To maintain a joyful family requires much from both the parents and the children. Each member of the family has to become in a special way the servant of the others.

Parents need all the help they can get. The strongest as well as the most fragile family requires a vital network of social supports.

When you have a godly husband a godly wife children who respect their parents and who are loved by their parents who provide for those children their physical and spiritual and material needs lovingly you have the ideal unit.

Maybe there is no actual place called hell. Maybe hell is just having to listen to our grandparents breathe through their noses when they're eating sandwiches.

My parents were both very intellectually honest straightforward and for them faith meant that you were fully engaged.

I had very supportive parents that made the way for me even at a time when there were very few women - no women really maybe two or three women - and very few fewer than that African-American women heading in this direction so there were very few people to look up to. You just had to have faith.

Since I was an atheist for many years and came to believe in God through my studies in science it frustrated me to see students and parents who viewed faith and science as enemies.

Thank goodness I had a great family growing up a great foundation. But I will say my faith my parents my family all that stuff is very very important. And I'll say that until the day I die.

Everything I am I owe to my faith and secondly to parents who were old school.

I looked at some of the statues of Jesus they were just stones with no life. When they said that God is three I was puzzled even more but could not argue. I believed it simply because I had to have respect for the faith of my parents.

The parents have a right to say that no teacher paid by their money shall rob their children of faith in God and send them back to their homes skeptical or infidels or agnostics or atheists.

My parents shared not only an improbable love they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name Barack or blessed believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.

It was seldom that I attended any religious meetings as my parents had not much faith in and were never so unfortunate as to unite themselves with any of the religious sects.

My work ethic came from my parents and my fear of failure. I came from a small predominantly black school and I didn't want to let them down.

As might be supposed my parents were quite poor but we somehow never seemed to lack anything we needed and I never saw a trace of discontent or a failure in cheerfulness over their lot in life as indeed over anything.

I think some parents now look at a youngster failing as the final thing. It's a process and failure is part of the process. I would like it if the teacher and the parents would connect more. I think that used to be but we're losing a little bit of that right now.

Indecision and delays are the parents of failure.

My experience with both my parents is that grief has a lot of down sad things but I was also really emotionally raw in the first year after each of them passed. Flowers smelled more intensely my relationships were hotter and I was more willing to risk. I was going for it a lot more. I was 'unsober' and I wasn't playing by my rules.

I was an only child. I've known only children. From this experience I do believe that the children should outnumber the parents.

My parents had an experience of life that is as opposite to mine as you can imagine.

The bullied straight kid goes home to a shoulder to cry on and support and can talk freely about his experience at school and why he's being bullied. I couldn't go home and open up to my parents.

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither in my experience do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat.

Parents it seems have an almost Olympian persistence when it comes to suggesting more secure and lucrative lines of work for their children who have the notion that writing is an actual profession. I say this from experience.

Parents of recovered children and I've met hundreds all share the same experience of doubters and deniers telling us our child must have never even had autism or that the recovery was simply nature's course. We all know better and frankly we're too busy helping other parents to really care.