Quotes About Motherhood

Being a mother is like being a gardener of souls. You tend your children, make sure the light always touches them; you nourish them. You sow your seeds, and reap what you sow.

Every woman should have a daughter to tell her stories to. Otherwise, the lessons learned are as useless as spare buttons from a discarded shirt. And all that is left is a fading name and the shape of a nose or the color of hair. The men who write the history books will tell you the stories of battle and conquests. But the women will tell you the stories of people's hearts.

Maybe that's what being a mother was—not so much the act of giving birth, but the sense of understanding and love born from the need to protect.

The only love that I really believe in is a mother's love for her children.

Vera Vladimirovna was, as we have seen, very proud of her daughter's successful upbringing, especially perhaps because it had been accomplished not without difficulty, because it took time and skill to destroy in her soul its innate thirst for delight and enthusiasm.

My mom took me to a Dolly Parton concert when I was 3.

I am learning how to mother. . . . I am distilling entire moral universes into single lines.

I would give up the unessential; I would give up my money, I would give up my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself. I can't make it more clear; it's only something I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me.

Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins, comrades and friends — but only one mother in the whole world.

Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers, and sisters, aunts and cousins, but only one mother in the whole world.

No whimpering, madam! You can't have the joys of motherhood without some of its pangs! Think of your blessings, and don't be a coward!—

When a man is deeply involved with his children it is harder for him to leave, and is it harder for a woman to let such a man go. By sharing so much more of the intimacy inherent to nurturing and protecting our children, more and more couples are finding a deeper common ground to their relationship, forging new and stronger bonds between them based on mutual respect.

Shush sweet baby, I said, so tired, and mixed her gripe water with whiskey and dill weed, but it did no good, so I seen now why lullabies was all about cradles falling from trees, oh dear, when the wind blows, down will come baby, whoops too bad, but at least it's quiet.

In this time, I learned for myself as my teacher predicted, how it is these two extremes - that we are transported by love and jailed by it - that are ever impossible for mothers to reconcile.

And what is it that you get from women?' asking me what I never asked myself. 'I don't know. Is it energy, support, tenderness? The wonder of rapport, a life experience close enough so you know the same jokes. Did your mother always warn you to wear clean underwear, just in case you had an accident?

Watching his sister be a mother was perhaps the greatest argument for marriage. And watching his niece spit up on her was perhaps the best argument against procreation.

I have often observed that the state of motherhood can turn quite ordinary females into heroines . . .

There are lots of different ways for women to be a mom in this culture.

was always me worrying about Chloe

Being a mother has been my greatest teacher and also the most self-sacrificing thing I've ever done.

I'm a better mother if I'm also doing my work. Some women find a lot more satisfaction from doing the hardest job, which is being a mom. But I like my day job, so I juggle a lot.

It's one thing for a rape victim to speak up, or a woman with a wanted pregnancy that has turned into a medical catastrophe. But why can't a woman just say, This wasn't the right time for me? Or two children (or one, or none) are enough? Why must the woman apologize for not having a baby just because she happened to get pregnant? It's as if we think motherhood is the default setting for a woman's life from first period to menopause

Pro-choicers often say no one is "pro-abortion," but what is so virtuous about adding another child to the ones you're already overwhelmed by? Why do we make young women feel guilty for wanting to feel ready for motherhood before they have a baby? Isn't it a good thing that women think carefully about what it means to bring a child into this world—what, for example, it means to the children she already has?

We may revere motherhood, the hazy abstraction, the cream-of-wheat-with-a-halo ideal, but a mother is just a kind of woman, after all, and women are trouble and not so valuable. Low-income mothers drag down the country—why'd they have kids if they couldn't support them? Middle-class mothers are boring frumps. Elite ones are obsessed sanctimommies.