James Fox Quotes

My parents were not perfect, but no one's parents are. As childhoods go, mine was pretty comfortable and good in a lot of ways, and yet I still ended up with anxiety.

Many parents know that hugging your children - telling them how amazing they are - is so important. Some parents, through no fault of their own, don't realise this. My mum was one of those who didn't realise, and I almost was too.

When you are brought up as a frozen child, you go on freezing. It wasn't until I had my four sons, who have brought me immense joy, that I began to thaw. That I realised how utterly extraordinary my childhood was.

I'm a good dad; I spend a lot of time with my kids.

My dad was a terrible father. Dreadful. But he had a very difficult childhood. He was fostered - he never knew who his father was. So he had a very different attitude to family and kids. I don't have any issues. I'm not suffering some secret angst.

I called my mother up and I said, 'You know, I've been to the best doctors in the world and I've spent almost half a million dollars and they're telling me I have symptoms of a P.O.W. and all I did was grow up in your home.'

Because I see my mum and dad as such amazing friends, I think I'll be a really good dad.

My father was a very unhappy person, very sarcastic, and my mother was very nervous and worried about what people thought. They weren't monsters, but it wasn't a good childhood.

If your mother did not know how to love herself, or your father did not know how to love himself, then it would be impossible for them to teach you to love yourself. They were doing the best they could with what they had been taught as children.

I wasn't against becoming a dad: I'd had a good childhood, as childhoods go, and as role models, my imperfect parents were as good as or better than most.

I was never taught how to raise a child, because I wasn't raised properly.

My father was a joyous, joyous spirit, he really was. He was a hedonist, that was just - he enjoyed life, thrust up to the elbows with it. He was a terrible father. I don't know that he was parented that well.

I really believe strongly that kids should be spared the runoff of their parents' lives and problems.

Raising children is an incredibly hard and risky business in which no cumulative wisdom is gained: each generation repeats the mistakes the previous one made.

When I became a mother, there was no doubt in my mind that it would be the most vital and important job I would ever have because I knew firsthand what it was like not to have a mother.

I've seen my own kids go through their own ups and downs, and as a mother, you want to make it better.

My mother's feeling about men in general were always a bit of a mystery to me. She had difficulties in Puerto Rico with the men in her life. Her brothers abused her. It's very easy to be judgmental, but more often than not, there are mitigating circumstances, and children are not usually aware of those.

You need to be emotionally ready for a baby, and the best way to do that is to clean skeletons from your own closest. Deal with the baggage of your childhood, or you'll just pass it on to your kid.

My mum and dad got divorced when I was nine and my brother was seven, and all they strived to do was to make sure we weren't affected.

My mom was always very, very careful with my mind: what I saw and didn't see.

My father never raised his voice or his hand on me when I was a kid.

I am most anxious to give my own children enough love and understanding so that they won't grow up with an aching void in them--like you and I and Harold and Martha. That can never be filled, and one goes around all one's life trying, trying to make up for what one didn't get that was one's birthright, asking the wrong people for it.

My own mother died when I was 10 years old. My folks have told me that what little humor I have comes from her. I can't remember her humor, but I can remember her love and understanding of me.

I'm so blessed to have such enlightened parents. It must have been very hard to watch their able-bodied son lock himself up in his old room for most of his 20s.

The parents' job is to be there for their kids, not the other way round. Troubles between parents need to be talked through with friends and not visited on the children.