Having children is something we think we ought to do because our parents did it, but when it is over the children are just other members of the human race, rather disappointingly.
My parents were reluctant to let me start auditioning until I was at least a little bit emotionally stable - I'm still working on that! And so I started when I was fifteen, and it was the best thing that could have happened to me in terms of being ab...
A lot of parents today are terrified that something they say to their children might make them 'feel bad.' But, hey, if they've done something wrong, they should feel bad. Kids with a sense of responsibility, not entitlement, who know when to experie...
Although we have, in theory, abolished human slavery, recognized women's rights, and stopped child labor, we continue to enslave other species who, if we simply pay attention, show quite clearly that they experience parental love, pain, and the desir...
I have sometimes questioned the advice and direction I received from my parents and grandparents, but I never questioned the fact that they loved me. I learned that they were in a better position to know more about right and wrong than I did from my ...
I think every parent knows that, like, boys and girls are different. And we just don't take that into account in schools on those things like required reading lists. 'Cause that was my experience, say, with my son, who had to read 'Little House on th...
I lived for two years in an abandoned gas station with no running water and no electricity after my parents got divorced and my stepdad couldn't get a job. So I think a lot about families like mine who were middle class and struggled. So that experie...
I got the travel bug when I was quite young. My parents took me and my sisters out of school and we travelled all over Europe. It was an eye-opening experience and, although I love Norway, I also enjoy visiting new countries. I don't get homesick.
The sweetest thing we ever had was, like, animal crackers in the pantry. I think my parents sort of passively made sure that we didn't have a lot of junk food at our disposal, and I think that helped me and all my siblings growing up with how to appr...
I wanted to be a great white hunter, a prospector for gold, or a slave trader. But then, when I was eight, my parents sent me to a boarding school in South Africa. It was the equivalent of a British public school with cold showers, beatings and rotte...
By the grace of God, my parents were fantastic. We were a very normal family, and we have had a very middle-class Indian upbringing. We were never made to realise who we were or that my father and mother were huge stars - it was a very normal house, ...
The number of stressors has multiplied exponentially: traffic, money, success, work/life balance, the economy, the environment, parenting, family conflict, relationships, disease. As the nature of human life has become far more complicated, our ancie...
When I'm home, the heart and soul of our family is in the kitchen. Growing up, my parents both worked, so dinnertime was for family - the TV was off. I think it's important to grab that time and really make it special, even after a tough day.
When we lived in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, my sister and I did a local play. My whole family got involved. My mom did the makeup. My sister and I were being homeschooled, and my parents wanted us to be socialized. We had a lot of fun with the oth...
It's not an accident that both my sister and I are writers. Our parents created an accidental Petri dish. My family has great storytellers, and I grew up in a very funny, conversational house and didn't have television. This small family farm was a b...
My parents emigrated from Poland in 1924 with my brother, who was a few months old. They were from a simple family of Polish Jews. They were looking, I suppose, for a better economic life and were escaping from an anti-Semitic environment.
I don't think anybody in my family meant there to be any pressure for me to write. But our parents were incredibly verbal and wrote for a living. The house was full of books, and we all grew up steeped in language. I mean, our mother recited poetry a...
The piano has disappeared from working-class family life, which is a shame. It's associated with the middle classes now. Everyone in my family sang and played piano, but my parents were delighted and amazed when I became the first professional perfor...
It's one of the worst-kept secrets of family life that all parents have a preferred son or daughter, and the rules for acknowledging it are the same everywhere: The favored kids recognize their status and keep quiet about it - the better to preserve ...
Before it was decided that I was going to be adopted, my mother was going to abort me. I was born with tangled legs; they never thought I'd be able to dance... without knowing it, as a child I overcame a lot thanks to really doting, loving parents an...
I haven't lived in Sweden since I was a teenager. We lived in southern Sweden, about two hours north of Copenhagen, where my family's home base has been since 1970. Our parents bought a schoolhouse in preparation for self-sufficient living. They want...
