Top 100 Quotes About Motherhood
#1. 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
#3. I only know there's something unsettling about a door that closes forever. I feel a vague lament about the changing of my body, the alterations in my appearance, the bleeding out of motherhood, the fear that I will not find the mysterious green fuse again.
Sue Monk Kidd
#4. There is eternal influence and power in motherhood.
Julie B. Beck
#5. For millions of girls around the world, motherhood comes too early. Those who bear children as adolescents suffer higher maternal mortality and morbidity rates, and their children are more likely to die in infancy.
Esther Duflo
#6. Motherhood furnishes us with, not just giving life - but, partaking of life's learning.
Eleesha
#7. The art of never making a mistake is crucial to motherhood. To be effective and to gain the respect she needs to function, a mother must have her children believe she has never engaged in sex, never made a bad decision, never caused her own mother a moment's anxiety, and was never a child.
Erma Bombeck
#8. As I see it, the greatest responsibility of motherhood is to make sure that our children know that there are principles of kindness, compassion, integrity, excellence, and discipline.
Marianne Williamson
#9. guilt to motherhood is like grapes to wine
Fay Weldon
#10. I found motherhood a crash course in existentialism (what is my purpose in life, am I mistress or slave of my destiny, when the hell do I get some sleep?) and [ the book] ROOM was the result.
Emma Donoghue
#11. Motherhood is so honorable a thing that nothing - no convention - can possibly make it dishonorable; and from the standpoint of the right of the child ... the unmarried mother should be granted by society the same reverence and regard as the married mother.
Ben Lindsey
#12. What would she have made of her life in the absence of childbirth? Maybe no more than she did in its presence and to ponder such possibilities denies the value of motherhood.
Debbie McGowan
#13. I quickly learned that motherhood was a high wire act sometimes performed without a net.
Marita Golden
#14. Motherhood in our society means always being on the edge between two existences which rarely allow for any overlap.
Michelle Harrison
#15. The issue of motherhood is no longer salient. In fact, the very first female bomber for Hamas posed in her last will and testament video with her two kids.
Mia Bloom
#16. Beguiling voices in the world cry out for 'alternative lifestyles' for women. They maintain that some women are better suited for careers than for marriage and motherhood.
Ezra Taft Benson
#17. In the cookies of motherhood, you're the chocolate chips.
H. L. Balcomb
#18. The ability to last in motherhood requires giving up expectations for our own lives, deciding that sacrificing our desires and wants for the sake of our family is our gift of worship to our heavenly Father. To
Sarah Mae
#19. When motherhood becomes the fruit of a deep yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children will become the foundation of a new race.
Margaret Sanger
#20. Motherhood is the most beautiful, exciting thing, and there's nothing that I feel like I can't accomplish while having children in my life. I would sacrifice having more years of being wherever I want whenever I want for years with my kids.
Hayden Panettiere
#21. Why not wear a scar of Motherhood? Better than a tattoo or a mark of Honor. Let the world know what you've achieved.
Richelle Mead
#22. [Motherhood is] the biggest gamble in the world. It is the glorious life force. It's huge and scary-it's an act of infinite optimism.
Gilda Radner
#23. I've learned that it's way harder to be a baby. Everything is a struggle for her. For instance, I haven't thrown up since the '90s and she's thrown up twice since we started this interview. Motherhood is cake compared to what it's like to be a baby.
Eva Mendes
#24. She was forty-one years old, and she was tired. But the fatigue would pass. The old dreams of full-time motherhood and a cushy retirement were forever forgotten.
John Grisham
#25. And (cue music swell) motherhood turned out to be the most meaningful thing I've ever done with my life. Really.
Nia Vardalos
#26. Motherhood rarely allows for solitude, yet it begets its own kind of isolation: from one's past, from one's youth, from the women we once thought we were and would become.
Hannah Nordhaus
#27. At first, it must be remembered, that [women] can never accomplish anything until they put womanhood ahead of wifehood, and make motherhood the highest office on the social scale.
Herbert Croly
#29. So, I guess motherhood and the threat of not being able to pay my rent inspired me to be a novelist. But as far as what inspired me to be a writer, it's the stories. It sounds very cliched, but the stories rise up and demand to be told. They always have done, long before I became a writer.
Gayle Forman
#30. And I think, as I'm surrounded by teeming life - parasites, fish, and children - I think, So, you thought you wanted to observe life? Motherhood shakes her head, clenches her fists, and demands, No, you must live it.
Sarah Ruhl
#31. The journey of motherhood centers on being the person God has chosen out of all humanity and space and time to care for these souls, these beings who will exist for all eternity.
Rachel Balducci
#32. A fierce literary woman with a penchant for married men, Margaret Fuller was ultimately torn between motherhood and her final career as a political reporter.
Susan Cheever
#33. I give praise and honor to the Holy one of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for the blessing of motherhood.
Emunah Y'srael
#34. Motherhood is about raising and celebrating the child you have, not the child you thought you would have. It's about understanding that he is exactly the person he is supposed to be. And that, if you're lucky, he just might be the teacher who turns you into the person you are supposed to be.
Joan Ryan
#35. The torment that so many young women know, bound hand and foot by love and motherhood, without having forgotten their former dreams.
Simone De Beauvoir
#36. I've learned so much from being a mom about the kind of person I want to be, the kind of woman I want to be. Motherhood has taught me mindfulness. If you just parent on instinct, you'll screw your kid up for life. You have to be so mindful.
Gwyneth Paltrow
#37. I've come to realize that being a mother makes me a better executive, because motherhood forces prioritization. Being a mom gives you so much more clarity on what is important.
Marissa Mayer
#38. Whether outside work is done by choice or not, whether women seek their identity through work, whether women are searching for pleasure or survival through work, the integration of motherhood and the world of work is a source of ambivalence, struggle, and conflict for the great majority of women.
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
#39. 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.
Marianne Williamson
#40. With what price we pay for the glory of motherhood.
Isadora Duncan
#41. Then too, motherhood is broken because in this place, to be a good mother is to give yourself completely. It is to erase yourself. This is what I refused to do.
Nayomi Munaweera
#42. You instantly become less selfish. You can't be the biggest person in the world anymore-they are. [Motherhood] really grounds you.
Keri Russell
#43. Photography is not cute cats, nor nudes, motherhood or arrangements of manufactured products. Under no circumstances it is anything ever anywhere near a beach.
Walker Evans
#44. I love motherhood. I certainly wasn't aware of any mothering instincts until I had babies. I wasn't a person who desperately wanted to have kids, but you don't get it until you do it, and, suddenly, this nurturing instinct exists.
Deirdre O'Kane
#45. Satan has declared war on motherhood. He knows that those who rock the cradle can rock his earthly empire. And he knows that without righteous mothers loving and leading the next generation, the Kingdom of God will fail.
Sheri L. Dew
#46. I think that poetry is perfect for women raising children, with just bits of time and such need to connect to other women out of the isolation of motherhood.
Francesca Lia Block
#47. I do think that despite my best efforts to resist it, I am now a grown-up. It's due to lots of very difficult decisions that you make over a long period of time - about motherhood, wifehood, and work, and all the things that one has to make decisions about.
Emma Thompson
#48. A dominant ideology represents the view of a dominant group, often by making the existing order seem inevitable. Thus, by depicting motherhood as natural, a patriarchal ideology of mothering locks women into biological reproduction, and denies them identities and selfhood outside mothering.
Evelyn Nakano Glenn
#49. 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
#50. (Motherhood) I want her to have this thing I have that's so ordinary and tedious and aggravating, and then, so divine.
Kelly Corrigan
#51. 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.
Helen Hunt
#52. Acting and modelling are good, but motherhood is what it's all about.
Jerry Hall
#53. You're only as happy as your least happy child,' is the best description of motherhood I have ever read.
Sarah Payne Stuart
#54. Feeling inadequate is an occupational hazard of motherhood.
Harriet Lerner
#55. Understand - motherhood, for a dog, is not an emotional experience, it is an instinctual experience.
Anonymous
#56. Spanish children are too often ill-cared for, but despite the abuses of ignorant motherhood and fatherhood, such vivid, vivacious, bewitching little people as they are!
Katharine Lee Bates
#57. I grew up with that completely fictive idea of motherhood, where the mother never strayed from the kitchen. All the women in my books are very afraid that if they do anything with their minds they won't be complete women. I don't think my daughters' generation has that feeling.
A.S. Byatt
#58. Motherhood is wonderful, but it's also hard work. It's the logistics more than anything. You discover you have reserves of energy you didn't know you had.
Deborah Mailman
#59. Of course a woman who decides to work full time as a mother in the home can be happy and deserves full respect from us. Motherhood is one of the most challenging and creative jobs anyone can do. The goal is to remake the world so that our choices are not so stark.
Naomi Wolf
#60. Many perfumes promise to lure men to women. None of them smell of motherhood. None of them proclaim the wearer to be tidy, thrifty, and sensible.
Janette Rallison
#61. I think every family has that moment when the parents realize they need help and think, Oh my gosh. We cannot do this all alone. Every woman has that panic at some point in motherhood when you feel completely overwhelmed and constantly tired.
Nia Long
#62. At the end of every day - chaotic and mundane alike - motherhood is about the adoration and enjoyment of our great God. The
Gloria Furman
#63. Marriage is all right. At least the person you're having a go at is an adult. But motherhood ... You're given something totally dependent, totally in love with you and it doesn't seem to come with a manual.
Jerry Pinto
#64. Even prior to marriage and motherhood, it's always been about prioritising and focusing on what you can commit to. That's been my approach to every aspect of my life, be it my relationships or my professional commitments.
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan
#65. I can imagine no heroism greater than motherhood.
Lance Conrad
#66. Motherhood is the keystone of the arch of matrimonial happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
#67. Remember, you can lead a fifty-seven-year-old body to motherhood, but you can't make it stay awake.
Erma Bombeck
#68. The danger of motherhood. you relive your early self, through the eyes of your mother.
Joyce Carol Oates
#69. More and more I'm seeing motherhood as a marathon of endurance, not a sprint to the next stage of life.
Stacey Thacker
#70. Other than motherhood, the eight years that I spent at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, I have incredibly fond memories of. It's a beautiful place, with four seasons up in Wisconsin. And really wonderful people.
Laurel Clark
#71. All of [motherhood] surprised me. It surprised me from the very first second I saw Jack. I'd believed that my pregnancy was a condition. It never computed. And there he was. Everyone made fun of me because I stared at him for months and months, not being able to believe he was real.
Meg Ryan
#72. With motherhood and marriage there was no finish line, no hour or day or year when you got to say you were through. Life just went on and on, endless and formless, with no performance evaluation, no raises or feedback or two weeks' vacation.
Jennifer Weiner
#73. Surrogate motherhood has been the subject of much philosophical and political dispute over the years.
Thomas Frank
#74. Motherhood is the only thing in my life that I've really known for sure is something I wanted to do.
Cynthia Nixon
#75. You know, I somehow envisioned embracing motherhood differently. Not at thirty-five, without a partner, and knocked up by a gigolo who might or might not be named Luigi.
Elle Aycart
#76. As I cooked in the cauldron of motherhood, the incredible love I felt for my children opened my heart and brought me a much greater understanding of universal love. It made me understand the suffering of the world much more deeply.
Tsultrim Allione
#77. One unexpected bonus of motherhood is the visual beauty. I am enchanted by the sights of my children, the tones of skin, the clear eyes, the grace, the curve of a hand and cheek, to see them racing across the back lawn in a certain slant of light.
Jaroldeen Edwards
#78. It's [motherhood] the biggest on-the-job- training program in existence today.
Erma Bombeck
#79. 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.
David O. McKay
#80. There's no doubt that motherhood is the best thing in my life. It's all that really matters.
Courteney Cox
#81. For the first time since giving birth so many years before, I grew weary of motherhood, and wondered how many more generations of women could be enticed to burden themselves with the solitary and thankless procreation, nourishing, and guidance of the human race.
Jean Sasson
#82. Moms never get out of the kid business. Last time I checked, motherhood had no expiration date.
Lisa Scottoline
#83. You don't take a class; you're thrown into motherhood and learn from experience.
Jennie Finch
#84. Some women are born mothers, some women become mothers, and some have motherhood thrust upon them. I struggled against it all my life, but I think the truth is I was probably born to it. I don't do badly, I don't do well, I just do it.
Fay Weldon
#85. Creativity is the only way a man can ever experience motherhood.
Girish Kohli
#86. The woman who has her being in marriage and motherhood has become part of antithetical reality, revoking property from the woman who remains in a condition of intangible femininity.
Rachel Cusk
#87. Though motherhood is the most important of all the professions - requiring more knowledge than any other department in human affairs - there was no attention given to preparation for this office.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
#88. Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.
Barbara Kingsolver
#89. I also feel like motherhood, especially, is seen usually in movies with this saintly veil over it. There's something about tipping that and showing what's actually going on. Or the wish fulfillment of probably most moms, which is really exciting. It's an area that's unexplored.
Kathryn Hahn
#90. More than in any other human relationship, overwhelmingly more, motherhood means being instantly interruptible, responsive, and responsible
Tillie Olsen
#91. Feminists have mocked full-time motherhood as silly and old fashioned. Maybe they're right. I mean, what do moms do really?
Kimberly Guilfoyle
#92. I believe it is by divine design that the role of motherhood emphasizes the nurturing and teaching of the next generation.
L. Tom Perry
#93. Women are still angry about feeling duped and undervalued, but instead of ignoring their kids and downing cocktails all day, as in Friedan's time, now we have the angry overdrive child-rearing style: motherhood as a competitive sport.
Laura Kipnis
#94. 1. Motherhood is hard
2. Motherhood is glorious
3. Motherhood is hard
Lisa-Jo Baker
#95. Motherhood is nitty and gritty and brutal and wonderful, but everything I read is about the wonderful parts. Sometimes, you're really in the trenches!
Constance Marie
#96. This is motherhood for you,' said my own mother. 'Going through life with your heart outside your body.
Jennifer Weiner
#97. 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
#98. 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.
Kim Gordon
#99. No whimpering, madam! You can't have the joys of motherhood without some of its pangs! Think of your blessings, and don't be a coward! -
Kate Douglas Wiggin
#100. Our society encourages women to place a very high value on maternity as an essential part of female identity, both a high moral calling and the deepest source of satisfaction on earth. It's not easy to redefine motherhood as handing your baby over to a stranger.
Katha Pollitt
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