Quote

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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Frank Pittman
Age: 77 †
Born: 1935
Born: January 1
Died: 2012
Died: November 24
Psychiatrist
Psychotherapist
the United States of America
Power
Guilt
Manly
Men
Necessary
Masculine
World
Development
Pulling
Boys
Pull
Growl
Quite
Male
Noises
Moral
Males
Induced
Often
Uncomfortable
Mystique
Another
Noise
Psyche

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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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The secret to having a good marriage is to understand that marriage must be total, it must be permanent, and it must be equal.
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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 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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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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Fathering is the most masculine thing a man can do.
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Fidelity is the single most important element in solidly enduring marriages.
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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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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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No one, however powerful and successful, can function as an adult if his parents are not satisfied with him.
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Parents can make us distrust ourselves. To them, we seem always to be works-in-progress.
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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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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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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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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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The end product of child raising is not the child but the parent.
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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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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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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.
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