Famous quotes containing the words mental health, mental, health and/or crisis:
“A major misunderstanding of child rearing has been the idea that meeting a child’s needs is an end in itself, for the purpose of the child’s mental health. Mothers have not understood that this is but one step in social development, the goal of which is to help a child begin to consider others. As a result, they often have not considered their children but have instead allowed their children’s reality to take precedence, out of a fear of damaging them emotionally.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“Doubtless, we are as slow to conceive of Paradise as of Heaven, of a perfect natural as of a perfect spiritual world. We see how past ages have loitered and erred. “Is perhaps our generation free from irrationality and error? Have we perhaps reached now the summit of human wisdom, and need no more to look out for mental or physical improvement?” Undoubtedly, we are never so visionary as to be prepared for what the next hour may bring forth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I would hope that parents and grown children could be friends. When a friend confides in you that she’s going to do something that you think is most inappropriate, foolhardy or even dangerous, wouldn’t you as a friend say so—in a calm, supportive way? Yet I have to be so careful what I say to my children. I have to walk on eggs to be sure I’m not hurting their feelings or interfering with their lives.”
—Anonymous Parent of Adult Children. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 5 (1978)
“... what’s been building since the 1980’s is a new kind of social Darwinism that blames poverty and crime and the crisis of our youth on a breakdown of the family. That’s what will last after this flurry on family values.”
—Stephanie Coontz (b. 1944)