Quotes About Parenthood

I work, and then I leave the office, and I'm with my kids and just sort of enjoy them on a visceral level, and I don't feel like I'm exorcising my own deep ideas about parenthood and about how my life will come into play in my work.

Obviously, nobody chooses not to have kids because they'd rather sleep in late. It's a very visceral decision, and it's a complicated decision.

What I learned from my kids is that the greatest joy in life is not from material trappings, power, or visibility. The greatest joy comes from your kids. Nothing is even close to my kids in terms of bringing me joy.

A half shelf-life for a woman is about thirty-five. The real shelf life is forty. Once you're forty and dating online, no guy who wants to have kids is willing to even meet you. Divorced guys who already have kids will meet a forty-year-old, but many of them have had vasectomies.

You didn't fall in love with me before our first date, when I told you I had a six-year-old," I say. "You knew what to do then, didn't you?" More suffocating silence. As you've probably guessed, this conversation goes nowhere.

I once told Wendell that I'm a terrible decision maker, that often what I think I want doesn't turn out the way I'd imagined. But there were two notable exceptions, and both proved to be the best decisions of my life. In each case, I was nearly forty. One was my decision to have a baby. The other was my decision to become a therapist.

He grinned. "You're my first with no covering and I must say, I like it very, very much. I fear, Duchess, that you are going to have many children.

I am the lucky one; my child is not dead. Just saying that makes me an anomaly in the current opioid crisis that is ravaging through our country.

Parenthood anywhere from the heart of Texas to the middle of Manhattan is one long coping with maladjusted personalities, crooked teeth, allergies to goose feathers and lamentable traits inherited from the other side of the family.

Each time he thought about it Gamache trembled with delight. The very idea of his child having a child struck him as nearly unbelievable.

It would be insane not to be afraid. To worry. The very thing you just admitted is what will make you a great father to your daughter. We're all afraid. Of something bad happening to our children. Of not being there when they need us. Of not being enough. We all want to pull the sheets up over our heads some days and hide.

But Clara knew why she wept. Not for Julia, not for Mrs. Morrow. She wept for all the Morrows, but mostly for parents who gave gifts and wrote "from." For parents who never lost children because they never had them.

BEING A MOTHER GIVES YOU a singular sort of vision, a prism through which you can see your child with many different faces all at once. It is the reason you can watch him shatter a ceramic lamp, and still remember him as an angel. Or hold him as he cries, but imagine his smile. Or watch him walk toward you, the size of a man, and see the dimpled skin of an infant.

I realize then that we never have children, we receive them. And sometimes it's not for quite as long as we would have expected or hoped. But it is still far better than never having had those children at all.

Look at that," Michael said. "My daughter's an hour old and she's already sleeping with some guy.

Parenthood was like awakening to find a soap bubble in the cup of your palm, and being told you had to carry it while you parachuted from a dizzying height, climbed a mountain range, battled on the front lines. All you wanted to do was tuck it away, safe from natural disasters and violence and prejudice and sarcasm, but that was not an option. You lived in daily fear of watching it burst, of breaking it yourself. Somehow

And then one day, you turn around, and your baby is a man.

There's this weird part about having kids—you know when your family is finished, and when it's not.

Love's the strongest energy. Katie and I loved each other. We couldn't love each other in my world, and we couldn't love each other in her world. But all that love, all that energy, it had to go somewhere. It went into that baby. His voice broke. Even if we couldn't have each other, we would have both had him. -Adam, Plain Truth

Have you had your first baby yet? I might have one myself, once they find a way for the man to carry it around the first nine months.

The only true immortality lies in one's children. [ Letter to his friend, Richard Heuberger ]

I get shivers when I think what I would be like without my baby.

When Charles first saw our child Mary, he said all the proper things for a new father. He looked upon the poor little red thing and blurted, "She's more beautiful than the Brooklyn Bridge."

Fathers are biological necessities, but social accidents.