Parenting Quotes by Anne Lamott

“This is parenting on steroids.”

— Anne Lamott

Expectations are resentments under construction.

— Anne Lamott

Write as if your parents are dead.

— Anne Lamott

Being a parent is absolutely exhausting and draining, along with all the joy and love.

— Anne Lamott

No matter what circumstances, it's hard to be a parent and maintain a sense of self and identity in the world.

— Anne Lamott

All parents are an embarrassment to their kids. Often, grandparents are the relief. Kids don't have to resist you.

— Anne Lamott

I was raised by my parents to believe that you had a moral obligation to try and help save the world.

— Anne Lamott

My father was a writer, so I grew up writing and reading and I was really encouraged by him.

— Anne Lamott

I don't remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don't even know exist until you love…

— Anne Lamott

I’m probably just as good a mother as the next repressed, obsessive-compulsive paranoiac.

— Anne Lamott

My mother was a not-too-devoted atheist. She went to Episcopal church on Christmas Eve every year, and that was mostly it.

— Anne Lamott

“And my father, who never once in his life would have used the word 'nigger,' would smile and give an almost imperceptible…

— Anne Lamott

Talking to the parents of older kids was helpful for me, since parents of kids the same age as yours won't admit…

— Anne Lamott

It's intrusive for grandparents to think they're in charge. It's manipulative. Also, it's self-destructive, since if the parents have to resist you,…

— Anne Lamott

If you asked me, parents were supposed to affect the life of their child in such a way that the child grows…

— Anne Lamott

Mother's Day celebrates a huge lie about the value of women: that mothers are superior beings, that they have done more with…

— Anne Lamott

I don't write about the intimate details of my cousins and aunts and uncles, and my mother and my father because it's…

— Anne Lamott

“I've spent my whole life trying to get over having had Nikki for a mother, and I have to say that from…

— Anne Lamott

Most marriages are a mess, and the children get caught between two bitter, antagonistic parents. My parents stayed married for 27 unhappy…

— Anne Lamott

There is something so tender about this to me, about being willing to have your makeup wash off, your eyes tear up,…

— Anne Lamott

So I was doing well academically, and I was a well-ranked tennis player and was the apple of my handsome father's eye-and…

— Anne Lamott

Having a child as a single mother was a crucible - maybe this is true for all parents. I got rid of…

— Anne Lamott

I didn't write about my mother much in the third year after she died. I was still trying to get my argument…

— Anne Lamott

All these people keep waxing sentimental about how fabulously well I am doing as a mother, how competent I am, but I…

— Anne Lamott

My mother might find a thin gold chain at the back of a drawer, wadded into an impossibly tight knot, and give…

— Anne Lamott

I am the woman I grew to be partly in spite of my mother, and partly because of the extraordinary love of…

— Anne Lamott

Now. Maybe you think it is arrogant or self centered, or ridiculous for me to believe that God bothered to wiggle a…

— Anne Lamott

My father was a writer, so I grew up writing and reading and I was really encouraged by him. I had some…

— Anne Lamott

“And what do you do in the face of this powerlessness? As a parent?" "You get to be obsessed and angry," Tom…

— Anne Lamott

“You can't find your true voice and peer behind the door and report honestly and clearly to us if your parents are…

— Anne Lamott

“. . . I bet I'm beginning to make some parents nervous - here I am, bragging of being a dropout, and…

— Anne Lamott

“My parents, and librarians along the way, taught me about the space between words; about the margins, where so many juicy moments…

— Anne Lamott

Mothers are supposed to listen and, afterward, to respond with some wisdom and perspective, but these things were not my mother's strong…

— Anne Lamott

Every woman's path is difficult, and many mothers were as equipped to raise children as wire monkey mothers. I say that without…

— Anne Lamott

Most of me was glad when my mother died. She was a handful, but not in a cute, festive way. More in…

— Anne Lamott

...one of the worst things about being a parent, for me, is the self-discovery, the being face to face with one's secret…

— Anne Lamott

One thing I know for sure about raising children is that every single day a kid needs discipline… But also every single…

— Anne Lamott

[Her] work taught me that you could be all the traditional feminine things -- a mother, a lover, a listener, a nurturer…

— Anne Lamott

“I was raised by my parents to believe that you had a moral obligation to try and save the world. You sent…

— Anne Lamott

Mothering has been the richest experience of my life, but I am still opposed to Mother's Day. It perpetuates the dangerous idea…

— Anne Lamott