Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
... the physical and domestic education of daughters should occupy the principal attention of mothers, in childhood: and the stimulation of the intellect should be very much reduced.
It is a fundamental truth that the responsibilities of motherhood cannot be successfully delegated. No, not to day-care centers, not to schools, not to nurseries, not to babysitters.
It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.
I think that Sappho expresses the orphaned part of ourselves. The orphaned part of ourselves that reaches out to passion for completion. That reaches out to motherhood for completion.
True motherhood is the noblest call of the world, and we look with sorrow upon the practice here in our own United States of limiting families, a tendency creeping into our own Church.
For most of us, when our 'dreams' - I use the word with reservations - came true, and marriage and motherhood became a reality, the romcoms, like horoscopes, swiftly lost their allure.
The software program for motherhood is impossible to fully download into the male brain. You give them two tasks and they're like, 'I have to change the baby and get the dry cleaning?'
I also think the women's movement has unintentionally contributed to the dishonoring of motherhood. It happened because we made such a big deal about our right to go out into the world.
Motherhood has taught me the meaning of living in the moment and being at peace. Children don't think about yesterday, and they don't think about tomorrow. They just exist in the moment.
In the name of motherhood and fatherhood and education and good manners, we threaten and suffocate and bind and ensnare and bribe and trick children into wholesale emulation of our ways.
There are some universal elements when it comes to motherhood - especially for Black moms. Black women are selfless. Many women think of their children before they think about themselves.
Take motherhood: nobody ever thought of putting it on a moral pedestal until some brash feminists pointed out, about a century ago, that the pay is lousy and the career ladder nonexistent.
Nothing can prepare you for the all-consuming nature of motherhood, and I am very aware of my good fortune, as I spent years fretting about whether I'd ever meet anyone to have a baby with.
What culture worth the name would deny women the right to safe motherhood? What value system would send young people ignorant into the world, when a little knowledge might save their lives?
Becoming a mom allowed me to just relax in a way I never had before. I used to care a lot about what I looked like in public or what people thought of me. I care at least 40 percent less now.
I remember noticing, when I had my babies, how much I liked them, and not just loved them, but I was really into them. I knew I was going to be curious about them, and up for the mayhem ahead.
Completeness? Happiness? These words don't come close to describing my emotions. There truly is nothing I can say to capture what motherhood means to me, particularly given my medical history.
I had a dozen years to act before starting a family then found that motherhood dwarfed everything else. Once or twice a year, I take a project that appeals to me for its redeeming social value.
It's incredible. Everything you ever thought about love just becomes night and day. I mean, you never thought you could love that much. You rediscover the world, and it's just a beautiful thing.
Motherhood has relaxed me in many ways. You learn to deal with crisis. I've become a juggler, I suppose. It's all a big circus, and nobody who knows me believes I can manage, but sometimes I do.
I had a dozen years to act before starting a family, then found that motherhood dwarfed everything else. Once or twice a year, I take a project that appeals to me for its redeeming social value.
It is vital that there is a narrator figure whom people believe. That's why I never do commercials. If I started saying that margarine was the same as motherhood, people would think I was a liar.
My whole life has been about working and being in the girl group and being on stage and being an actress, but now I get to really enjoy a bigger purpose, which is motherhood, so I'm really excited.
Because there is less female storytelling, especially motherhood storytelling, there has been immense pressure on my storytelling to represent more people, and to do so in a sort of unrealistic way.
I don't want to let my life as a woman pass me by. There's a time to work, there's a time to be young and crazy, and there should be a time to enjoy motherhood. I'm actually looking forward to that.
Motherhood brings you to your knees in a way that doesn't leave room for you to judge others. It makes you see that there's no ideal - a constant struggle, constantly compromising, but ultimate love.
A woman's decision to carry a baby to term knowing that she will not reap the fruits of motherhood should be treated as an act of bravery and selflessness - the ultimate standards of good motherhood.
When a baby first looks at you...when it laughs that deep, unselfconscious gurgle; or when it cries and you pick it up and it clings sobbing to you...then you are-happy is not the precise word-filled.
But the truth is I wanted to have my daughter for so long. It's not the kind of thing you can visit, motherhood. Especially in the early years. Now she's eight, and I'm still not going to go anywhere.
Motherhood is so sentimentalised and romanticised in our culture. It's practically against the law to say there are moments in the day when you hate your children. Everyone actually has those moments.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.
I grew up with six girls and one boy, so my innate instinct of who I am - I'm the third oldest, and I helped raise all of my younger sisters. I just fall into that aspect - that motherhood - naturally.
Until women learn to want economic independence, and until they work out a way to get this independence without denying themselves the joys of love and motherhood, it seems to me feminism has no roots.
When children are little, they really need you in one way. When they're bigger, they need you as a friend. And balancing motherhood and career makes you both a better mother and a better businesswoman.
I was divorced when my children were young, so I was a single mother for a while. It's so hard to have to do every little thing yourself and be forced to navigate the rocky emotions of motherhood alone.
The way Hollywood portrays mothers - you're either all good and saint-like, or you're all bad. And I think the real honesty of motherhood is not given a voice in movies. I miss that as an audience member.
You're always going to feel like you're catching up, and part of that is just balancing work and motherhood and the whole feeling of needing to please, which I do think girls and women feel more than men.
Becoming a mother has been the best thing ever for me. It's become my life's work. Not just parenting, but sharing information and encouraging other women to be receptive to the basic nature of motherhood.
Motherhood is given the brush-off in our society. 'Oh, I'm just a mom,' you hear women say. 'Just' a mom? Please! Being a mom is everything. It's mentorship, it's inspirational, it's our hope for the future.
A lot of women wrote to me. Some wrote me long letters on the meaning of the circle and about mythology and about motherhood and the significance or the symbolism of the mermaid and the frogs and the turtles.
I am consumed, or I have been consumed, with these issues of motherhood and the way we act out societal expectations and roles. So both my nonfiction and my fiction have been pretty much exclusively about that.
Passion has always been important to me. That won't change. What changes in a woman's perspective. I mean, I have two kids now. I'm a single parent balancing motherhood and my career. That changes the equation.
To give life another being, what a gift! When he finally was placed into my arms, I looked into his precious eyes and felt an overwhelming, unconditial love... I never felt so complete and empowered in my life.
How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone? No, a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. (What’s Wrong with the World)
People think motherhood involves a lot of domestic labor, and it doesn't. It involves being nice to your children as often as possible. That's part of my trick. I don't have that anxiety about meeting their needs.
A miracle is really the only way to describe motherhood and giving birth. It's unbelievable how God has made us women and babies to endure and be able to do so much. A miracle, indeed. Such an incredible blessing.
Motherhood is an amazing feeling, and if you get to relive those special moments while working, it works as an icing on the cake. Kids have always been close to my heart, and working with them is a pleasure for me.
Our religion has defined a position for women (in society): motherhood. Some people can understand this, while others can't. You cannot explain this to feminists because they don't accept the concept of motherhood.
Unless women have, from the moment of birth, socialization for, expectations of, and preparation for a viable significant alternative to motherhood . . . women will continue to want and reproduce too many children.
Motherhood is more than bearing children, though it is certainly that. It is the essence of who we are as women. It defines our very identity, our divine stature and nature, and the unique traits our Father gave us.