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The end product of child raising is not the child but the parent.

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
Children
Fathering
Raising
Product
Products
Parent
Child
Ends

More quotes by 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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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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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.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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When the masculine mystique is pulling boys and men out into the world to growl manly noises at one another, the only power with astronger pull on the male psyche is maternally induced guilt. The guilt is quite necessary for our moral development, but it is often uncomfortable.
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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Happy people learn that happiness, like sweat, is a by-product of activity.
Frank Pittman
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Every boy was supposed to come into the world equipped with a father whose prime function was to be our father and show us how tobe men. He can escape us, but we can never escape him. Present or absent, dead or alive, real or imagined, our father is the main man in our masculinity.
Frank Pittman
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To insult a friend implies that you respect his masculinity enough to know he can take it without acting like a crybaby. The swapping of insults, like the fighting between brothers, becomes the seal of the male bonding.
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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Love is not something people feel, but something people try to express no matter how they feel.
Frank Pittman
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Parents have subtle ways of humbling you, of reminding you of your origins, perhaps by showing up at the moment of your greatest glory and reminding you where you came from and demonstrating that you still have some of it between your toes.
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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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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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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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