Our dad hugged us and kissed us so much that some friends and relatives complained that he was going to turn us into sissies or homosexuals. But my dad didn't care. Let them raise their kids in a reserved and reticent way. He grew up in Israel, and his boys were going to be hugged and kissed by their father and know they were loved.
Interpretation
Parental affection is essential for emotional well-being, regardless of societal opinions.
In this quote, Ezekiel Emanuel reflects on the unconditional love and affection his father showed him and his siblings through physical displays of affection like hugging and kissing. Despite external criticism suggesting that such displays could harm their masculinity or sexuality, Emanuel's father remained steadfast in his belief that demonstrating love is paramount, emphasizing the importance of emotional connection and support within a family, particularly in creating a nurturing environment for children.
In practice
During a family gathering, I shared this quote to highlight the importance of showing love and affection to children.
There's nothing to be gained, and much to be lost, in trying to bend every child to match a one-size-fits-all notion of what it means to be a boy or girl of a specific age. Better to set a few parameters and then go with the flow. Call it 'jazz parenting.'
We had a big controversy in the United States when there was a limited number of dialysis machines. In Seattle, they appointed what they called a 'God committee' to choose who should get it, and that committee was eventually abandoned. Society ended up paying the whole bill for dialysis instead of having people make those decisions.
Patients who are being kept alive by technology and want to end their lives already have a recognized constitutional right to stop any and all medical interventions, from respirators to antibiotics. They do not need physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia.
As an academic, what do you have? You have the quality of your work and the integrity with which you do it.
The death of a 20-year-old woman is intuitively worse than that of a 2-month-old girl, even though the baby has had less life. The 20-year-old has a much more developed personality than the infant, and has drawn upon the investment of others to begin as-yet-unfulfilled projects.
Childhood vaccines are one of the great triumphs of modern medicine. Indeed, parents whose children are vaccinated no longer have to worry about their child's death or disability from whooping cough, polio, diphtheria, hepatitis, or a host of other infections.
To become a mother is to learn a whole language - to relearn it, perhaps, as it was the tongue to which we were born - and hence gain entrance to a forgotten world of comprehension.
They are not royal. They just happen to have me as their aunt.
I was ravenous for my child and took to gorging myself in the boneyard, hoping that she might possibly meet me halfway, or just beyond, one night, if only for an instant—step back into her own bare feet, onto the wet grass or fallen leaves or snowy ground of the living Enon, so that we could share just one last human word.
I didn't have a mother; I had a mama. I measure other women by the stature of my mama.
Our heroine knew that the mother would always leave the window open for her children to fly back by; so they stayed away for years and had a lovely time.
The children in this country are the one center and focus of all our thoughts. Every step of our advance is always considered in its effect on them-on the race. You see, we are MOTHERS, she repeated, as if in that she had said it all.
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