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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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Frank Pittman
Age: 77 †
Born: 1935
Born: January 1
Died: 2012
Died: November 24
Psychiatrist
Psychotherapist
the United States of America
Parent
Generation
Age
Accept
Lasts
Possibility
Last
Generations
Values
Accepting
Faith
Parents
Adapt
Jobs
Question
Explore
System
Possibilities

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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.
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Happy people learn that happiness, like sweat, is a by-product of activity.
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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.
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Fathering is the most masculine thing a man can do.
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When it comes to little girls, God the father has nothing on father, the god. It's an awesome responsibility.
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. . . in the end, there is nothing a man can do that a woman can't, except be a father.
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Love is not something people feel, but something people try to express no matter how they feel.
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Fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man.
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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.
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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.
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Fidelity is the single most important element in solidly enduring marriages.
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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?
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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.
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Parents can make us distrust ourselves. To them, we seem always to be works-in-progress.
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Men who have been raised violently have every reason to believe it is appropriate for them to control others through violence they feel no compunction over being violent to women, children, and one another.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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