Families

Famous quotes containing the word families:

    What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night!
    Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the
    tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by
    the watermelons?
    Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)

    Affection, indulgence, and humor alike are powerless against the instinct of children to rebel. It is essential to their minds and their wills as exercise is to their bodies. If they have no reasons, they will invent them, like nations bound on war. It is hard to imagine families limp enough always to be at peace. Wherever there is character there will be conflict. The best that children and parents can hope for is that the wounds of their conflict may not be too deep or too lasting.
    —New York State Division of Youth Newsletter (20th century)

    Nostalgia is one of the great enemies of clear thinking about the family. The disruption of families in the nineteenth century through death, separation, and other convulsions of an industrializing economy was much more catastrophic than we imagine.
    Joseph Featherstone (20th century)