Selfishness is one of the most common human traits. It can be seen in people of all ages, races, and religions. And, yes, it can even be seen in parents. As a parent, it’s important to remember that you need to take care of yourself first and foremost. If you don’t have your own back, you won’t be able to take care of your children. Here are 119 selfish parents quotes to help motivate and inspire you!
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Selfish Parents Quotes
- “Kids are fat because of lack of parenting.” – Ben Shapiro
- “Put your child’s likes before your selfishness.” – Unknown
- “Don’t make your selfishness ruin your child’s life.” – Unknown
- “I’m worried about parents who aren’t parenting.” – Barbara Bush
- “We raise predators by treating children as prey.” – Stefan Molyneux
- “A good parent never uses their child for their happiness.” – Unknown
- “My parents loved us, but I wasn’t always sure they liked us.” – Tahereh Maf
- “Being a parent does not give you an excuse for bad manners.” – Rosalind Wiseman
- “Good parenting give headaches, but bad parenting gives heartaches.” – Shiv Khera
- “Being a selfish parent is the biggest crime you can do to your child.” – Unknown
- “An unpredictable parent is a fearsome god in the eyes of a child.” – Susan Forward
- “There are no illegitimate children – only illegitimate parents.” – Leon R. Yankwich
- “It has been my observation that parents kill more dreams than anybody.” – Spike Lee
- “Fear-based parenting is the surest way to create intimidated children.” – Tim Kimmel
- “Don’t try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.” – Russell Baker
- “Do your kids see your kindness, or are you always telling them NO?” – Brenda M. McGraw
- “In the minds of my parents, they are the victims; I am the abuser.” – Christina Enevoldsen
- “Here’s a shock: An adult who still hangs out in skate parks is a bad parent.” – Daniel Tosh
- “You shouldn’t do that. Not to your child. You should carry your own burdens.” – Cassandra Clare
- “Remember, you are not managing an inconvenience; You are raising a human being.” – Kittie Frantz
- “Did you have parents or just some people who thought they should own somebody?” – Catherine Lacey
- “Don’t you just love children? If they’re not disappointing you, they’re dead.” – Shawn Wickersheim
- “They are not sorry for harming you. So, don’t feel guilty for cutting them off.” – John Mark Green
- “If you want to live in your child’s memory, you must have to live in their lives today.” – Unknown
- “People tend to raise the child inside of them rather than the child in front of them.” – Joe Newman
- “Wounded parents often unintentionally inflict pain and suffering on their children …” – David W. Earle
- “My dad taught me everything I know. Unfortunately, he didn’t teach me everything he knows.” – Al Unser
- “Parents. Honestly. Sometimes they really do think the world revolves around them.” – Randa Abdel-Fattah
- “Parents wonder why the streams are bitter when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.” – John Locke
- “I built up so much hatred for my parents, like so much anger for the life they had given me.” – Tana Mongeau
- “If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much.” – Jackie Kennedy
- “Narcissist parents don’t care about their children’s feelings at all. Only their feelings matter.” -Kim Saeed
- “They should love you, just as you are. Parents should love their kids, right?” “You’d think so.” – N.R. Walker
- “It’s not the children who sacrifice for your betterment; it’s you to sacrifice for their betterment.” – Unknown
- “If mental abuse was a punishable crime, a lot of parents would be in jail serving a long term.” – Maddy Malhotra
- “In troubled families, abuse and neglect are permitted. It’s talking about them that is forbidden.” – Marcia Sirota
- “Being a parent is easy but being a good parent is tough as it requires a lot of dedication and goodwill.” – Unknown
- “A person can’t pick up their children and just squeeze them to which-a-way they want them to be.” – Carson McCullers
- “No child is born a delinquent. They only became that way if nobody loved them when they were kids.” – Jeannette Walls
- “Many children of toxic parents find it exceptionally difficult to identify who they are once they grow up.” – JR Thorpe
- “When a child does bad things, the parents are always going to love their child even if they do something bad.” – Selena
- “If we, as mothers, are not careful, we can begin to find our identity in our children and their behavior.” – Sue Detweiler
- “Your children vividly remember every unkind thing you ever did to them, plus a few you really didn’t.” – Mignon McLaughlin
- “Your children vividly remember every unkind thing you ever did to them, plus a few you really didn’t.” – Mignon McLaughlin
- “No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.” – Plato
- “You must let go of the responsibility for the painful events of your childhood and put it where it belongs.” – Susan Forward
- “No one, however powerful and successful, can function as an adult if his parents are not satisfied with him.” – Frank Pittman
- “Today’s troubled homes are made by parents who want to have children but don’t want their children to have parents.” – Agona Apell
- “Your kids require you most of all to love them for who they are, not to spend your whole time trying to correct them.” – Bill Ayers
- “If you teach hatred to your children, one day your child will have that hatred reflected back onto them and onto YOU.” – Suzy Kassem
- “When you grieve toxic, abusive parents, you don’t just grieve the abuse, you grieve everything you didn’t have.” – Lily Hope Lucario
- “Narcissist parents do not know their children; they aren’t interested in what they have to say unless it affects them.” – Tina Fuller
- “A narcissistic parent will provoke an independent child to anger in order to feel superior and prove the child’s flaws.” – Shannon Thomas
- “If we never have headaches through rebuking our children, we shall have plenty of heartaches when they grow up.” – Charles Haddon Spurgeon
- “If your parents ignored you, or if they are just not emotionally available, or if they yell a lot, that is a type of trauma.” – Tucker Max
- “Never substitute ‘presence’ with ‘presents’. Presents can spoil your child, but your presence will make them a true human being.” – Unknown
- “Anyone could father a child. But a good parent puts his child’s needs before his own. A parent should be selfless, not selfish.” – Penelope Ward
- “What’s so sad is when we’re younger, if you have a bad parent, that is normal to you, and that’s what you think of as healthy.” – Jennifer Lawrence
- “If parents wish to preserve childhood for their own children, they must conceive of parenting as an act of rebellion against culture.” – Neil Postman
- “Narcissist parents want total control. Take back your control. If possible, don’t accept any money, favor, items or anything from them.” – Tina Fuller
- “The hateful and stinging words of a narcissistic parent can linger in the mind of an adult child long after the adult has left home.” – Shannon Thomas
- “It is the selfish parents who are to blame. Pay attention, be involved in your children’s lives. They are your legacy, your only hope.” – Aaron B. Powell
- “The toxic parent sees the child as a threat to their own ego and having the child overshadow the parent is not an option in their mind.” – Shannon Thomas
- “A narcissist parent is easily frustrated by a healthy independent child that they can’t control through parental emotional manipulation.” – Shannon Thomas
- “Leave your pride, ego, and narcissism somewhere else. Reactions from those parts of you will reinforce your children’s most primitive fears.” – Henry Cloud
- “When you have children, there is no room for lies, no room for anything but the truth. Anything other than that is a bad example, I believe.” – Johnny Depp
- “I never had a speech from my father ‘this is what you must do or shouldn’t do’ but I just learned to be led by example. My father wasn’t perfect.” – Adam Sandler
- “To all you parents out there, don’t make your little girls, or little boys, so thirsty for love that they will want to drink water that will poison them.” – Lisa Bedrick
- “The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.” – Jim Morrison
- “Most children would rather preserve the fantasy of a loving connection with their fathers and mothers, at all costs, even if it costs them their self-esteem.” – Keith Ablow
- “In the narcissistic parent’s eyes, they do no wrong nor do they feel they should be held accountable for the bad and wrong things that they have done.” – Katherine Childress
- “Dysfunctional parents let their children know how burdened they have been by their children and how many sacrifices they had to make in order to raise them.” – Dr Marita Sirota
- “Instead of treating your child like how you were treated. Treat them with the same love and attention you wanted from your parents while growing up.” – Jonathan Anthony Burkett
- “My dad had limitations. That’s what my good-hearted mom always told us. He had limitations, but he meant no harm. It was kind of her to say, but he did do harm.” – Gillian Flynn
- “When you’re three or seven years old, it’s less frightening to think of yourself as an unlovable, disappointing screwup than to recognize the fact that you’re living with a monster.” – Keith Ablow
Selfish Mother Quotes
- “A narcissistic mother sees her children as an extension of herself- as a possession. She will baby her sons and turn her daughters into copycats of herself.” – Shahida Arabi
- “You know, the one thing that always struck me about my mother was her selfishness. And that sounds like a horrible thing to say, but it’s true.” – Meryl Streep
- “My mother was the most selfish person I’ve ever known. She didn’t do anything for me unless she could see how it would benefit her.” – Lorene Scafaria
- “My mother was always very interested in me as a person, which is not the same as interested in me as her daughter.” – Jane Fonda
- “A narcissistic mother will often try to control her children with guilt. If you don’t do what she wants, she’ll make you feel guilty about it.” – Shahida Arabi
- “My mother used to say that guilt is to mothers what rust is to iron.” – Erma Bombeck
- “My mother was a self-centered, narcissistic woman who didn’t care about anyone but herself.” – Lorena Scafaria
- “A lot of people think that being a good mother means sacrificing everything for your children. But it doesn’t. Good mothers know how to put themselves first.” – Lorene Scafaria
- “A good mother is not selfless. A good mother is a healthy, happy woman who loves her children and makes time for them, but also has a life of her own.” – Unkown
- “My mother always put herself first, and she always will. It’s just her nature.” – Unkown
- “My mother used to say that the only thing a good mother ever does is love her children. And she was right.” – Unkonwn
Selfish Father Quotes
- “The father who does not teach his son his duties is equally guilty with the son who neglects them.” – Confucius
- “My father used to say that it’s never too late to do anything you wanted to do. And he said, ‘You never know what you can accomplish until you try.’” – Michael Jordan
- “My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it.” – Abraham Lincoln
- “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” – Bible
- “A good father is one of the most unsung, unpraised, unnoticed, and yet one of the most valuable assets in our society.” – Billy Graham
- “A father is a man who expects his son to be as good a man as he meant to be.” – Frank A. Clark
- “It is much easier to become a father than to be one.” – Kent Nerburn
- “There are three stages of a man’s life: He believes in Santa Claus, he doesn’t believe in Santa Claus, he is Santa Claus.” – Bob Thaves
- “There’s something like a line of gold thread running through a man’s words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself.” – John Gregory Brown
- “To her the name of father was another name for love.” – Fanny Fern
- “When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.” – William Shakespeare
- “A father is always making his baby into a little woman. And when she is a woman he turns her back again.” – Enid Bagnold
- “It’s only when you grow up, and step back from him, or leave him for your own life, it’s only then that you can measure his greatness and fully appreciate it.” – Margaret Truman
Unhealthy Relationship Selfish Parents Quotes
- “The most toxic parents are those who idealize their children, and then turn around and criticize them for not being perfect.” – Michael J. Fox
- “The worst part about having toxic parents is that they never see how toxic they are.” – Unkown
- “You can’t choose your parents, but you can choose how you react to them.” – Unkown
- “Toxic parents need their children to behave in a certain way so they can feel good about themselves.” – Shahida Arabi
- “Toxic parents are the ones who put their own needs above their children’s, and don’t hesitate to use emotional manipulation to get what they want.” – Unkown
- “My parents were always telling me what to do, and I never felt like I could just be myself.” – Unkown
- “Toxic parents are the ones who make you feel like you’re never good enough, no matter what you do.” – Unkown
- “I spent my whole life trying to please my parents, and I never felt like I was good enough.” – Unkown
- “Toxic parents are the ones who gaslight their children into thinking that they’re crazy.” – Unkown
- “My parents would always tell me one thing, and then do the exact opposite.” – Unkown
- “Toxic parents are the ones who make you feel like you have to walk on eggshells all the time.” – Unkown
- “I grew up feeling like I had to tiptoe around my parents all the time, and it was exhausting.” – Unkown
- “Toxic parents are the ones who try to control every aspect of their children’s lives.” – Unkown
- “My parents were always telling me what to do, and I never felt like I had any autonomy.” – Unkown
- “Toxic parents are the ones who make you feel like you’re not allowed to have any opinions of your own.” – Unkown
- “I grew up feeling like my opinion didn’t matter, and that was really confusing for me.” – Unkown
- “Toxic parents are the ones who are never satisfied, no matter what you do.” – Unkown
- “I spent my whole life trying to please my parents, but it was never enough.” – Unkown
- “Toxic parents are the ones who constantly compare you to other people.” – Unkown
- “My parents would always compare me to my cousins or friends, and it made me feel really inadequate.” – Unkown
Final Thoughts
Whether your parents are toxic or not, remember that you always have a choice in how you react to them. You can’t control them, but you can control yourself. And at the end of the day, that’s all that really matters. Keep your head up, and don’t forget that you’re not alone in this. We all have our struggles, and we all have our stories.
You are not alone.
