Parental Self-Reflection Quotes

I don't think anybody feels like they're a good parent. Or if people think they're good parents, they ought to think again.

Every single second of every single day... I don't know if I feel like a bad mom, but at the end of the day I'm always plagued with, 'Did I do enough? Should I go in a different direction?'

If a parent keeps on saying that, 'my kid is not understanding me at all,' he or she needs to look inside and ask, what wrong am I doing that my child is unable to understand me?

Anybody who thinks they're the perfect parent is a fool.

I told my kids when they were little, 'Look, kids, your mother and I are screwing you up somehow. We don't understand how, or we wouldn't do it. But we're parents. So somehow we're damaging you, and I want you to know that early. So just ignore me when I go to that part of my parenting.'

We all parent the best we can. Being human, we're ambivalent. We want perfection for our babies, but we also need sleep.

You're always asking yourself, are you doing the best for your child? And other parents let you know if you're not, just not in a direct way. There's a sense of competition, which is ridiculous because you know deep down you're all suffering.

I always assumed I'd be a terribly patient mum but it turns out I'm not!

Being a developmental psychologist didn't make me any better at dealing with my own children, no. I muddled through, and, believe me, fretted and worried with the best of them.

The frustrations and joys of parenthood are just hard to understand until you have a kid... the constant fight you're having with yourself, like loving being with your kid but also being kind of bored and wanting to look at your iPhone - it's kind of an interesting thing that's hard to write about before you've experienced it.

I think we forget that part of parenthood means having to face and reject or face and embrace a kind of animal capacity for unkindness. And if, when, parents do embrace that, it reveals something very ugly to oneself.