I would argue that we have a generation of young people, particularly minorities, who are no longer putting up with the kinds of things their parents put up with. They're much more self-confident. It's no longer acceptable to make fun of people because of race or sex. But it has always been present in American society.
My parents have taught me the value of reading and self-love through books that have characters that look like me and talk like me.
Please spare us the self-pity about how tough it is to look for a job while living with your parents.
I was not a popular little girl. I played Robinson Crusoe in a small wooden fort that my parents built for me in the back yard. In the fort, I was neither ostracized nor ill at ease - I was self-reliant, brave, ingeniously surviving, if lost.
Self-sufficiency is vitally important to my self-respect. I never wanted to rely on my parents in that way, because I knew that if I got used to it, I'd be reliant all my life.
I dunno whether it was to do with my parents - we were working-class - but it was important to me to be self-sufficient.
Ours was a loving, nurturing household, but, at the same time, my parents' goal was to make all their children self-sufficient.
My particular historical vantage point is a product of my upbringing as that odd duck, a native Washingtonian whose parents were not in government. The first presidential transition of my sentient lifetime, Kennedy's, I remember vividly.
Strangely, you know, my parents, who left Poland separately and, you know, divorced, ended up marrying other people. But then they met again abroad, and they got together again.
My parents have left a legacy in our family of service to others.
I have my parents to thank for that, they raised me to be active and play all sports. They taught me the importance of staying healthy, being focused and setting goals in whatever I do.
Both of my parents sacrificed a lot. My dad, Tero, would drive me to training every single day. My mum, Teija, came to Seville to help me. She did everything for me. It was such a big place to go at 17. Even if you can speak English, it doesn't matter there. It was all Spanish. They don't do English.
We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet. In my view we have nothing to show for it. We haven't invested in our roads, our bridges, our waste-water systems, our sewer systems. We haven't even maintained the assets that our parents and grandparents built for us.
I say we have not even had the decency to maintain the assets that our parents and grandparents built for us - our roads, our bridges, our wastewater systems, our sewer systems; by the way, those weren't Bolsheviks, those weren't socialists that built those things for us - much less build the infrastructure we need for the 21st century.
We need sex education in schools, but we need it at home first. We need parents to learn the names of the teachers who are teaching their children. We need families to question day-care centers, to question other children and their own as to what goes on.
Before the child ever gets to school it will have received crucial, almost irrevocable sex education and this will have been taught by the parents, who are not aware of what they are doing.
My parents had broken through the shackles of dogma.
My parents' marriage was already shaky when I came along. They split up when I was five, and I didn't see Dad all that often after that - four or five times a year.
I've only twice in my life come across someone with both high IQ and high EQ naturally; and that was because their parents were super high EQ, and the parents just EQ'd the hell out of them. They're inevitably very successful because now you've got someone who's sharper than the average person and well-rounded, too.
My parents disagreed sharply with me over the decision to leave school.
