80 Selfish Parents Quotes About Not Putting Children First

Parenting is no easy task. It takes guts, grit, and the ability to put your child’s needs above your own. Selfish parents quotes harness the importance of care for children and how their needs trump all else. After all, you can’t just have a kid and let them raise themselves. Guidance, compassion, and patience are the currency of parenting and without them, you will be a very poor caretaker.

Selfish parents quotes aren’t just for selfish parents. They act as reminders to not be in your own head too much as a parent and instead, stay open to the needs of children. We’ve rounded up dozens for you to read and share to encourage generosity, love, and selflessness.

These Selfish Parents Quotes Capture the Essence of Toxic Parenting.

Good Advice in Selfish Parents Quotes

• “There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.”
• “Don’t let your happiness depend on something you may lose.”
• “Sometimes you don’t need to hear their excuses or what they have to say for themselves because their actions already spoke the truth.”
• “A narcissist parent is easily frustrated by a healthy independent child that they can’t control through parental emotional manipulation.”

Deep Selfish Parents Quotes

• “Glory, built on selfish principles, is shame and guilt.”
• “Sometimes parents are too possessive and do not want their children to be very independent and take decisions individually.”
• “If all the people in this world, in which we live, were as selfish as a few of the people in this world, in which we live, there would be no world in which to live.”
• “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.”

Straightforward Selfish Parents Quotes

• “Being a selfish parent is a sign of not having learned from experience.”
•  “Having kids doesn’t make parents. Raising them does.”
• “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.”
• “It has been my observation that parents kill more dreams than anybody.”

Selfish Parents Quotes That Ask You to Re-Evaluate

• “If you are too busy to enjoy quality time with your family, then you need to re-evaluate your priorities.”
• “As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.”
•  “If you can’t make sacrifices for your kids, you don’t deserve them. A true parent would give their life and their very last breath!”
• “Parents wonder why the streams are bitter when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.”

Selfish Parents Quotes About Lingering Resentment

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• “Divorce doesn’t scar children. Selfish parents with insecurities do.”
• “The hard thing is, you try to help them but still you’re the bad one.”
• “But who’s going to take care of you when you’re older? I’m not selfish I’m going to bring someone into this world just so they can take care of me.”
• “You must let go of the responsibility for the painful events of your childhood and put it where it belongs.”

Poignant Selfish Parents Quotes

• “What a difficult time for a child when they find out their parent used and manipulated them to hurt someone they love.”
• “Sometimes problems don’t require a solution to solve them; instead they require maturity to outgrow them.”
• “As a child, I never imagined that all of the real monsters in the world would be humans.”
• “When you grieve toxic, abusive parents, you don’t just grieve the abuse, you grieve everything you didn’t have.”

Potent Selfish Parents Quotes

• “Self-absorbed people only think about what makes them feel good at the moment. They don’t have any respect or regard for anyone else. Then they wonder why their relationships fail.”
• “It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings.”
•  “Stop making your child a victim of your anger.”
• “Your children vividly remember every unkind thing you ever did to them, plus a few you really didn’t.”

Selfish Parents Quotes About Toxic Parenting

• “The best security blanket a child can have is parents who respect each other.”
•  “Wise parents prepare their children to get along without them.”
•  “When you have a child, your ‘wants’ come last. It’s about their needs & wants first. If you can’t do that, you don’t deserve to be a parent.”
• “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.”

Selfish Parents Quotes About Dysfunctional Families

• “It hurts to have a child removed from you for no reason at all. But think about the pain of the child who is being used to hurt you. Now that’s painful.”
• “Respond to your children with love in their worst moments, their broken moments, their angry moments, and their selfish moments because it is in their most unlovable human moments that they most need to be feel loved.”
• “Nothing is weaker or smaller than the man who hurts women or children whether by his actions or by his words.”
• “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.”

Selfish Parents Quotes About Being Present

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• “Too much love never spoils children. Children become spoiled when we substitute presents for presence.”
•  “Denying a child the joy and memories of being with the other parent is an act of pure evil.”
•  “To be in your children’s memories tomorrow, you have to be in their lives today.”
• “When a child does bad things, the parents are always going to love their child even if they do something bad.”

Powerful Selfish Parents Quotes

• “Your children become who you are so be who you want them to be.”
•  “Anyone can have a child and call themselves ‘a parent.’ A real parent is someone who puts that child above their own selfish needs and wants.”
•  “As a parent, you should be more concerned with your child’s happiness than your petty insecurities and jealousies. Just a thought!”
• “If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much.”

RELATED: 99 Parents Quotes That Prove There Is No Greater Love

Astonishing Selfish Parents Quotes

• “Children shouldn’t have to sacrifice so that you can have the life you want. You make sacrifices so your children can have the life that they deserve.”
• “Being a parent shouldn’t be when it is convenient for you. It is a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year commitment.”
• “Your mother’s happiness is not your responsibility. It has never been.”
• “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.”

Selfish Parents Quotes About the Meaning of Parenthood

• “Real dads support their children without the law telling them they have to.”
• “Just remember when you are ignoring them, you are teaching them to live without you.”
• “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.”
• “No one, however powerful and successful, can function as an adult if his parents are not satisfied with him.”

Selfish Parents Quotes to Take to Heart

• “Being a parent does not give you an excuse for bad manners.”
• “Good parenting gives headaches, but bad parenting gives heartaches.”
• “If mental abuse was a punishable crime, a lot of parents would be in jail serving a long term.”
• “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.”

Selfish Parents Quotes About the Things Parents Pass On to Children

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• If you teach hatred to your children, one day your child will have that hatred reflected back onto them and onto you”
• “Wounded parents often unintentionally inflict pain and suffering on their children.”
• “We raise predators by treating children as prey.”
• “My dad taught me everything I know. Unfortunately, he didn’t teach me everything he knows.”

Even More Quotes to Consider

• “You shouldn’t do that. Not to your child. You should carry your own burdens.”
• “Here’s a shock: An adult who still hangs out in skate parks is a bad parent.”
• “If we never have headaches through rebuking our children, we shall have plenty of heartaches when they grow up.”
• “If you want to live in your child’s memory, you must have to live in their lives today.”

Wise Selfish Parenting Quotes

• “Did you have parents or just some people who thought they should own somebody?”
• “Don’t try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.”
• “A person can’t pick up their children and just squeeze them to which-a-way they want them to be.”
• “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.”

Selfish Parents Quotes About Molding Children

• “People tend to raise the child inside of them rather than the child in front of them.”
• “Your kids require you most of all to love them for who they are, not to spend your whole time trying to correct them.”
• “Narcissist parents do not know their children; they aren’t interested in what they have to say unless it affects them.”
• “If parents wish to preserve childhood for their own children, they must conceive of parenting as an act of rebellion against culture.”

Best Selfish Parents Quotes

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• “Your first obligation as a parent is to not bring chaos into your kids’ lives.”
• “Parents forgive their children least readily for the faults they themselves instilled in them.”
• “Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without himself.”
• “It’s not the children who sacrifice for your betterment; it’s you to sacrifice for their betterment.”

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More of Our Favorite Quotes

• “I want someday to be able to love with the same intensity and unselfishness that parents love their children with.”
• “Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”
• “If you love your children, why brainwash them into thinking the other parent doesn’t care?”
• “Fear-based parenting is the surest way to create intimidated children.”

Now you have some selfish parents quotes that will help you express to others how inappropriate parenting behavior can damage the well-being of a child. Being a parent is a huge commitment that forces us to put someone other than ourselves at the fore of our thoughts and care. Those who can’t manage to think of their little ones first should probably not have kids until they are in a place to do so.