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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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Frank Pittman
Age: 77 †
Born: 1935
Born: January 1
Died: 2012
Died: November 24
Psychiatrist
Psychotherapist
the United States of America
Away
Littles
Little
Fathering
Enough
Fathers
Needs
Mostly
Fear
Father
Running
More quotes by Frank Pittman
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
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
The end product of child raising is not the child but the parent.
Frank Pittman
The secret to having a good marriage is to understand that marriage must be total, it must be permanent, and it must be equal.
Frank Pittman
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
Character, not passion keeps marriages together long enough to do their work of raising children into mature, responsible, productive citizens.
Frank Pittman
Love is not something people feel, but something people try to express no matter how they feel.
Frank Pittman
Parents can make us distrust ourselves. To them, we seem always to be works-in-progress.
Frank Pittman
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
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
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
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
No one, however powerful and successful, can function as an adult if his parents are not satisfied with him.
Frank Pittman
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
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
When it comes to little girls, God the father has nothing on father, the god. It's an awesome responsibility.
Frank Pittman
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
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
Fathering is the most masculine thing a man can do.
Frank Pittman
. . . in the end, there is nothing a man can do that a woman can't, except be a father.
Frank Pittman
