Quote

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

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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
Even
Authority
Join
Declares
Men
Effects
Relax
Diploma
Accepting
Model
Masculinity
Company
Develop
Accepts
Father
Effect
Modeling
Also
Models
Manhood
Enough
Function
Masculine
Important
Skills
Requirements

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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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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 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.
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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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Parents can make us distrust ourselves. To them, we seem always to be works-in-progress.
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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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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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When it comes to little girls, God the father has nothing on father, the god. It's an awesome responsibility.
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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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The end product of child raising is not the child but the parent.
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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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Love is not something people feel, but something people try to express no matter how they feel.
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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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Happy people learn that happiness, like sweat, is a by-product of activity.
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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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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.
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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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