P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

Raising children was not designed for single parents. (Which is why divorce was such a taboo prior to birth control).

There is but one way to eliminate juvenile delinquency - that is by providing each child in America with competent parents.

In response to a question concerning China's policy of compulsory abortion after the first child, Molly Yard responded, "I consider the Chinese government's policy among the most intelligent in the world"

China had managed to reduce their fertility to a large extent because of basic expansion of women's education, not because of the one-child family.

Now that children don't till your fields or take you in when you're incontinent, there is no sensible reason to have them, and it's amazing that with the advent of effective contraception anyone chooses to reproduce at all.

Some children are afraid to die because their parents are afraid to die. My own children have come to understand that it's totally okay with me if they die. They don't have to live for my sake.

The children of childish parents age quickly.

He saw the cause of his unhappiness in the family--the family as a social institution, which does not permit the child to become an independent individual at the proper time.

when we are young our parents run our life; when we get older, our children do.

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.

Good parents have children who do terrible things and vice-versa.

I think too often in our society parents, who may have good impulses, overreach and try to mold and shape and direct their child.

A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.

Kids and violent TV, violent TV and violence, violence and kids. The only people missing from this discussion are the parents. Where are we? Gone. Abdicated.

Every child is so helpless - just to survive he has to be political, he has to accept whatsoever the parents are saying.

I'm an only child. My mum and dad are six in each family. They're both twins, and they only wanted one. I always say to them though that they're lucky - it could have all gone wrong.

Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents' own rule.

Badgered, snubbed and scolded on the one hand; petted, flattered and indulged on the other-it is astonishing how many children work their way up to an honest manhood in spite of parents and friends. Human nature has an element of great toughness in it.

We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the rising generation. I am an oldster myself and might be expected to take the oldsters' side, but in fact I have been far more impressed by the bad manners of parents to children than by those of children to parents.

Visitation reflects the era of the absentee father; parent time influences the re-emergence of the involved father. Visitation reflects the destruction of the family; parent time influences the reconstruction of the family. Parent time influences an era that understands that as either parent loses, so lose the children.

Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners.

I think women are afraid to say that they don't want children because they're going to get shunned. But I think that's changing too now. I have more girlfriends who don't have kids than those that do. And honestly? We don't need any more kids. We have plenty of people on this planet.

I think it's up to the parents to determine whether what they're doing is consigning their child to difficulty. It's not as though they were crippling their children after they were born.

It's very important that your parents have careers of their own. When the kid becomes the breadwinner of the household, that's when you have problems.

Some children do what they’re told to do; some children do what they’re told not to do; all children do what they’re parents have done.