Quotes About Motherhood

I'm not there," she says. "I'm not there to scramble his egg or kiss his forehead. My baby. I'm not going to be there. The whole rest of his life he's going to be sick without me. How can that be?

A tightening in her chest almost stopped her. It was a foreign feeling, to be so afraid of words addressed to her own son. And, in another very real way, familiar. She had stood at this threshold many times, and each time she had let that clench of fear stop her.

She learned so much from these little talks with her son. He always swore he'd learned it from her and was only mirroring it back, but somehow the wisdom of her own advice surprised her as it came out of his mouth, and left her wondering if she was wise enough to heed it.

People can do all manner of things if it's important enough. If a mother can lift a car off her son, maybe she can die at just the right time to save him.

When you've only ever had one child, and she's gone, are you still a mother? Maybe. But I don't even know.

She stopped herself. He wasn't a boy. A time comes in the life of a mother and son when that kind of mothering crosses the line into critical behavior. At age thirty he could eat and talk in any way he saw fit.

What could I possibly have done to bring this on? What can I possibly do to stop it? I thought, is there anybody besides me whose mother welcomed them into the world with a face full of joyful love? I mean, one single person besides myself?

As all mothers know, children travel faster than kisses. The speed of kisses is, in fact, what Doctor Fallow would call a cosmic constant. The speed of children has no limits.

Love, I've never been anyone's mother; I don't know how to talk to young or old. But don't stop smiling just because I flap my mouth and say something that's not dressed around the edges like a lace tablecloth. Thicken up and we'll get along fine.

Kõik emad teavad, et lapsed jooksevad kiiremini kui õhusuudlused. Õigupoolest on õhusuudluse kiirus kosmiline konstant, nagu ütleks doktor Fallow. Lapse kiirusel ei ole piire.

there had been the two little boys. Now they were gone, too. They loved her and called her and sent her e-mails and would still snuggle up to her to be petted when they were in the mood, but they were men, and though they would always be at the center of her life, she was no longer at the center of theirs.

Most of her feelings she deemed insubstantial and she sent them packing with barely a nod of recognition. But her feelings for her daughter she recognized as inevitable, irresistable, and she reveled in them.

Mothers, food, love, and career - the four major guilt groups.

Just because women can bear children doesn't mean they're unable to harbour the same sort of career ambitions as a man.

Does an Asian American narrative always have to return to the mother?

You have an Asian mother," she said. "She has to be interesting.

Many working mothers feel guilty about not being at home. And when they are there, they wish it could be perfect. This pressure to make every minute happy puts working parents in a bind when it comes to setting limits and modifying behavior.

She'd been married at twelve, before her menarche, and had been pregnant or lactating ever since.

In modern consumer society, the attack on mother-child eroticism took its total form; breastfeeding was proscribed and the breasts reserved for the husband's fetishistic delectation. At the same time, babies were segregated, put into cold beds alone and not picked up if they cried.

A housewife's work has no results: it simply has to be done again. Bringing up children is not a real occupation, because children come up just the same, brought up or not.

It [childbearing] was never intended to be as time-consuming and self-conscious a process as it is. One of the deepest evils in our society is tyrannical nurturance.

What is certain is that he [the baby] has too much attention from the one person who is entirely at his disposal. The intimacy between mother and child is not sustaining and healthy. The child learns to exploit his mother's accessibility, badgering her with questions and demands which are not of any real consequence to him, embarrassing her in public, blackmailing her into buying sweets and carrying him.

In 'The Female Eunuch' I argued that motherhood should not be treated as a substitute career; now I would argue that motherhood should be regarded as a genuine career option, that is to say, as paid work and, as such, as an alternative to other paid work. What this would mean is that every woman who decides to have a child would be paid enough to raise that child in decent circumstances.

To be a mother, to feel maternally, means to turn especially to the helpless, to incline lovingly and helpfully toward everything on earth that is small and weak. Therefore the principle of motherhood is a dual one. It hinges not only on the birth of the child, but also on fostering and protecting that which has been born.