Quotes About Parenthood

Children serve as impossible-to-ignore, in-your-face timepieces, marking the relentless march of one's life through what otherwise might seem an infinite sea of minutes, hours, days, and years.

His two infant sons had died the previous year

Isn't it perfectly possible that Nils and his wife are too depressed to have kids? The prospect of having kids depresses the shit out of me, and I'm neither suicidal nor Norwegian!

Motherfucking Christ," Gerry said to me on that Christmas Day, 1960. "Isn't it perfectly possible that Nils and his wife are too depressed to have kids? The prospect of having kids depresses the shit out of me, and I'm neither suicidal nor Norwegian!

He did so, after the shocking birth of his first child (he was treated at the State University of Iowa hospital in March of 196$ for a fainting spell, following the first look at his gory, swaddled son. 'It's a boy!' the nurse, fresh and dripping from the delivery room, informed him. 'Will it live?' asked Trumper, sliding gelatinous to the floor).

One day, Jenny Fields thought, she would like to have a baby – just one.

Suddenly Mrs. Reilly remembered the horrible night that she and Mr. Reilly had gone to Prytania to see Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in 'Red Dust.' In the heat and confusion that had followed their return home, nice Mr. Reilly had tried one of his indirect approaches, and Ignatius was conceived. Poor Mr. Reilly. He had never gone to another movie as long as he lived.

But at the same time that the experience is pulling you apart, it's also bonding you. You have this joint venture! You both made this baby. And that's the thing I still can't get over

There is no way out of the experience except through it, because it is not really your experience at all but the baby's. Your body is the child's instrument of birth.

You can't understand it until you experience the simple joy of the first time your son points at a seagull and says 'Duck!'

Life increases with the presence of children . They add colors and give us new reasons to live.

A bitter paradox, I thought: to keep his son he had to lose him.

I touched my hand to my belly. Your father said once that he wanted more children, but that is not why you live. You are for me.

How often in those days did I think of Odysseus' smiling child? I tried his trick, along with all the rest. Held my son's floppy body up into the air, promised him he was safe. He only screamed louder. Whatever made the prince Telemachus so sweet, I thought, it must have come from Penelope. This was the child I deserved.

Motherhood seemed easy to me, before I had a child.

Your son is not yet a man." Tyndareus' voice seemed far away. I could detect nothing in it.

Never in my life have I felt more prochoice than when I was pregnant. And never in my life have I understood more thoroughly, and been more excited about, a life that began at conception.

About parenthood and BDSM) Note that a difficulty in shifting gears, or a struggle to find the time, is not the same thing as an ontological either/or.

Babies grow in a helix of hope and fear.

She hadn't ever wanted children and yet she had. She had and she did

She has created this moment – no one else – and yet, now it is happening, she finds that it is entirely at odds with what she desires. What she desires is for him to stay at her side, for his hand to remain in hers. For him to be there, in the house, when she brings this baby into the world. For them to be together.

When you engender a life, you open yourself to risk, to fear. Holding my child, I realised my vulnerability to death: I was frightened of it, for the first time. I knew all too well how fine a membrane separates us from that place, and how easily it can be perforated.

Five years off my life... I wondered with a wry smile, would people be immortal if they didn't have kids?

People who have babies tell me I will know a love that is beyond anything I can imagine, and a joy that is indescribable. Love and joy? That sounds horrifying. I have no way of knowing whether I can handle either of those. I'm much better with need and fear. They are what ground me.