Motherhood Quotes - Page 29

• motherhood is the great mesh in which all human relations are entangled, in which lurk our most elemental assumptions about love and power.

  Adrienne Rich

  Assumption, Mesh, Relation

  Adrienne Rich (1995). “On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978”, p.144, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Motherhood, in the sense of an intense, reciprocal relationship with a particular child, or children, is one part of female process; it is not an identity for all time.

  Adrienne Rich

  Children, Identity, Female

  Adrienne Rich (1976). “Of woman born motherhood as experience and institution”

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• The great constructive energies of the child ... have hitherto been concealed beneath an accumulation of ideas concerning motherhood. We used to say it was the mother who formed the child; for it is she who teaches him to walk, talk, and so on. But none of this is really done by the mother. It is an achievement of the child. What the mother brings forth is the baby, but it is the baby who produces the man. Should the mother die, the baby still grows up and completes his work of making the man.

  Maria Montessori

  Mother, Baby, Children

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• Labor is like motherhood to most of our political leaders: a calling so fine and noble that it would be sullied by talk of vulgar, mundane things like pay.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Work, Leader, Political

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• As a general rule, when something gets elevated to apple-pie status in the hierarchy of American values, you have to suspect that its actual monetary value is skidding toward zero. 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. Same thing with work: would we be so reverent about the 'work ethic' if it wasn't for the fact that the average working stiff's hourly pay is shrinking, year by year.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Zero, Work, Average

  Ms., Oct. 1986

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• it used to be almost the first question (just after 'Can you type?') in the standard female job interview: 'Are you now, or have you ever, contemplated marriage, motherhood, or the violent overthrow of the U.S. government?

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Jobs, Government, Female

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• It can often happen that motherhood can really stop a lot of women in their tracks and I wanted to try and keep working through that as much as I could.

  Martha Wainwright

  Track, Trying, Wanted

  Source: thequietus.com

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• I think people should think a million times before they give birth. The guilts of motherhood were the worst guilts in the world for me. They were really insurmountable. You see, you are depriving another human being of so many things, and the other party also knows it.

  Louise Berliawsky Nevelson

  Party, Thinking, People

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• Motherhood: if it were going to be easy, it never would have started with something called labor.

  Barbara Johnson

  Easy, Labor, Ifs

  Barbara Johnson (2000). “Boomerang Joy: Joy That Goes Around, Comes Around”, p.175, Zondervan

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• To counter-balance the natural humility of motherhood, I garden ... In the garden, more than any place, I really feel successful.

  Glenda Jackson

  Humility, Successful, Garden

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• Motherhood has most definitely changed me and my life. Its so crazy how drastic even the small details change - in such an amazing way. Even silly things, like the fact that all of my pictures on my cell phone used to be of me at photo shoots - conceited, I know! - but now every single picture on my phone is of Mason.

  Kourtney Kardashian

  Crazy, Silly, Conceited

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• Motherhood informs my work 100 per cent.

  Jessica Marais

  Cents

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• Motherhood is the greatest thing Ive ever done in my life.

  Sara Rue

  Done

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• Charity, till then, had been conscious only of a vague self-disgust and a frightening physical distress; now, of a sudden, there came to her the grave surprise of motherhood.

  Edith Wharton

  Self, Charity, Surprise

  Edith Wharton (2013). “Delphi Works of Edith Wharton (Illustrated)”, p.1841, Delphi Classics

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• It's the curse of motherhood. You're required to love us even when we vex you.

  Julia Quinn

  Vex, Curse

  Julia Quinn (2009). “The Duke And I”, p.17, Harper Collins

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• A mother is a mother still, The holiest thing alive.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Mothers Day, Mom, Alive

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2015). “The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 4 (Part II): The Friend”, p.90, Princeton University Press

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• If nature had arranged that husbands and wives should have children alternatively, there would never be more than three in a family.

  Laurence Housman

  Marriage, Mothers Day, Mom

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• If you have a mom, there is nowhere you are likely to go where a prayer has not already been.

  Robert Breault

  Family, Mom, Mother

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• You watched and you saw what happened and in the accumulation of episodes you saw the pattern: Daddy ruled the roost, called the shots, made the money, made the decisions, so you signed up on his side, and fifteen years later when the women's movement came along with its incendiary manifestos telling you to avoid marriage and motherhood, it was as if somebody put a match to a pile of dry kindling.

  Anne Taylor Fleming

  Years, Daddy, Decision

  Anne Taylor Fleming (1995). “Motherhood Deferred: A Woman's Journey”, Fawcett

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• I think there are few films out there that take motherhood seriously.

  Emma Donoghue

  Thinking, Film

  "‘Room’ Author/Screenwriter Emma Donoghue on Her “Deeply Feminist” Film and Industry Sexism". Interview with Laura Berger, blogs.indiewire.com. October 16, 2015.

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• Borrow a child and get on welfare.
  Borrow a child and stay in the house all day with the child,
  or go to the public park with the child, and take the child
  to the welfare office and cry and say your man left you and
  be humble and wear your dress and your smile, and don't talk
  back.

  Susan Griffin

  Children, Humble, Men

  Susan Griffin (1976). “Like the iris of an eye”

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• Know that every mother occasionally feels "at the end of her rope." When you reach the end of your rope, don't add guilt to your frustration. No one said motherhood was going to be easy.

  Heather King

  Mother, Frustration, Guilt

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• Ideas about mothers have swung historically with the roles of women. When women were needed to work the fields or shops, experts claimed that children didn't need them much. Mothers, who might be too soft and sentimental, could even be bad for children's character development. But when men left home during the Industrial Revolution to work elsewhere, women were "needed" at home. The cult of domesticity and motherhood became a virtue that kept women in their place.

  Sandra Scarr

  Mother, Children, Work

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• Not rarely, and this is especially true of wives and mothers, the motive behind assuming a disproportionate share of work and responsibility is completely unselfish. We want to protect, to spare those of whom we are fond. We forget that, regardless of the motive, the results of such action are almost always destructive and unproductive.

  Hortense Odlum

  Mother, Responsibility, Wife

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• It was palpable, all that wanting: Mother wanting something more, Dad wanting something more, everyone wanting something more. This wasn't going to do for us fifties girls; we were going to have to change the equation even if it meant . . . abstaining from motherhood, because clearly that was where Mother got caught.

  Anne Taylor Fleming

  Girl, Mother, Dad

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