Extended Family Quotes

“A husband, a wife and some kids is not a family. It's a terribly vulnerable survival unit.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“The only reason that some people aren’t ashamed of their parents and/or siblings is because they know that we know that they did not choose them.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“No one 'just adopts'.”
― Jody Cantrell Dyer, The Eye of Adoption: The True Story of My Turbulent Wait for a Baby

“Being divorced does not necessarily make one’s advice on marriage useless … or useful.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“In such a people world, filled with a real, immediate, and tangible sense of belongingness, did I spend the earliest years of my life. I was not only wanted, I was loved. I was cherished.
The adults in my world, no doubt, had their cares and their sorrows. But childhood, by its very nature, is a magic-filled world, egocentric, wonderfully carefree, and innocent. Mine was all these things and more.”
― Sindiwe Magona, To My Children's Children

“We really had a close netted structure to rely on for anything, you could have gone by anyone house and get something to eat. Whatever they were eating, they would’ve fed you, and all the mothers would’ve treated you just like they treated their own. What the gang also did, it provided some level of protection for a lot of the working adults in the neighborhood. They knew that their houses were safe, when they went out to work and didn’t have to worry about anyone breaking in to their homes. Scrooge, former leader of the Rebellion Raiders street gang that once boasted of having some ten thousand members”
― Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father

“We owe some of our family members respect, but do not owe any of them love.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“A husband, a wife and some kids is not a family. It’s a terribly vulnerable survival unit.
I met a man in Nigeria one time, an Ibo who had six hundred relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, the best possible news in any extended family.
They were going to take it to meet all its relatives, Ibos of all ages and sizes and shapes. It would even meet other babies, cousins not much older than it was. Everybody who was big enough and steady enough was going to get to hold it, cuddle it, gurgle to it, and say how pretty or how handsome it was.
Wouldn’t you have loved to be that baby?”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A Man Without a Country

“As a firstborn I also had a duty to succeed my father and look after my mother and siblings. Although school taught me that this was an outdated practice and that I would have been better off focusing on inheriting my father's assets for my own benefit, it was the strong emphasis on family values that ultimately prevailed. This was not because they had sounded good on paper or had been presented by a world-famous researcher, but because I saw they worked through my experience.”
― Salatiso Mdeni, The Homeschooling Father, How and Why I got started.: Traditional Schooling to Online Learning until Homeschooling

“from The Ninja and The Diplomat (coming in September 2015)--As an unintended but ineluctable consequence of the one child policy, he and his wife, like most of his generation and those succeeding, consisted of only children; hence his family included no aunts or uncles, no cousins, and no nieces or nephews. The Chinese family had lost an immeasurable dimension of richness.”
― Hock G. Tjoa

“Remember, a family cannot give more than it has, once it runs out of resources and empathy it is bound to let go all those who are not members but draws support of it.”
― Dr. Lucas D. Shallua

“To believe that it is fair to punish an entire race or gender for the actions of a few individuals from that race or gender, who benefited a small group connected to the corrupt and guilty members of that race or gender, one must be ready to accept this reasoning when it affects them personally. We are after all Africans who believe in the spirit of Ubuntu, reciprocity, universally interpreted as the golden rule. If you believe in penalizing every white person for the actions of a few white politicians and their associates who have benefited from those actions, then it is only fair for you, as a black person, to also accept responsibility for all the corruption within the ANC, given that the ANC supposedly represents the black majority.

Whether you benefited is immaterial, as is the case for government-sanctioned affirmative action policies. We know it was a minority of white people who supported apartheid because the 1992 referendum to end apartheid was supported by 68,73 percent of the white population that voted.”
― Salatiso Mdeni, The Homeschooling Father, How and Why I got started.: Traditional Schooling to Online Learning until Homeschooling

“Before the ubiquity of the traditional schooling system, it was the families that fulfilled this role. The nuclear family and single parents that stay in smaller households was the exception rather than the norm. Family members tended to stay together in one area. This meant in one homestead there were grandparents, parents, uncles and aunts and so on. This in turn created a strong supportive environment”
― Salatiso Mdeni, The Homeschooling Father, How and Why I got started.: Traditional Schooling to Online Learning until Homeschooling

“In fulfilling my duty to my father, I managed to keep my family coherent in an environment that is conducive for homeschooling. While I could have left my mother and sisters to fend for themselves in the Eastern Cape, it seemed more logical to take them with me, and work towards a house to accommodate everyone. The vulnerability of the female headed household, especially in rural South Africa is a well-documented phenomenon, leaving them could have sealed their fate.”
― Salatiso Mdeni, The Homeschooling Father, How and Why I got started.: Traditional Schooling to Online Learning until Homeschooling

“Rural Free Delivery (RFD)
Home, upon that word drops the sunshine of beauty and the shadow of tender sorrows, the reflection of ten thousand voices and fond memories.
This is a mighty fine old world after all
if you make yourself think so. Look happy even if things are going against you— that will make others happy. Pretty soon all will be smiling and then there is no telling what can’t be done.

Coca-Cola Girl
Mother baked a fortune cake
pale yellow icing, lemon drops round rim, hidden within treasures,
a ring—you’ll be married,
a button—stay a bachelor,
a thimble—always a spinster,
and a penny—you’re rich.


Gee, but I am hungry. Wait a second, dear, until I pull my belt up another notch. There that’s better.
So, you see, Hon, I am straighter than a string around a bundle.

You ought to see my eye, it’s a peach. I am proud of it, looks like I’ve been kicked by a mule. You know, dear, that they can kick hard enough to knock all the soda out of a biscuit without breaking the crust

Hogging Catfish
This gives you a fighting chance. Noodle your right hand into their gills, hold on tight while you grunt him out of the water. This can be a real dogfight. Old river cat wants to go down deep,
make you bottom feed.
Like I said, boys, when you
tell a whopper, say it like you believe it.

Saturday Ritual
My Granddad was a cobbler.
We each owned two pairs of shoes, Sunday shoes and everyday shoes. When our Sunday shoes got worn they became our everyday shoes.
Main Street Saturday Night
We each were given a dime on Saturday
opening a universe of possibilities.
All the stores stayed open and people
flocked into town. Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds
set up a popcorn stand on Reinheimer’s
corner and soon after lighting a little stove, sounding like small firecrackers, popping began.

Dad, laughing
shooting the breeze with a group of farmers,
drinking Coca Cola, finding out if any sheds
needed to be built or barns repaired, discussing the price of next year’s seed, finding out
who’s really working, who’s just looking busy.
There is no object I wouldn’t give to relive my childhood growing up in Delavan— where everyone knew everyone—
and joy came with but a dime.

Market Day
Jim Pittsford’s grocery
smelled of bananas ripening
and the coffee he ground by hand,
wonderful smoked ham and bacon fresh sliced. He’d reward the child
who came to pick up the purchase,
with a large dill pickle
Biking home, skillfully balancing Jim Pittsford’s bacon, J B’s tomatoes and peaches, while sniffing a tantalizing spice rising from fresh warm rolls,
I nibbled my pickle reward.”
― James Lowell Hall

“Insult your Mother-in-Law - GO!
She was created to be the devils helpmate and companion. They are twin flames, burning together in travesty. Equally yoked and fastened together by hate, jealousy, malice, envy, spite, malicious and deceptive behavior. Her and her son.

Inspired by ILGB and the one and only Dr. Jekyl”
― Niedria D. Kenny