#motherhood

While parenthood served as no disadvantage at all to men, there was evidence of a substantial "motherhood penalty". Mothers received only half as many callbacks as their identically qualified childless counterparts. ↗

— Cordelia Fine

#motherhood #men

Franklin, I was absolutely terrified of having a child. Before I got pregnant, my visions of child rearing- reading stories about cabooses with smiley faces at bedtime, feeding glop into slack mouths- all seemed like pictures of someone else. I dreaded confrontation with what could prove a closed, stony nature, my own selfishness and lack of generosity, the thick tarry powers of my own resentment. However intrigued by a “turn of the page,” I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else’s story. And I believe that this terror is precisely what must have snagged me, the way a ledge will tempt one to jump off. The very surmountability of the task, its very unattractiveness , was in the end what attracted me to it. (32) ↗

— Lionel Shriver

#motherhood #nature

I remember the sift that occurred after Abby was born - there'd been the great big before, where dying grandparents and natural disasters on the news were sad but mostly distant concerns. But then I became a mother, and when that happens, you cross a line that makes all loss a crushing, personal matter. ↗

— DEB CALLETI

#motherhood #nature

Was it the act of giving birth that made you a mother? Did you lose that label when you relinquished your child? If people were measured by their deeds, on the one hand, I had a woman who had chosen to give me up; on the other, I had a woman who'd sat up with me at night when I was sick as a child, who'd cried with me over boyfriends, who'd clapped fiercely at my law school graduation. Which acts made you more of a mother? Both, I realized. Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#children #motherhood #parenting #life

So I guess you were hopelessly romantic and easily distracted, a B-plus mother, certainly good enough to get into Matriarchal State University but not quite good enough for St. Mary's College of the Blessed Womb Warriors. ↗

— Sherman Alexie

#romantic

There is no theoretical study of motherhood. You know, before I became a mother, I did play a mother, but I was like - I was more thinking of my own mother. I was doing my mother. ↗

— Joan Chen

#before #did #doing #i #know

If they would all sleep all the time she wouldn't mind being their mother. ↗

— Kate Atkinson

#motherhood

You know what they say - sleep is the mother's drug of choice, but like heroin, only the very rich and the very poor can afford it. ↗

— Elissa Schappell

#motherhood

A mother is a mother from the moment her baby is first placed in her arms until eternity. It didn't matter if her child were three, thirteen, or thirty. ↗

— Sarah Strohmeyer

#motherhood

No occupation in this world is more trying to soul and body than the care of young children. What patience and wisdom, skill and unlimited love it calls for. God gave the work to mothers and furnished them for it, and they cannot shirk it and be guiltless. ↗

— Isabella Macdonald Alden

#motherhood #parenting #love