Parenting Forward Quotes

“The most insidious aspect of systemic racism is its capability of shielding the dominant cultural group from self-awareness. This is how the founding fathers could own slaves and still draft a document declaring all men to be created equal. It’s how the majority of white Christian churches stood against Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement.”
― Cindy Wang Brandt, Parenting Forward: How to Raise Children with Justice, Mercy, and Kindness

“The children in more privileged societies also suffer silently. From the bullied gay teen in public school to the five-year-old whose appetite to consume is being groomed by the billion-dollar advertising industry, from young Tamir Rice, shot fatally for playing with a toy gun, to girls who are catcalled, raped, and disbelieved—the way we treat our children is a grim diagnosis of the state of our moral consciousness.”
― Cindy Wang Brandt, Parenting Forward: How to Raise Children with Justice, Mercy, and Kindness

“race-conscious conversations with their kids to help them develop their racial literacy. Organizations like Embrace Race19 and Teaching for Change20 offer resources to support parents.”
― Cindy Wang Brandt, Parenting Forward: How to Raise Children with Justice, Mercy, and Kindness

“This is how we build a better world: doing one tiny act of love at a time and moving on to the next small, right thing. Bit by bit, we can get the impossible job done by homing in on the small things with the small people.”
― Cindy Wang Brandt, Parenting Forward: How to Raise Children with Justice, Mercy, and Kindness

“Providing a set of values for a child to live into is markedly different in terms of power dynamics than demanding a child adhere to doctrine. The former compels, while the latter coerces.”
― Cindy Wang Brandt, Parenting Forward: How to Raise Children with Justice, Mercy, and Kindness

“As parents, equipping our children with a secure self-identity in a pluralist society has become one of the most important lessons to impart as they come of age.”
― Cindy Wang Brandt, Parenting Forward: How to Raise Children with Justice, Mercy, and Kindness

“He humbly insists that Malala is the bold and poised girl that she is today not because of what he did but what he did not do. “I did not clip her wings, and that’s all.” Perhaps parenting really is as simple as that.”
― Cindy Wang Brandt, Parenting Forward: How to Raise Children with Justice, Mercy, and Kindness

“The best parenting is done not in the direction of our children but through the hard work of deep healing within ourselves so that our children are met with a healthy and whole parent imparting patterns of lovingkindness instead of shame.”
― Cindy Wang Brandt, Parenting Forward: How to Raise Children with Justice, Mercy, and Kindness