Quotes About Motherhood

Motherhood is about raising—and celebrating—the child you have, not the child you thought you would have. It's about understanding that he is exactly the person he is supposed to be. And that, if you're lucky, he just might be the teacher who turns you into the person you are supposed to be.

Oh, Mama," I said. "What if I don't live that long?" My mother didn't hesitate one second. "By hook or by crook, you will. Having children only increases your grip on the world. It's like reading a thriller. You can't put it down because you have to know how the story turns out.

It's not easy being a mother. We raise our children, given them wings to leave the nest, but we have no control where they will fly off too.

Maybe I should stand outside the Adam & Eve store holding a sign reading "Single Mom, Anything Helps" and a cup for change.

Adoptive Mom? I am a Mom. I need no other label or prefix.

I think there's a danger of a being typecast as the all-American mom forever.

I just yesterday returned from a trip where I photographed a woman with two children whom I photographed first when she was the age of the older of the two children.

I started writing when I had three kids under the age of 4. I used to write every ten minutes I got to sit in front of a computer. Now, when I have more time, I function the same way: if it's writing time, I write.

Bitter, cold, barren. These are words thrown at women without children. Like we're a Montana winter. Either we're to be pitied or we're to be blamed, depending on how much choice we had in the matter.

No mother should lose her child.

I miss you, Daddy. I wish you could have seen me as a mother. It would have made you smile.

I'm not ready for this," she says. "This," Florida says. She thinks: This is the subject that defines women. Having babies. Will you have them? Can you have them? Do you want to have them?

Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman's natural fitness for the career of mother: the alternatives are all too expensive.

Women are as brave as any man. They save their own without a second thought. But that's love isn't it? Loyalty. Women never give up, not when it's someone they love. Many a child wouldn't be here if they did.

Lutie sat down near the back of the room. It was filled with colored women, sitting in huddled-over positions. They sat quietly, not moving. Their patient silence filled the room, made her uneasy. Why were all of them colored? Was it because the mothers of white children had safe places for them to play in, because the mothers of white children didn't have to work?

They blame the low-income women for ruining the country because they're staying home with their children and not going out to work. They blame the middle-income women for ruining the country because they go out to work and do not stay home to take care of their children.

I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.

My faith experience, well, as you can imagine, you need a lot of faith to raise five boys.

Is this why, for countless days, In my arms I carried you, Is this why your strength had blazed Through your lively eyes of blue!

I will lead a man to dear one -- I don't want the little joy -- And I'll quietly lay to sleep The glad, tired little boy. In a chilly room once more I will pray to Mother of God, It is hard to be a hermit, To be happy is also hard. Only fiery sleep will come to me, I'll enter a temple on the hill, Five-domed, white, and stone-hewn, On the paths remembered well.

But this, it seems to me, should be the grand leading principle of a mother in the education of her daughter, to give her such faith in herself, such knowledge of the laws of her own being, such trust in the guiding power of the universe, that she will have a principle of life and growth within her which will react upon all outward circumstances and turn them into means of education.

Some might call my trepidation at the idea of motherhood "selfishness"—I would call it "agency"—but those people are probably either (1) dudes or (2) self-satisfied professional parents, and I'm not sure I care enough about their opinions that I wouldn't just agree with them and shrug my shoulders in shared chagrin.

I didn't think my mother was even consciously aware of what she was doing. She had convinced herself more than anyone else so that she would not feel the insufferable guilt that comes when you realize you have abused and betrayed your own children.

If I get the forty additional years statisticians say are likely coming to me, I could fit in at least one, maybe two new lifetimes. Sad that only one of those lifetimes can include being the mother of young children.