Quotes About Motherhood

It's her second baby, she had another child, once, I know that from the Center, when she used to cry about it at night, like the rest of us only more noisily. So she ought to be able to remember this, what it's like, what's coming. But who can remember pain, once it's over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.

What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into crude diagrams. We deny them an existence of their own, we make them to suit ourselves - our own hungers, our own wishes, our own deficiencies. Now that I've been one myself, I know.

But I know this isn't true. It is just passing the buck, as children do, to mothers. I've mourned for her already. But I will do it again, and again.

Mom, who knew the dirt, and hid the dirt, and did the dirty work, and never saw herself or us as clean enough – and who believed that there was other dirt you shouldn't tell to children, and didn't tell it, which was dangerous only later.

We miss you, Mom, though you were reviled to great profit in magazines and books for ruining your children – that would be us – by not loving them enough, by loving them too much, by wanting too much love from them, by some failure of love –

She lived with several men, but in each of the apartments there were always cardboard boxes, belonging to her, that she never got around to unpacking; just as well, because it was that much easier to move out. When she got past thirty she decided it might be nice to have a child, some time, later. She tried to figure out a way of doing this without becoming a mother.

I'm nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water. I have been obliterated for her. I am only a shadow now, far back behind the glib shiny surface of this photograph. A shadow of a shadow, as dead mothers become. You can see it in her eyes: I am not there.

T]he mothers who had sold their children felt empty and sad. They felt as if this act, done freely by themselves (no one had forced them, no one had threatened them) had not been performed willingly. They felt cheated as well, as if the price had been too low. Why hadn't they demanded more? And yet, the mothers told themselves, they'd had no choice.

I actually remember feeling delight, at two o'clock in the morning, when the baby woke for his feed, because I so longed to have another look at him.

Fascists have been particularly enamored of traditional gender roles. Vichy France made Mother's Day a major festival and awarded medals to good mothers. Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, argued that "Man should be trained as a warrior and woman as recreation for the warrior," a precept he put into practice in his own life as far as the recreation was concerned.

Why, why, her mind stuttered, I believe women could manage everything in the world without men's help--except having babies, and God knows, no woman in her right mind would have babies if she could help it.

A new baby! Why, Scarlett, this is a surprise!" he laughed, leaning down to push the blanket away from Ella Lorena's small ugly face. - Rhett Butler

I believe woman could manage everything in the world without men's help–except birthing babies...

Oh, it wasn't fair that she should have a dead husband and a baby yelling in the next room and be out of everything that was pleasant.

in his finger, and the woman muffled the moans of childbirth, lest she disturb him.

She felt little affection for the child, hide the fact though she might.

SCARLETT'S CHILD WAS A GIRL, a small bald-headed mite, ugly as a hairless monkey and absurdly like Frank.

Why, why, her mind stuttered, I believe women could manage everything in the world without men's help--except having babies, and God knows, no woman in her right mind would have babies if she could help it.

I'm sure your children won't approve of you, Scarlett, any more than Mrs. Merriwether and Mrs. Elsing and their broods approve of you now. Your children will probably be soft, prissy creatures, as the children of hard-bitten characters usually are. And to make them worse, you, like every other mother, are probably determined that they shall never know the hardships you've known. And that's all wrong. Hardships make or break people. So you'll have to wait for approval from your grandchildren.

The next year, their first child was born and they named her Katie Scarlett

Postpartum depression is a very real and very serious problem for many mothers. It can happen to a first time mom or a veteran mother. It can occur a few days... or a few months after childbirth.

By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.

I think it's a tough road if you're a stay-at-home mom, a working mom, if you have a partner, if you don't. It's the best job in the world, and the toughest job in the world all at the same time.

I'm a full-time mom right now and a part-time actress.