What it's like to be a parent: It's one of the hardest things you'll ever do but in exchange it teaches you the meaning of unconditional love.

In spite of the six thousand manuals on child raising in the bookstores, child raising is still a dark continent and no one really knows anything. You just need a lot of love and luck - and, of course, courage.

There is no quick and easy way to rear a child. It takes eighteen years of constant work to get one into presentable enough shape so that a college will take him or her off your hands for the winter season, and it can easily take the child on permanently.

(on whether motherhood is the world's most difficult job) I did roofing in the middle of July as a redhead. I thought that THAT was difficult. But these mothers are bending over at the waist, putting DVDs into DVD players... I don't know how they do it!

As a mother, it is not easy to wait for a missing child to return -- it is very hard.

Mothering might be difficult but it is far more rewarding than many of the other tasks that we get up to. So don’t allow us (mothers) complain about how difficult it is because the reward far outweighs what we have to put in.

A boy, by the age of 3 years, senses that his destiny is to be a man, so he watches his father particularly-his interests, manner, speech, pleasures, his attitude toward work.

The fact is that child rearing is a long, hard job, the rewards are not always immediately obvious, the work is undervalued, and parents are just as human and almost as vulnerable as their children.

Without freedom of choice, there is no creativity. Without creativity, there is no life.

Respect children because they're human beings and they deserve respect, and they'll grow up to be better people.

Physical punishment teaches children that the larger, stronger person has the power to get his way, whether or not he is in the right, and they may resent this in the parent-for

Child rearing is an art, and what makes art art is that it is doing several things at once.

Childhood is a tricky business. Usually something goes wrong.

It is the fundamental unfairness of parenthood that if we do our jobs well, the deepest bond we are given will walk out the door with a wave over the shoulder. We get good training along the way. We learn to say "Have a great time, sweetie" while we are longing to pull them back to safety. And against all the evolutionary imperatives of protecting our gene pool, we give them car keys. And freedom. It's our job. And I wanted to be a good mother.

It takes a long time for a father to drive the love out of a child.

Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.

Don’t get me wrong. Being a mom is no picnic. Raising the kids is the mother’s
responsibility. It’s a thankless, solitary job, like sheriff or Pope.

first child ending one’s life or putting a long hold on their career. Because even those who become mothers still have a lot to deal with.