Parental Priorities Quotes

I think my father couldn't wait to get home to his wife, but I don't know if he was so keen on us children.

I recently turned down a film that I didn't want my kids to see. Priorities shift. Sometimes I'm sad about that, but not enough to do anything about it.

Parents tend to value their lives more highly than people without kids, but they're different in lots of ways: They're richer. They're better educated. They're healthier.

I spent a lot of time in boarding school. This is something I will never do to my kids. I think if you're having kids, then you have to take care of them; otherwise, what's the point? There are many things that parents say are good for the kids, but the truth is they say that because it is good for the parents.

When you have kids, you start thinking about their future and you forget about yours.

I think daycare is great for people who have to work two jobs. My problem is with people who are dropping kids off at daycare because they want to go out and spend the day golfing or getting their nails done. You know what I mean? That's not why they invented daycare.

It's hard to have both parents involved in elective office at the same time.

It's hard enough to be in a marriage, and then have a kid, then kids, it changes everything. For me, I'd become more concerned with my children. Not that I ignored Britney, but my kids are always most important . . . I mean, we were having complications. I didn't give her an ultimatum, but I was trying to work stuff out with her, and she didn't even talk to me or anything and went behind my back and filed [for divorce]. [I was] completely blindsided.

When most artists walk offstage, they go to a lonely hotel room. I went home to my family. They were there before the show, during and after. It's been great. I never would have done it any other way. I wasn't gonna miss raising my kids. There was no way that was gonna happen.

When you hire a nanny, the question you ask yourself is, 'What's best for my precious child?' And do you really want someone who feels that your motive in life is to minimize the amount you spend on your child?

My mother, whose interest in chemistry was rather minimal, nevertheless went to graduate school in the subject and married my father, for whom it was as important as life itself.

I grew to resent the way my father treated his furniture like children, and his children like furniture.

The focus of our family life was homework and what was for dinner; getting to ballet rehearsal and getting my brother to soccer.

Some parents let their kids sleep at other people's houses, where they drink alcohol, watch TV for hours and God knows what else. But if you say you have to get all A's and practice the violin for two hours, then they consider that abusive. That upsets me.

What do you care more about? The kids or your hair?

Mummy always wanted the five children, and she knew she couldn't look after them all because she was this absolutely glorious woman who loved going to parties and going to the races, and she just didn't have time.

Maybe someday it will seem quaint that, during a time of plague, some of the parents of the 1990s wanted to deny their children protection so that they could safeguard their own self- image. Or maybe we'll just seem like a bunch of lunatics.

My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, 'You're tearing up the grass'; 'We're not raising grass,' Dad would reply. 'We're raising boys.'

You can have terrible things happen in your family. A husband and wife can be having a knock-down, drag-out fight and the minute one of the kids gets hurt, the fight is over and it's about the family.

There were only two other Chinese families in this town of 25,000, but to our parents, the determining factor was the quality of the public school system.

People expect you to change when you become a mother, and of course my priorities changed when I had Violet. She's number one in my life and the best thing that ever happened to me, but I still have fun. I am still myself, but that is made out to seem like I am rebelling against motherhood.

What's perfect for one mom might be the worst idea for another.

Now that I'm a mom, I'm way more laid back. If you come into my house, don't look for a coaster. Forget it. There is not a piece of furniture in my house now that is too precious.

Like anyone, I stress and get hard on myself from time to time, but it's minute compared to the pressure I used to put on myself to perform and succeed. To my kids' credit, they've probably helped me the most here: I'm more worried about what they're doing than what I'm doing!

Nobody cares that you're smart and nobody cares that your kids don't have bruises.