David Blankenhorn Quotes

I wish all the mothers, fathers and children out there realize how much I need them and how much I value their support.

I'll show up at every classroom open house and teacher conference,' she said, now in a voice that was almost frightening in its intensity. 'I'll bake brownies. My child will have new clothes. Her shoes will fit. She'll get her shots, and she'll get her braces. We'll start a college fund next week. I'll tell her I love her every damn day.' If that wasn't a great plan for being a good mother, I couldn't imagine what a better one could be

I would never, ever desert my child. A lot of my friends didn't have fathers growing up, and they were very upset that their fathers weren't around. I was lucky to have mine around.

People are concerned, here again, about life, and haven't given a whole lot of attention to how you make fathers responsible for the lives they bring into the world.

If you bring a child into this world, whether it's planned or an accident, you'd better make sure you can care for it. You have to be around. You make time. It's as simple as that.

It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father.

Of all the rocks upon which we build our lives, … family is the most important. And we are called to recognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation.

I saw my father every day of my childhood.

Dads are not a risk to be managed, but a resource to be used for the benefit of the whole family.

Whenever my kids have a tournament, or something going on, I make it a point to make sure I'm there for them every step of the way. That's real important to me.

If you really want to heal our communities, more men to step it up to take care of their children. Safe neighbors happen when fathers and mothers are at home.

Failing to support children one has fathered is wrong. We must be unequivocal about this. It doesnt help matters when prime-time TV has Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes todays intelligent, highly paid professional woman, mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice.

The one real irritant is that my young children - they also adapt. They adapt to being without their father. That's a hard, hard adaption which they didn't ask for. I worry about them; I worry about their mother.

There's nothing more noble than a father and mother making an opportunity for their child, knowing that their life is gonna be hard. There's something incredibly heroic about that.

The mother's and father's attitudes toward the child correspond to the child's own needs.... Mother has the function of making himsecure in life, father has the function of teaching him, guiding him to cope with those problems with which the particular society the child has been born into confronts him.

I'm a parent. I think we're responsible for the problems that young people have. I believe that. I don't blame them for any of it. I blame us for what we haven't done as mothers and fathers, not sticking together as a unit.

My mother used to pitch to me and my father would shag balls. If I hit one up the middle close to my mother, I'd have some extra chores to do. My mother was instrumental in making me a pull hitter.

The mother may be doing ninety percent of the disciplining, but the father still must have a full-time acceptance of all the children. He never must say, "Get these kids out of here; I'm trying to watch TV." If he ever does start saying this, he is liable to see one of his kids on the six o'clock news.

[Among the Arapeh... both father and mother are held responsible for child care by the entire community...] If one comments upon a middle-aged man as good-looking, the people answer: 'Good-looking? Ye-e-e-s? But you should have seen him before he bore all those children'.

There aren't many fathers around here...If someone is old enough to father a child, he should be old enough to help bring it up.

You have to convince the adults that if a child is to learn his culture, he or she will have to see his mother and father reading about it, and explaining it to him. Then it gets a legitimacy it otherwise would never have. Until then, his learning is limited.

I urge all children to listen to their mothers and fathers. My mom was helping out some kids and she didn't want to call me for all of the money; she only wanted to take care of some of the kids.

If fathers aren't growing up, I would challenge them to want to be a father that is present in the home, so that their kids have that identity.

I think we think that parenthood is confined to the country of mothers, but I think a lot of the men I've spoken to and the men who have read my books - I've been surprised by this actually - have a fierce attachment to being parents and to being fathers. And just as we, a lot of women I know, want this, men too want to pass down what they have to pass down.