Family Cycle Quotes

When the father dies, he writes, the son becomes his own father and his own son. He looks at is son and sees himself in the face of the boy. He imagines what the boy sees when he looks at him and finds himself becoming his own father. Inexplicably, he is moved by this. It is not just the sight of the boy that moves him, not even the thought of standing inside his father, but what he sees in the boy of his own vanished past. It is a nostalgia for his own life that he feels, perhaps, a memory of his own boyhood as a son to his father.

I keep seeing myself in my daughter, and I see my mother in me and in her. Bloody hell.

Children grow rapidly, forget the centuries-long embrace from their parents, which to them lasted but seconds. Children become adults, live far from their parents, live their own houses, learn ways of their own, suffer pain, grow old. Children curse their parents for their wrinkled skin and hoarse voices. Those now old children also want to stop time, but at another time. They want to freeze their own children at the center of time.

The presence of a grandparent confirms that parents were, indeed, little once, too, and that people who are little can grow to be big, can become parents, and one day even have grandchildren of their own. So often we think of grandparents as belonging to the past; but in this important way, grandparents, for young children, belong to the future.

O what is it about having one's own Babe upon one's Hip that makes a Woman wish to go home to her Mother? A Desire to say: 'Look, the Circle is compleat'? A Desire to say: 'Look, I have cross'd the Divide and now am more like you'? A Desire to say: 'Look, this Babe I offer you is my most precious Gift'?

With our parents we bury our past, with our children our future.

Nevertheless, if you ask me, most people have children just as their own enthusiasm about life begins to wane. A child allows us to revisit the excitement we once felt about, well... everything. A generation later, our grandkids bump up our enthusiasm yet again. Reproducing is a kind of booster shot to keep us loving life.

Once, I was my mother's daughter. Now I am my daughter's mother.

To watch how lovingly your children parent their own children is to know profound achievement.

We study ourselves three weeks, we love each other three months, we squabble three years, we tolerate each other thirty years, and then the children start all over again.

One thing that's great about seeing your kids is you see things that you admired in your parents.

The debt of gratitude we owe our mother and father goes forward, not backward. What we owe our parents is the bill presented to us by our children.

Few things are more satisfying than seeing your children have teenagers of their own.

What really broke it down was I had my son while I was locked up, so that really affected me. I can't really have this, knowing my father was locked up when I was small. So that really out of everything - through the fame, the money, everything - that really put the toll on me: 'Oh yeah, I gotta change.'

There have been a lot of murders and suicides in my family; it's like the primary cause of death. I wonder if there's a certain energy that attracts that.

Sons branch out, but one woman leads to another.

I miss my parents. But still, my granddaughter, my daughter, my grandma, you know, so it's very important for me. You lost your parents, but a new baby comes. It's like the cycle of fashion.

The first half of our lives are ruined by our parents and the second half by our children.

I thought about all of us women and how we spend half our lives rebelling against our mothers and the next half rebelling against our daughters.

My mother wasn't controlling at all. She was a stabilizing force who grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania. Now it's the big circle game. Taking care of her is a great blessing for me. I'll tuck her into bed, kiss her on the cheek, wipe up the mess on her blouse from whatever she spilled.

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

An ordinary life used to look something like this: born into a growing family, you help rear your siblings, have the first of your own half-dozen or even dozen children soon after you're grown, and die before your youngest has left home.

If your parents didn't have any children, there's a good chance that you won't have any.

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.

Although my parents have never been the kind to hint around about grandchildren, I can think of no better tribute to them than giving them some.... I can't help thinking that the cycle is not complete until I can introduce them to a child of their child. And I can think of no better comfort when they are gone than to know that something of them lives on, not only in me but in my children.