When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he’s doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911.

According to Ethiopian custom, parents wait to name a baby because children often die in the first weeks of life.

Once you have six children, you’re committed.

When I’m around the kids I feel like I act the most grown-up just because you’re supposed to. And I say things, like every other day, that remind me of my own parents.

The biggest thrill a ballplayer can have is when your son takes after you. That happened when my Bobby was in his championship Little League game. He really showed me something. Struck out three times. Made an error that lost the game. Parents were throwing things at our car and swearing at us as we drove off. Gosh, I was proud.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!

The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.

The uncertainty of parenting can bring up feelings in us that range from frustration to terror.

I didn’t start sweating until I had children. That was one of the first things I realized when my daughter Violet was born – I started getting wicked BO. You know there’s a difference between basketball BO and stress BO? This was definitely stress BO. Like, new dad BO.

My mother was a full-time mother. She didn’t have much of her own career, her own life, her own experiences… everything was for her children. I will never be as good a mother as she was. She was just grace incarnate. She was the most generous, loving – she’s better than me.

My fans saw me get engaged, saw me make that woman my wife, me having kids, me divorcing, me talking about divorce before the divorce, me talking about my kids‘ reaction to that divorce.

I’m not great at bedtime stories. Bedtime stories are supposed to put the kid to sleep. My kid gets riled up and then my wife has to come in and go, ‚All right! Get out of the room.‘

Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.

Historically, the family has played the primary role in educating children for life, with the school providing supplemental scaffolding to the family.

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.

All parents are concerned about their children’s well-being. As a parent of three kids, I’m very concerned about their well-being.

My parents were the same in the pulpit as they were at home. I think that’s where a lot of preachers‘ kids get off base sometimes. Because they don’t see the same things at both places.

I think about my own sons and my own daughters, and I’m sure that many parents are concerned about what their children are exposed to.

Like every parent, when you start your family, your life completely changes. And you completely live for someone else. I find that the most extraordinary thing. Your life is handed over to someone else. From that moment on, they come first in every choice you make. It’s the most wonderful thing.

While I believed deeply in my husband’s vision for this country… and I was certain he would make an extraordinary President… like any mother, I was worried about what it would mean for our girls if he got that chance. How would we keep them grounded under the glare of the national spotlight?

I had this child, and it destroyed my family.

I’ve never been a hands-on dad. I’m not ashamed to admit it, but you can’t run a restaurant and be home for tea at 4:30 and bath and change nappies.

You send a boy to school in order to make friends – the right sort.

People have told me, ‚You shouldn’t bring your daughter onto the podium, ‚cause it’s the workplace,‘ and things like that. But I’m not gonna really listen to that. I’m gonna do what I think is fun for me and my family, and everything’ll be all right.

Just talk to me as a father – not what the Constitution says. What do you feel?

There’s something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she’s only measured water in it.

The deep, personal material of the latter half of your life is your children. You can write about your parents when they’re gone, but your children are still going to be here, and you’re going to want them to come and visit you in the nursing home.

For an Ethiopian mother, if you have a chubby kid, it means you’re doing something good.

Who will take responsibility for raising the next generation?

If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people’s choices. If I feel good about my body, I don’t go around making fun of other people’s weight or appearance. We’re hard on each other because we’re using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived deficiency.

Mum had done everything you need to educate a kid. She made me a kid who likes books and she told me about ‚Wind in the Willows‘ and read it and I thought this is weird, Rat, Mole, Toad and my first ever Bolshie thought – you know about ‚The Wind in the Willows.‘

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us.

I used to meditate all the time in bed. That was when I was raising my daughter, and I’d get her up and off to school, and then I would go back to bed and meditate. And then I would do the same in the evening, and that was very good for that period because I had so many things to juggle as a single mother.

Someday I want to have children and give them all the love I never had.

I take a very practical view of raising children. I put a sign in each of their rooms: ‚Checkout Time is 18 years.‘

When you have two busy kids running around the house, returning e-mails is a task, let alone surfing the web.

The reason children accept discipline from their parents is because they know their parents love them.

My own eight children all march to the beat of their inner music, and in some cases, it is definitely far away from what I hear. I’ve had to honor their instincts and their choices, and merely guided them out of harm’s way until they could be their own guides.

It took Simone a long time to understand why people want Daddy’s autograph. I’d tell her, and my wife would tell her, too, ‚People see Daddy in the movies, and they are excited to meet him.‘ But she couldn’t really grasp it.

Ironically, parenting is a shame and judgment minefield precisely because most of us are wading through uncertainty and self-doubt when it comes to raising our children.

It’s true that I’ve never had a burning desire to rebel against my parents.

I have spent the greater part of my life in a hotel room with seven or eight kids, looking after everyone, sorting out fights, wiping noses, handing out towels, not having a clean towel left for me.

My parents pretty much realized that I would do whatever I wanted, and that was it, really.

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

If you’ve ever hauled a 28-pound two-year-old around New York, you’ll find that men fold at the knees a lot quicker than women.

I go to sleep thinking about my kids being spoiled and I wake up thinking about it.

I’ve always felt heroic about my life… As a child, I remember little girls in the playground moaning about how boys could do more than they could. I didn’t think that was the case at all. My parents didn’t treat me as a girl.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

My friends ask me if I want more kids, and I always say yes, I want more; it’s the best thing you can have in your life.

I would like to fly in space. Absolutely. That would be cool. I used to just do personally risky things, but now I’ve got kids and responsibilities, so I can’t be my own test pilot. That wouldn’t be a good idea. But I definitely want to fly as soon as it’s a sensible thing to do.

I’ve never been pregnant, so I just feel God didn’t mean for me to have kids so that everybody else’s children could be mine.

No, we don’t own our children. Our parental privilege is to love them, to lead them, and to let them go.

But I was the most unashamed lone parent you were ever going to meet.

My parents were just constantly affirming me in everything that I did. Late at night, I’d wake up and hear my mother talking over my bed, saying, ‚You’re going to do great on this test. You can do anything you want.‘

We think it’s fun for our kids to have cameos and join us on set, but not to be actors. That’s not our goal for Brad and me at all. I think we would both prefer that they didn’t become actors.

To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.

In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn’t danced in television.

We’re African-American and we work together as a family, so people assume we’re like the Jacksons. But I didn’t have parents using me to get out of a bad situation.

The side of fairytales I don’t like is that they always have happy endings, that there’s just good and evil, and things are perfect. But life is a little more complicated, and that’s what I try to teach my kids.