50+ of the Best Parenting is Hard Quotes
Enjoy the camaraderie as we share some of the best parenting is hard quotes.
Raising kids is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do. No one can deny that. It’s a continuous, lifetime job that requires a lot of work, love, and patience.
Amidst the chaos and never-ending messes, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and alone. But you’re not alone! Take encouragement in these facts:
- Children are the greatest gift in our lives.
- We will have bad days. At the end of the day, we are trying our best.
- There is no such thing as a perfect parent.
- The love of a parent is the greatest love of all.
- Children teach us the meaning of unconditional love.
- Every day we learn to put our children’s needs above our own needs.
These parenting quotes will remind you that you’re not the only one who feels overwhelmed from time to time. So read on, relax, and know you’re doing a fantastic job!
Parenting is Hard Quotes
Parenting is one of the most challenging, yet rewarding, experiences a person can have. It requires a lot of patience, love, and hard work.
Here are some quotes about parenting that highlight the challenges and rewards of this important job:
“Parenting has nothing to do with perfection. Perfection isn’t even the goal. Not for us, not for our children. We are learning together to live well in an imperfect world. We love each other despite our imperfections. And we grow ourselves as much as our own children grow. Try not to beat yourself up over asking yourself if you did everything right. The most important thing is what you learn and how well you love your child. Then grow from your answer. That is perfect parenting.”
L.R. Knost
“Some think that love is all flowers and good times, but I think that love is more than just that. Love is the bad, as well as the better, not lived alone, but a journey together. Something that only the closest can share, with communication, respect.”
Maya Angelou
“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”
James Baldwin
“Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.”
Anne Frank
“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
Frederick Douglass
“There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other wings.”
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
“At the end of the day, the most overwhelming key to a child’s success if the positive involvement of parents.”
Jane D. Hull
“I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.”
Sigmund Freud
“A child who is allowed to be disrespectful to his parents, will not have true respect for anyone.”
Billy Graham
“The thing about parenting rules is there aren’t any. That’s what makes it so difficult.”
Ewan McGregor
“Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.”
Garrison Keillor
“Your children need your presence more than your presents.”
Jesse Jackson
“Don’t take what your children do too personally.”
Robert Fulghum
“Don’t keep score cards on your children – a short memory is useful.”
Robert Fulghum
Best Parenting Quotes
“Dirt and mess are a breeding ground for well-being.”
Robert Fulghum
“You will never really know what kind of parent you were or if you did it right or wrong. Never. And you will worry about this and them as long as you live. But when your children have children and you watch them do what they do, you will have part of an answer.” (I think I love this one most of all❤)
Robert Fulghum
“Most of us communicate the same way we grew up. That communication style becomes our usual way of dealing with issues, our blueprint for communication. It’s what we know and pass on to our children. We either become how we were raised, or we make a conscious effort to change it.“
Kristen Crockett
“Becoming a parent is about guiding the next generation and forgiving the last.”
Peter Krause
“Don’t try to be perfect. Use mistakes as an opportunity to grow tolerance and to teach.”
Teri Hatcher
“Remember you are not managing an inconvenience. You are raising a human being.”
Kittie Franz
“You will never look back on life and think, “I spent too much time with my kids.”
Kimberly McLeod
“In raising my children, I have lost my mind but found my soul.”
Lisa T. Shepherd
“The kids who need the most love will always ask for it in the most unloving ways.”
Russel Barkley
“Play is the language of childhood. Speaking our children’s language may sound like nonsense to us, but it sounds like love to them.”
L.R. Knost
“Your child isn’t giving you a hard time. Your child is experiencing a hard time. This is when you must find strength and patience to persevere.”
Unknown
“If you want to teach your children to do things in the later years of their life, you have to let them go through hard times with falling apart yourself. You can’t truly master something hard until you have experienced it.”
Unknown
“Parenting is the easiest thing to have opinions about but the hardest thing to do.”
Matt Walsh
Inspirational Quotes
“The most wonderful inheritance you can give your child is a few minutes of your time each day.”
O. A. Battista
“Behind every child who believes in himself is a parent who believed first.”
Matthew Jacobson
“Children harbor doubts and sorrows that could be eased by a loving hug from a parent.”
Richelle E. Goodrich
“My father didn’t tell me how to live. He lived, and let me watch him do it.”
Clarence Budinton Kelland
“Every day of our lives, we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.”
Charles R Swindoll
“There are places in your heart you didn’t even know existed until you love a child.”
Anne Lamott
“We never truly know the love of our parents until we become parents ourselves.”
Henry Ward Beecher
“Speak to your children in the most positive, uplifting, and encouraging way. What they believe about themselves is what they will become.”
Brooke Hampton
“Children don’t stay with you if you do it right. The better you are, the more you won’t be needed in the long run.”
Barbara Kingsolver
Motherhood Quotes
There’s something special about motherhood quotes. They can sum up all of the emotions and trials that come along with being a mom in just a few short words.
And they often come from some of the most famous and respected women in the world. Here are just a few of our favorite motherhood quotes:
“Motherhood has taught me the meaning of living in the moment and being at peace. Children don’t think about yesterday, and they don’t think about tomorrow. They just exist in the moment.”
Jesalyn Gilsig
“As a mother, my job is to care for the possible and trust God with the impossible.”
Ruth Bell Graham
“I owe all that I am or hope to be to my mother.”
Abraham Lincoln
“A mother understands what a child does not say.”
Jewish Proverb
“When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.”
Sophia Loren
Fatherhood Quotes
Fatherhood is one of the most important and rewarding roles you will ever play in your lifetime. As a father, you have the opportunity to shape the lives of your children.
To help you celebrate this special role, here are some quotes about fatherhood:
“You don’t raise heroes, you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they’ll turn out to be heroes, even if it’s just in your own eyes.”
Walter M. Schirra, Sr.
“One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.”
George Herbert
“The best way of training the young is to train yourself at the same time; not to admonish them, but to be seen never doing that of which you would admonish them.”
Plato
“The nature of impending fatherhood is that you are doing something that you’re unqualified to do, and then you become qualified while doing it.”
John Green
“A boy needs a father to show him how to be in the world. He needs to be given swagger, taught how to read a map so that he can recognize the roads that lead to life and the paths that lead to death, how to know what love requires, and where to find steel in the heart when life makes demands on us that are greater than we think we can endure.”
Ian Morgan Cron
Quotes About Discipline
“We change our behavior when staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. Consequences give us pain that motivates us to change.”
Henry Cloud
“If we don’t shape our kids, they will be shaped by outside forces that don’t care what shape our kids are in.”
Dr. Louise Hart
“Nothing can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitive child.”
Frank A. Clark
“If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.”
C.G. Jung
“I think of discipline as the continual everyday process of helping a child learn self-discipline.”
Fred Rogers
“For children, mastery requires difficulty. This means they must be allowed to struggle. If parents inappropriately step in to “help” out of impatience, they undermine essential lessons. The child is unlikely to discover the importance of determination and learning to stick to something.”
Nathaniel Branden
“Parents who discipline their children by discussing the consequences of their actions produce children with better moral development than children whose parents use authoritarian methods and punishment.”
Simon Baron-Cohen
“The child who hasn’t been disciplined with love while he is young will be disciplined, generally without love, when he enters the adult world.”
Zig Ziglar
“Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.“
Maria Montessori
Unconditional Love Quotes
“My father gave me the gift someone could give another person. He believed in me.”
Jim Valvano
“Children need your love, especially when they don’t deserve it.”
Harold Hulburt
“Your kids require you to love them for who they are, not to spend your whole time trying to correct them.”
Bill Ayers
“By loving your child for more than their abilities, we show them that they are much more than the sum of their accomplishments.”
Eileen Kennedy-Moore
“A child seldom needs a “good talking to” as a “good listening to.”
Robert Brault
“Encourage and support your kids because children can live up to what you believe of them.”
Lady Bird Johnson
“As your kids grow up, they may forget what you said. But they won’t forget how you made them feel.“
Kevin Heath
Funny Parenting Quotes
Being a parent is one of the most challenging and rewarding roles you can undertake in life. It comes with its share of ups and downs.
But the laughter and love that you experience along the way make it all worth it. To help you get through the tough times (and to remind you of the good ones), here are some funny parenting quotes:
“Having children is like living in a frat house: nobody sleeps, everything is broken, and there’s a lot of throwing up.”
Ray Romano
“Say “no” only when it really matters. Wear a bright red shirt with bright orange shorts. Sure! Put water in the toy tea set. Okay! Sleep with your head at the foot of the bed? Fine.”
Gretchen Rubin
“A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.”
Mary Karr
“Having a child is like getting a tattoo on your face. You better be committed.”
Elizabeth Gilbert
“When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.”
Nora Ephron
“Why don’t kids understand their nap is not for them but for us?”
Alyson Hannigan
“It just occurred to me that most of my diet is made up of foods my kid didn’t finish.”
Carrie Underwood
“Mother Nature is providential. She gives us twelve years to develop a love for our children before turning them into teenagers.”
William Galvin
“Raising kids is part joy and part guerrilla warfare.”
Ed Asner
“90% of parenting is just thinking about when you can lie down again.”
Unknown
“The quickest way for a parent to get a child’s attention is to sit down and look comfortable.”
Lane Olinghouse
“Parenthood is the scariest hood you will ever go through.“
Unknown
“Parenting hack; there are no hacks. Everything is hard. These kids don’t listen. This is your life now.”
Unknown
“You know your life has changed when going to the grocery store alone is a vacation.”
Unknown
“Being a parent is like folding a fitted sheet; no one really knows how.”
Unknown
“I love cleaning up messes I didn’t make. So I became a Mom.”
Unknown
“Hell hath no fury like a toddler whose sandwich has been cut into squares when they wanted triangles.”
Unknown
“And then I thought to myself, “what’s the point of cleaning if my family is going to keep living here?
Unknown
“A two-year old is kind of like having a blender, but you don’t have a top for it.”
Jerry Seinfeld
“Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the sidewalk before it stops snowing.”
Phyllis Diller
More Funny Quotes
“Do not compare your dog’s problems to parenting. Your dog cannot say your name 3,427 times a day.”
Unknown
“When I tell my kids, I’ll do something in a minute, what I am really saying is, ‘Please forget.'”
SarcasticMommy4
“Before I became a parent, I didn’t know I could ruin someone’s day by asking them to put pants on.”
Unknown
“Having one child makes you a parent. Having two kids makes you a referee.”
David Frost
“Buying your kid a goldfish is a great way to teach them about responsibility for 24-36 hours.”
Conan O’Brien
“The sole purpose of a child’s middle name is so he can tell when he’s really in trouble.“
Dennis Fakes
“Be nice to your kids. They choose your nursing home.”
Steven Wright
“I’m going to write a parenting book called “Fine. Whatever. Go ahead.”
Unknown
“The hardest part of parenting is being fake mad when they do something that is actually hilarious.“
Unknown
“Being a mom means developing ‘The Look‘”
Unknown
“I gave you life; you give me all the Reese’s.” Every mom, every Halloween.”
Unknown
“I feel very blessed to have two wonderful, healthy children who keep me thoroughly grounded, sane, and throw up on my shoes just before I go to an awards show just so I know to keep it real.”
Reese Witherspoon
“Usually, the triumph of my day is, you know, everybody making it to the potty.”
Julia Roberts
“I use a nice, safe playpen when my kids become wild and unruly. When they’re finished, I climb out.”
Erma Bombeck
“Silence is golden…unless you have kids, then silence is just suspicious.”
Unknown
“Waking your kids up for school the first day after a break is almost as much fun as birthing them was.”
Jenny McCarthy
“Once you sign on to be a Mother, 24/7 is the only shift they offer.”
Jodi Picoult
“A baby changes your dinner party conversations from politics to poop.”
Maurice Johnston
“My kids will walk right past their father sitting on the couch and come bang on the bathroom door for me to get them a snack.”
Unknown
“Before I married, I had six theories about bringing up children; now, I have six children and no theories.”
John Wilmot
Final Thoughts
The parenting journey is hard, but it’s also one of the most rewarding experiences you’ll ever have. I hope these quotes encourage you and remind you that you’re not alone on this journey.
And hopefully these quotes made you laugh with the humorous quotes at the end. Humor is part of what carries you through the hard days.
To read further, here is a great article called Why Parenting is hard and 5 Simple ways to Make it Easier.
Many blessings to you and yours!
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