Quotes About Motherhood

Everyone knows how women soldier on, how women dream up blueprints, recipes, ideas for a better world, and then sometimes lose them on the way to the crib in the middle of the night, on the way to the Stop & Shop, or the bath. They lose them on the way to greasing the path on which their husband and children will ride serenely through life.

Maybe the idea of the supposed tension between working and nonworking mothers had been put out in the world just to cause divisiveness.

Everyone knows how women soldier on, how women dream up blueprints, recipes, ideas for a better world, and then sometimes lose them on the way to the crib in the middle of the night, on the way to Stop and Shop, or the bath. They lose them on the way to greasing the path on which their husband and children will ride serenely through life.

Did you ever look out in that dark and fucked-up world out there and think, how do I let my daughter out into that? And how do i stop her? And the things you can't stop because you're … because-

You're going to look your girl straight in the eye and say, Baby your mom rode to the rafters. Your mom lifted three girls in her hand, grinning all the way, she says, our voices rising to a baying now, all together. Your mom build pyramids and flew high in the sky, and back in Sutton Grove, they're still talking about the wonders they saw that night, still talking about how they watched us all reach to the heavens.

Peace, hands and mouth smeared with chocolate pudding, blinks and says nothing. Happy frowns. Bliss, firmly ensconced on Liesel's hip, babbles something so cute and precious it would be nice to take a second to appreciate it, but Liesel is caught between her genuine and somewhat frightening fury and her shame at realizing that she's turned into everything she swore she'd never be.

Where are you in your cycle? Oh, WHO CARES? Let's get you two BUMPING right away. We don't want another trimester to go by with a FLAT TUMMY. And not to put any pressure on you or anything, but it would be just BREEDY if you could deliver the goods by next March.

I'M SCURRYING AROUND THE HOUSE, TRYING TO DECIDE WHAT I should pack (cloth diapers, knitted booties, cotton jumpers?) and what I should leave behind (cloth diapers, knitted booties, cotton jumpers?) when I'm stopped in my tracks by the lowing and braying of the animals in the barn. Someone's coming. Again.

She taught me everything I know about what it means to be a good wife and mother, nourishing me with all the fruits of the spirit: joy, peace, kindness, faithfulness, and gentleness. What's happened to me since then isn't her fault. She did the best she could.

But the closer I got to my own marriage and maternity, the more I felt like I was only as praiseworthy as my healthy womb. Why was I the only one who seemed to see it this way?

Even with men doing more parenting than before, the majority of women are still left facing the well-rehearsed motherhood-versus-career dichotomy. But it's not a dichotomy; its a socially organized choice masquerading as a natural one.

She didn't really want to have a baby; she wanted to want to have a baby.

A nagging thought: What did I have to show for all that free time the mothers didn't have?

As a woman who chooses to be childless, I generally have just one problem: other adults. Living in a culture where women are assumed to prioritize motherhood above all else and where a woman's personal choices are often considered matters of public discussion means everyone thinks they have the right to discuss my body and my choices, so anyone who is curious about my lack of spawn feels the right to march right on over and ask me about it.

I don't really want to have a baby; I want to want to have a baby." I longed to feel like everybody else, but I had to face the fact that I did not.

A woman should be home with the children, building that home and making sure there's a secure family atmosphere.

What was unspoken between us, what need never be explained or said, was that nobody would ever love us again like our mothers did. Yes, we would be loved, by our fathers, our friends, our siblings, our aunts and uncles and grandparents and spouses--and our children if we chose to have them--but never would we experience that kind of unconditional, nothing-you-can-do-will-turn-me-away-from-you kind of mother love.

There comes a time in every mother's life when it becomes very clear that your child is a much better person than you are, but you're not allowed to say this because then where would you go from there—admitting such a thing to a nine-year-old?

I'm looking forward to being a mom and a wife and a business owner.

Grandma entertained us with reading or checkers or chess so we wouldn't bother Mother as she studied for her night-school exams. She was determined to complete her master's degree.

I walk down the steps of the verandah towards her and with shaking hands she holds my face between them, sobbing, "Look at my beautiful girl.

At home, at our most vulnerable, she's Mummy. When we're talking to other people she's Mum, but in my head she's just Mia because I've been angry at her so many times that I've wanted to distance myself from her.

It's not that I miss my mother. It's just that I miss the idea of what one would be.

I find it hard to believe that she was just seventeen, my age now, when she was married and taken halfway across the world. But then again, Mama was just seventeen when she gave birth to me, so it makes me realize how young we youth of today really are. Maybe we know more or think we know more, or do a lot more, but we haven't been through as much. We'd never be able to cope with the pressures our mothers and grandmothers went through.