth.

I like trying [to get pregnant]. I'm not so sure about childbirth.

It might sound a paradoxical thing to say --for surely never has a generation of children occupied more sheer hours read more

It might sound a paradoxical thing to say --for surely never has a generation of children occupied more sheer hours of parental time --but the truth is that we neglected you. We allowed you a charade of trivial freedoms in order to avoid making those impositions on you that are in the end both the training ground and proving ground for true independence. We pronounced you strong when you were still weak in order to avoid the struggles with you that would have fed your true strength. We proclaimed you sound when you were foolish in order to avoid taking part in the long, slow, slogging effort that is the only route to genuine maturity of mind and feeling. Thus, it was no small anomaly of your growing up that while you were the most indulged generation, you were also in many ways the most abandoned to your own meager devices by those into whose safe-keeping you had been given.

Childhood sometimes does pay a second visit to man; youth never.

Childhood sometimes does pay a second visit to man; youth never.

The trouble with children is that they are not returnable.

The trouble with children is that they are not returnable.