Frank Pittman

The guys who fear becoming fathers dont 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.

The more things we can laugh about, the more alive we become: The more things we can laugh about together, the more connected we become.

Marriage, like a submarine, is only safe if you get all the way inside.

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.

No one, however powerful and successful, can function as an adult if his parents are not satisfied with him.

Common courtesy plays a big role in happy marriages. People who are permanently married are polite to one another. They dont want to hurt one anothers feelings and they dont try to make the other one feel humiliated. People who are married for life are extremely kind to one another.

Parents can make us distrust ourselves. To them, we seem always to be works-in-progress.

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.

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?

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.

Why do otherwise sane, competent, strong men, men who can wrestle bears or raid corporations, shrink away in horror at the thought of washing a dish or changing a diaper?

A boy is not free to find a partner of his own as long as he must be the partner to his mother.

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.

The guys who fear becoming fathers dont understand that fathering is not something perfect men do but something that perfects the men.

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.

At the heart of the matter of masculine excess is a great longing for the love and approval of a father, a man who can tell another man that his masculinity is splendid enough and he can now relax.

The end product of child raising is not the child but the parent.

Fathering is the most masculine thing a man can do.