Quote

Parents can make us distrust ourselves. To them, we seem always to be works-in-progress.

Frank Pittman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Frank Pittman
Age: 77 †
Born: 1935
Born: January 1
Died: 2012
Died: November 24
Psychiatrist
Psychotherapist
the United States of America
Works
Parents
Seem
Progress
Parent
Seems
Make
Always
Distrust

More quotes by Frank Pittman

Image
No one, however powerful and successful, can function as an adult if his parents are not satisfied with him.
Frank Pittman
Image
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
Image
. . . in the end, there is nothing a man can do that a woman can't, except be a father.
Frank Pittman
Image
Fidelity is the single most important element in solidly enduring marriages.
Frank Pittman
Image
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
Image
Parents have to get over the idea that their children belong just to them children are a family affair.
Frank Pittman
Image
Love is not something people feel, but something people try to express no matter how they feel.
Frank Pittman
Image
The end product of child raising is not the child but the parent.
Frank Pittman
Image
Fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man.
Frank Pittman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Frank Pittman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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