#motherhood

I understood and appreciated the miracle of birth, but I did not understand motherhood, nor did I appreciate the oveselling of it. To me it was a choice, one of many options. To others it was what women did. We were supposed to breed. It had been decided for us. Society expected it. Religion demanded it. ↗

— Judy Morgan

#motherhood-once-removed #no-kidding #religion

Had I catalogued the downsides of parenthood, "son might turn out to be a killer" would never have turned up on the list. Rather, it might have looked something like this: 1. Hassle. 2. Less time just the two of us. (Try no time just the two of us.) 3. Other people. (PTA meetings. Ballet teachers. The kid's insufferable friends and their insufferable parents.) 4. Turing into a cow. (I was slight, and preferred to stay that way. My sister-in-law had developed bulging varicose veins in her legs during pregnancy that never retreated, and the prospect of calves branched in blue tree roots mortified me more than I could say. So I didn't say. I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.) 5. Unnatural altruism: being forced to make decisions in accordance with what was best for someone else. (I'm a pig.) 6. Curtailment of my traveling. (Note curtailment. Not conclusion.) 7. Dementing boredom. (I found small children brutally dull. I did, even at the outset, admit this to myself.) 8. Worthless social life. (I had never had a decent conversation with a friend's five-year-old in the room.) 9. Social demotion. (I was a respected entrepreneur. Once I had a toddler in tow, every man I knew--every woman, too, which is depressing--would take me less seriously.) 10. Paying the piper. (Parenthood repays a debt. But who wants to pay a debt she can escape? Apparently, the childless get away with something sneaky. Besides, what good is repaying a debt to the wrong party? Only the most warped mother would feel rewarded for her trouble by the fact that at last her daughter's life is hideous, too.) ↗

— Lionel Shriver

#kids #motherhood #parenting #life

A mother knows what her child's gone through, even if she didn't see it herself. ↗

— Pramoedya Ananta Toer

#motherhood

A mother's body remembers her babies-the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has it's own entreaties to body and soul. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#motherhood #motherhood

It's come at last", she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache. ↗

— Betty Smith

#motherhood #motherhood

Thus far the mighty mystery of motherhood is this: How is it that doing it all feels like nothing is ever getting done. ↗

— Rebecca Woolf

#motherhood

Being a mother is like trying to hold a wolf by the ears,” Gram said. “If you have three or four –or more – chickabiddies, you’re dancing on a hot griddle all the time. You don’t have time to think about anything else. And if you’ve only got one or two, it’s almost harder. You have room left over – empty spaces that you think you’ve got to fill up. ↗

— Sharon Creech

#motherhood

Have you any idea how many children it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen Three. It takes one to say What light and two more to say I didn't turn it on. ↗

— Erma Bombeck

#motherhood

She was not, herself, hugely in favor of motherhood in general. Obviously it was necessary, but it wasn't exactly difficult. Even cats managed it. But women acted as if they'd been given a medal that entitled them to boss people around. It was as if, just because they'd got the label which said "mother", everyone else got a tiny part of the label that said "child"... ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#motherhood #mothers #motherhood

لو أخبرته بأنني أحبه، فهو ينظر إليّ بخواء وحسب.. كل ما أفعله ناقص ومزيف، وأنا دائماً بحاجة إلى حججٍ وأدلةٍ للبرهنة على أمومتي. ↗

— بثينة العيسى

#motherhood