Quotes About Motherhood

take me less seriously.) 10. Paying the piper. (Parenthood repays a debt. But who wants to pay a debt she can escape? Apparently, the childless get away with something sneaky. Besides, what good is repaying a debt to the wrong party? Only the most warped mother could feel rewarded for her trouble by the fact that at last her daughter's life is hideous, too.) Those, as best I can recall, are the pygmy misgivings I weighed beforehand, and I've tried not to

La paternidad es el pago de una deuda. Pero… ¿quién quiere pagar una deuda de la que puede escaparse? En apariencia, quienes no tienen hijos se libran con alguna artimaña. Además, ¿de qué sirve pagar una deuda a quien no se la debes? Sólo la madre más retorcida siente compensados sus desvelos por el hecho de que, finalmente, la vida de su hija resulte tan horrorosa como la suya.

So I wasn't only afraid of becoming my mother, but a mother. I was afraid of being the steadfast, stationary anchor who provides a jumping-off place for another young adventurer whose travels I might envy and whose future is still unmoored and unmapped.

so i wasn't only afraid of becoming my mother, but a mother.

Mothers' bodies are not their own. The happiest ones seem to have forgotten what it is like to want themselves back at all.

For me, just being how old I am, I know I don't want to be a single mom. I really would rather make it a two-person job. But I've also come to terms with not being a mother at all. I'm actually really good with either direction that my life can take as being a valid experience.

Once, I was my mother's daughter. Now I am my daughter's mother.

Let him grow up, Regan. Quit fighting the inevitable. For Christ's sake, Jeremy's nearly a man." "Haven't you heard? Twenty's the new twelve." "Only from overprotective, control-freak mothers.

Kim sometimes thinks that women practice being mothers on men until they become actual mothers, leaving behind a kind of vacancy.

Listen, Dad, in a family like this, the wife without a child is at the bottom of the heap. Everyone comes before them. Everyone.

Her mother existed entirely in the moment. And she made every moment sparkle.

Hanna. Her middle child. The difficult one. The tiring one. The one she wouldn't want to be stranded on a desert island with. And a terrible thought shot through her, so fast she barely registered it. 'It should be you missing and Ellie eating beans on toast.

Men don't know, she thinks, they don't know how having a baby makes you protective of your skin, your body, your space. When you spend all day giving yourself to a baby in every way that it's possible to give yourself to another human being, the last thing you want at the end of the day is a grown man wanting you to give him things too.

When the children were small, Laurel's mother would occasionally make small, raw observations about gaps between phone calls and visits that would tear tiny, painful strips off Laurel's conscience. I will never guilt trip my children when they are adults, she'd vowed. I will never expect more than they are able to give.

The baby is starting to grumble. Kim sits still in her chair and holds her breath. It's taken her all night to get him to sleep. It's Friday, a sultry midsummer night, and normally she'd be out with friends at this time.

She is a mother again at fifty-five. She is making packed lunches in the mornings and writing down term dates in her diary. She is doing two school runs a day and putting someone else before her at every juncture of her life.

her heart suddenly expands and contracts with the knowledge that this boy is a part of her and that he loves her, that he is not seeking out his mother, he is content for her to come to him in the dark of night to comfort him.

And then, just over twelve months ago, her teenage daughter, Tallulah, had a baby. And now Kim is a grandmother at the age of thirty-nine and there is a crying baby in her house again, soon, it feels, so soon, after her own babies stopped crying.

And she felt it then, like a needle in her heart, the love her mother always talked about. 'You won't understand how much I love you until you're a mother yourself.

Noah was born she backed off completely for a while, barely visiting

You know that's it now, don't you? You know you can't be Noah's mother any more. Not now. No court in the world would let a person like you raise a child. No court in the world. I'm going now, Tallulah. I'm going back to the house and I'm taking Noah, and you will never see him again. Do you hear me? You will never see him again.

She wants to ask Pat why she didn't plan it that way. She was clever and had ambitions. Why did she get pregnant at twenty? Why didn't she go back to university afterwards? But she doesn't. Instead, she slides the photo back

She has a ten-year-old son and a face like a sincere apology for something that really isn't her fault.

I had learned that there were substitutes for a mother who couldn't be a mother. You could find love with other people. You could find it in places you weren't even looking. But the original wound would never heal. I would carry it with me forever, and so would Tara. That was the trick . . . accepting it, going on with your life, knowing it was part of you.