I do not think that I am a natural born mother… If I ever wanted to mother anyone, it was my father.

Actually, I didn’t start sweating until I had children.

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

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

Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?

As a father, safety is always a top of mind issue for me.

I want my kids to see me as Dad, for God’s sake, not a television personality.

I became the kind of parent my mother was to me.

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

Education commences at the mother’s knee, and every word spoken within hearsay of little children tends toward the formation of character.

My parents taught me never to judge others based on whom they love, what color their skin is, or their religion.

It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature’s gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever.

The moment you have a child, in an instant your life is not for you, and your life is completely, 100 percent dedicated to another human being, and they will always come first. It changes you forever. It changes your perspective, and it gives you a nice purpose and focus.

The great thing about having a bunch of kids is they just remind you that you’re the person who takes them to go poop!

A two-year-old is kind of like having a blender, but you don’t have a top for it.

I got the stern end of the stick. It was kind of that iron fist. I am who I am today because of my mother.

I’m sure most parents read to their children to explain what certain things mean. So books are a good way to convey a message to anybody. Everybody reads.

As a mom, I know it is my responsibility, and no one else’s, to raise my kids. But we have to ask ourselves, what does it mean when so many parents are finding their best efforts undermined by an avalanche of advertisements aimed at our kids.

The kids are old enough now – I just want to let them be kids. I don’t want to comment on them too much. They’re at an age where I just want to let them be kids.

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

My husband’s a pediatrician, so he and I talk about parenting all the time. You can’t raise children who have more shame resilience than you do.

Once you have six children, you’re committed.

The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.

I take my kids to school. And if I go to work, I go to work, and they visit me on set. I come home. I have dinner with my family. I have breakfast with my family. I have a very solid, very warm home.

My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God – I thank God every time I think of it – I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult.

Now that I’m a parent, I understand why my father was in a bad mood a lot.

I always say I’m one of the toughest mama’s boys you’re ever gonna meet. And I say that to send a message to all the young thugs out there; that it’s nothing to be ashamed of to say you love your mother.

For me, already being part of a single parent household and knowing it was just me and my mom, you’d would wake up times and hope that the next day you’d be able to be alongside your mother because she was out trying to make sure that I was taken care of. But all I cared about was her being home.

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.

I’m dying to be a great dad one day, whenever that day comes.

You bring children into the world. You love them with heart and soul.

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

You definitely want your kids to understand their heritage, but I don’t want my kids to just focus on being black. They are people. I don’t want them to judge other people or to be judged. I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows.

What used to keep me up at night was the fact that I didn’t know how I was going to pay the rent. Now that I can pay the rent, I’m worrying about people I care about, you know, the people I love. The little aches and pains of my children that I, my family. That’s always first.

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.

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.

It takes three to make a child.

Being a housewife and a mother is the biggest job in the world, but if it doesn’t interest you, don’t do it – I would have made a terrible mother.

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

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.

The kids are a big part of my schedule.

Be nice to your children. After all, they are going to choose your nursing home.

My son complains about headaches. I tell him all the time, when you get out of bed, it’s feet first!

My father? I never knew him. Never even seen a picture of him.

To be a successful father… there’s one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don’t look at it for the first two years.

Being a kid’s not easy. You’re transforming and becoming a human being. At some point, you have everyone taking care of you, and then, all of a sudden, you’re out in the world.

My son is becoming me – just a silly, silly prankster guy.

Children are our most valuable natural resource.

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.

If you are a parent, you have probably already realized that your children are always watching what you do. And just as children watch their parents and emulate their behavior, so do employees who are watching their bosses.

I had to make a choice at one point in my life, of missing films or missing my children. It was a very easy decision to make because I missed my children so very much.

Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.

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?

Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.

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

My three children have brought me great joy.

If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.

I don’t pick up toys. I crush them.

I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.