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A man doesn't have to have all the answers children will teach him how to parent them, and in the process will teach him everything he needs to know about life.

Frank Pittman

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Frank Pittman
Age: 77 †
Born: 1935
Born: January 1
Died: 2012
Died: November 24
Psychiatrist
Psychotherapist
the United States of America
Life
Parent
Teach
Process
Doesn
Everything
Children
Needs
Parenthood
Men
Answers

More quotes by Frank Pittman

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Our father has an even more important function than modeling manhood for us. He is also the authority to let us relax the requirements of the masculine model: if our father accepts us, then that declares us masculine enough to join the company of men. We, in effect, have our diploma in masculinity and can go on to develop other skills.
Frank Pittman
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Parents can make us distrust ourselves. To them, we seem always to be works-in-progress.
Frank Pittman
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If fathers who fear fathering and run away from it could only see how little fathering is enough. Mostly, the father just needs to be there.
Frank Pittman
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Infidelity flows from a belief that women have the power to make you feel like a man if you only find a woman that thinks you're perfect if you can only find a woman that you haven't hurt or disappointed yet.
Frank Pittman
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Fathering is the most masculine thing a man can do.
Frank Pittman
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Happy people learn that happiness, like sweat, is a by-product of activity.
Frank Pittman
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A boy is not free to find a partner of his own as long as he must be the partner to his mother.
Frank Pittman
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The guys who fear becoming fathers don't understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man. The end product of child-raising is not the child but the parent.
Frank Pittman
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Fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man.
Frank Pittman
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Each generation's job is to question what parents accept on faith, to explore possibilities, and adapt the last generation's system of values for a new age.
Frank Pittman
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No one, however powerful and successful, can function as an adult if his parents are not satisfied with him.
Frank Pittman
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For most people, a life lived alone, with passing strangers or passing lovers, is incoherent and ultimately unbearable. Someone must be there to know what we have done for those we love.
Frank Pittman
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We know how powerful our mother was when we were little, but is our wife that powerful to us now? Must we relive our great deed of escape from Mama with every other woman in our life?
Frank Pittman
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Fathering makes a man, whatever his standing in the eyes of the world, feel strong and good and important, just as he makes his child feel loved and valued.
Frank Pittman
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There are great advantages to seeing yourself as an accident created by amateur parents as they practiced. You then have been left in an imperfect state and the rest is up to you. Only the most pitifully inept child requires perfection from parents.
Frank Pittman
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Becoming Father the Nurturer rather than just Father the Provider enables a man to fully feel and express his humanity and his masculinity. Fathering is the most masculine thing a man can do.
Frank Pittman
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The end product of child raising is not the child but the parent.
Frank Pittman
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In considering the ledger equal, understand the greatest gift you have given your parents is the opportunity to raise you. The things a child gets from parents can't compare to the things a parent gets from raising a child. Only by experiencing this can you understand the degree to which children give meaning to parents' lives.
Frank Pittman
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Character, not passion keeps marriages together long enough to do their work of raising children into mature, responsible, productive citizens.
Frank Pittman
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When it comes to little girls, God the father has nothing on father, the god. It's an awesome responsibility.
Frank Pittman