60 Sweet & Funny Quotes About Having Sons

Are you all about being a #boymom? Or, do you just happen to have sons and feel like showing them some extra love? Well, gather ‘round all ye tiny stuntman spotters and wee human wranglers: these quotes about sons from literature, music, and celeb interviews will have you in your feels. They’re perfect to write in cards or special notes for your boys, or to use as Instagram captions for National Sons Day, if you want to post some celebratory pics. Because let’s be honest, who doesn’t want a reason to share more adorable photos of their little loves?

Mother & son quotes

When you’re pregnant and find out you’re having a boy, all the usual comments start rushing in. “Oh, boys love their moms more than anything.” “A mama’s boy, good for you!” Chances are, whether you had a girl or boy, you and your baby were bound to be obsessed with one another. In reality, what’s special about little boys is that they grow up to become men, and their moms have a special opportunity to make them an emotionally intelligent, kind-hearted generation of grownups. These quotes are all about that, and yes, the fact that you really are obsessed with each other.

• “The most important mark I will leave on this world is my son.” – Sarah Shahi
• “Raising boys has made me a more generous woman than I really am.” – Mary Kay Blakely
• “Heaven on Earth is looking at my little boy.” – Jenny McCarthy
• “Mothers are inscrutable beings to their sons, always.” – A.E. Coppard
• “The only man who has stolen my heart is my son.” – Sandra Bullock
• “There is an endearing tenderness in the love of a mother to a son that transcends all other affections of the heart.” – Washington Irving
• “Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don’t want them to become politicians in the process.” – John F. Kennedy
• “She loved a boy very, very much — even more than she loved herself.” – Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree
• “Sons are the anchors of a mother’s life.” – Sophocles
• “Men are what their mothers made them.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “A boy’s best friend is his mother.” – Joseph Stefano
• “A mother's love doesn't make her son more dependent and timid; it actually makes him stronger and more independent.” – Cheri Fuller
• “To be a mother of a son is one of the most important things you can do to change the world. Raise them to respect women, raise them to stand up for others, raise them to be kind.” – Shannon L. Adler
• “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.” – Oscar Wilde
• “Boys: Less drama than girls but harder to keep alive.” – Unknown
• “The best love in the world is the love of a man. The love of a man who came from your womb, the love of your son! I don’t have a daughter, but maybe the love of a daughter is the best, too. I am first and foremost me, but right after that, I am a mother. The best thing that I can ever be, is me. But the best gift that I will ever have, is being a mother.” – C. JoyBell C.
• “So there’s this boy. He kind of stole my heart. He calls me ‘Mom.’” – Unknown
• “A man ain’t nothing but a man. But a son? Well now, that’s somebody.” – Toni Morrison
• “I have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind.” – Maya Angelou
• “It doesn’t matter how old a son is. Even when he is big and strong, he is always a small boy for his mother.” – Unknown
• “To wake up to the sound of my son saying, ‘Mama, mama!’ It’s the best sound ever.” – Miranda Kerr
• “Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.” – George Eliot
• “Sometimes a mother wonders if her son could have a better mother, but she knows for sure that she knows that there doesn’t exist a better son.” – Unknown
• “More than mother and son, they were accomplices in solitude.” – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• “Happy is the son whose faith in his mother remains unchallenged.” – Louisa May Alcott

Father & son quotes

As for dads and their boys, well, there was never a rowdier bunch. All the after-dinner play sessions, giggle fits, and playing catch in the yard should be celebrated. Not only are you making your little guy’s childhood magic, but you’re showing him just how to be a loving dad himself one day.

• “Every son quotes his father, in words and in deeds.” – Terri Guillemets
• “My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.” – Clarence Budington Kelland
• “Fathers should know that sons follow their example, not advice.” – Charles F. Kettering
• “Forget Batman: When I really thought about what I wanted to be when I grew up, I wanted to be my dad.” – Paul Asay
• “When you teach your son, you teach your son’s son.” – The Talmud
• “Son, you will outgrow my lap, but never my heart.” – Unknown
• “He promised us that everything would be OK. I was a child, but I knew that everything would not be OK. That did not make my father a liar. It made him my father.” – Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
• “When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.” – Yiddish Proverb
• “I am a family man, and my most important role is a father to my son.” – Ed Skirein
• “A son needs his father at every situation he faces in present, and a father needs his son at every situation he faces for his son in past.” – Nishan Panwar
• “It's not flesh and blood, but the heart that makes us father and son.” – Johann Schiller
• “By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.” – Charles Wadsworth
• “He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God, God never spoke.” – Cormac McCarthy, The Road
• “A father is a man who expects his son to be as good a man as he meant to be.” – Frank A. Clark
• “I hope I can be as good of a father to my son as my dad was to me." – Calvin Johnson
• “Do I want to be a hero to my son? No. I would like to be a very real human being. That’s hard enough.” – Robert Downey Jr.
• “Until you have a son of your own, you will never know what that means. You will never know the joy beyond joy, the love beyond feeling that resonates in the heart of a father as he looks upon his son.” – Kent Nerburn

Quotes about raising a son

Here’s the thing about having boys in the house: they thrive in messiness. So, there are plenty of quotes about sons that acknowledge the hilarity of trying to keep your house tidy with a few little dirt magnets running around inside it. On the other hand, some are more sentimental, honoring all the bittersweet moments of watching a newborn baby grow up into whoever they want to be.

• “You don’t raise heroes, you raise sons, and if you treat them like sons, they’ll turn out to be heroes, even if it’s just in your eyes.” – Walter M. Schirra, Jr.
• “The biggest adjustment is I just didn't know there was that much room in a house for that much joy.” – Hoda Kotb
• “Son, you remind me how so much depends on days made of now.” – Alison McGhee
• “If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, and — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!” – Rudyard Kipling, If
• “Little boys can test your patience, run you ragged, and make you want to pull your hair out. But they will also melt your heart with just one look, and make you wonder how you ever existed before them.” – Katie Bingham Smith
• “As the mother of a son, I do not accept that alienation from me is necessary for his discovery of himself. As a woman, I will not cooperate in demeaning womanly things so that he can be proud to be a man. I like to think the women in my son’s future are counting on me.” – Letty Cottin Pogrebin
• “You are loved for the boy you are, the man you will become, and the precious son you will always be.” – Unknown
• “If you would have your son to walk honorably through the world, you must not attempt to clear the stones from his path but teach him to walk firmly over them — not insist upon leading him by the hand but let him learn to go alone.” – Anne Bronte
• “My friend asked me what it was like to live in a house full of boys, so I peed on her bathroom floor, ate everything in her fridge, told her 800 stories about Minecraft, farted 20 times, and when she was ready to end me, I gave her a hug and told her she was pretty.” – Unknown
• “The years will rush by, and one day you will be watching your son as a man, and feeling incredibly proud that he is caring, safe, making a contribution, and hopefully going far beyond you in the scope of his life.” – Steve Biddulph
• “Handprints on the cupboards and shoes in the hall. Toilet seat’s up and there’s mud on the wall. The shelves in the kitchen are continually bare. There’s toys on the couch, and jeans on the chair. Wrestling and mud and cars and noise; I’m sure you guessed, I’m the parent of boys.” – Unknown
• “Let your boys test their wings. They may not be eagles, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t soar free.” – C.J. Milbrandt
• “My wild, wild son, run free. Ooh, you’ll know it when you’re where you’re supposed to be.” – Armin van Buuren & Sam Martin
• “Yet now in my arms I was holding a helpless baby boy who would grow into a man… I cannot imagine that soft little face one day having whiskers.” – Rhonda Stoppe
• “Here’s what I’ve learned about raising boys — if you keep ‘em busy, they’re fine. If you let ‘em get bored, they’ll dismantle your house, board by board.” — Kenny Rogers
• “Though our new son is barely a part of our present, we look at his squirming, warm bundle of future potential and say to ourselves, ‘Hello, little man.’ Little do we know the adventure we are beginning!” – Dr. Gregory L. Jantz
• “One of the greatest gifts you can give your teenage boy is the gift of letting him know you get it. You’ve been there.” – Sebastian R. Jones
• “Little boys bring you just to the brink of insanity before gently easing you off the ledge with a sweet kiss and laughter from a perfectly timed fart.” – Unknown

Whether you need the perfect quote to use as an Instagram caption, or something sweet to write in a card to your boy, these quotes about sons ought to do the trick.

This article was originally published on March 4, 2022