Quotes About Parenthood

When she is with them she is not herself; when she is without them she is not herself; and so it is as difficult to leave your children as it is to stay with them. To discover this is to feel that your life has become irretrievably mired in conflict, or caught in some mythic snare in which you will perpetually, vainly struggle.

The baby can seem like something her husband has given her as a substitute for himself, a kind of transitional object, like a doll, for her to hold so that he can return to the world.

I remember, when my own children were born feeling a great awareness of this new, foreign aspect of myself that was in me and yet did not seem to be of me. It was as though I had suddenly acquired the ability to speak Russian: I didn't know where my knowledge of it had come from.

his mother had explained this anomaly to him by saying that the biological basis of parenthood was essentially antithetical to reason, and as such could be seen as a whole system of inverted logic.

Only tyrants want power for its own sake, and parenthood is the closest most people get to an opportunity for tyranny. Was I a tyrant, wielding shapeless power without authority? What I felt a lot of the time was a sort of stage fright, the way I imagine inexperienced teachers must feel when they stand at the front of the class looking at a sea of expectant faces.

I guess it reminded me of having a kid,' she said finally. 'You survive your own death,' she added, 'and then there's nothing left to do except talk about it.

The closest most people come to it is in having a child. And nowhere are our mistakes and limitations more plainly written than there!

I was surprised by the discovery that Gerard had a child. In the time when I knew him he had been so far from resolving the difficulties of his own childhood that it was hard to believe he was now a father.

For many women,' she said, 'having a child is their central experience of creativity, and yet the child will never remain a created object; unless,' she said, 'the mother's sacrifice of herself is absolute, which mine never could have been, and which no woman's ought to be these days.

And you know when I was growing up, I knew I wanted to have kids, but I knew I didn't want to do it alone. Then once I was 41 42, I had to accept that I probably wouldn't have kids unless I decided to adopt later on, but even then it would be with a partner.

Parenthood and having kids puts you in touch with a whole other sort of sensitivity which is nothing but good. You feel more than you ever felt. You feel that vulnerability, but at the same time you wouldn't trade it for anything.

Because I've been so bad at looking after myself, how would I ever look after a kid? But the old cliche applied: they handed her to me, and my world turned upside down - and I realised I was now going to be vulnerable in more ways than I expected.

I have pictures of me sitting in the racquetball court in my pajamas with an acoustic guitar, and Wolfgang is probably just two-and-a-half-feet tall. I'll never forget the day I saw his foot tapping along in beat! I knew then, I couldn't wait for the day I'd be able to make music with my son. I don't know what more I could ask for.

Yes, I want children and I can't wait to have that closeness with someone - to bring someone into the world. But, I really don't know when.

To be honest, I can't wait to be a dad. I really hope that that's how the cookie crumbles for me.

Every time I went to the doctor when I was in my twenties, he repeated the same thing to me: don't wait too long to have children.

My parents waited to have me and my sister - my dad was 43 when my mother had me, and my mom was 38. They purposefully waited until they had had their adventures in life so that we wouldn't represent the end of their freedom.

Because our generation has waited so long to have babies, we feel we've 'discovered' something that women have been doing for thousands of years. I have no illusions that I will be in the same situation as the average working mother. I'm not trying to prove anything - I just want to have kids.

There is nothing I've wanted more, or waited for longer, than to be a father.

When I had a child, everyone was telling me that I was going to see the world through her eyes, and everything was going to get this nice gloss to it. I kept waiting for that to happen, and thought there was a real problem with me that it wasn't.

When my daughter was born, I said: 'I feel like I know what I've been waiting my whole life to be.'

I didn't wake up one day and think, 'I'm not going to have children.' My mother was a housewife and brought up three children, so I just thought it would happen.

I experienced a lot, and achieved nearly everything I wanted. I can enjoy that today. Go to bed at nine in the evening, because my child wakes up around seven, without having the feeling that I missed or are missing something.

People see me now and ask if I'm still running. I may look like I am, but I'm really not. People think I still run every day but I ran for 25 years and I deserve to not do anything but walk or ride the bike with my kids.