Parenting & Family Quote by Frank Howard Clark

Clark’s line works because it takes a Hallmark-sounding premise and tightens it into something closer to a moral accusation. “A baby is born” is deliberately plain, almost clinical; it’s the one phase of life we all agree is innocent and unarguable. By anchoring the claim there, he shuts down the usual cultural escape hatches: the idea that love is a reward for good behavior, a luxury, or something “earned” once you’ve proven yourself competent.

The turn comes in the dash. “And never outgrows it” borrows the language of childhood development - outgrowing diapers, fears, bedtime rituals - and flips it. We’re trained to treat needing love as immature, a weakness adults should manage privately. Clark’s subtext is that this shame is a social fiction: we’re still infants in the one way we most want to deny. The sentence quietly reframes adulthood not as independence from need, but as sophistication in how we disguise it.

Contextually, it reads like mid-century American self-help humanism: a writer trying to smuggle a hard truth into a soft package. That’s why the quote has survived. It’s easily printable, but it isn’t merely “nice.” It implies consequences. If love is a lifelong need, then emotional neglect isn’t just sad; it’s structural harm. And if no one outgrows it, then the toughest person in the room is still negotiating the same hunger, just with better camouflage.