#motherhood

Vous travaillez pour l'armee, madame?' (You are working for the army?), a Frenchwoman said to me early in the Vietnam war, on hearing I had three sons. ↗

— Adrienne Rich

#childbearing #children #motherhood #right-wing-politics #war

For a long time, I tried to make my ilfe work, to make our family work. I got tired, though. Five children wears you out until the only thing left inside you, the only thing you've got to give, is a memory of what you thought you'd be. ↗

— Amy Franklin-Willis

#family

...there is still a kind of unique loneliness to child rearing for women. We so often do it in isolation. Add to the fact that in our competitive, perfectionist culture, in which the price woman are required to pay for freedom still seems to be martyrdom, almost everyone lies about motherhood. Part of that lying is loyalty - I can't let on that my kid is the only one on the playground who can't read or play the piano - and part of it is self-protection, since we've made hyper-motherhood a measure of female success. The preferred answer to the question "How are you?" is always "Fine," and the answer to the question "How are the kids?" is supposed to be "Great!" That's true even if the accurate answers would be "terrible" and "a mess." I think it produces its own kind of desperation, especially for women, who yearn to be emotionally open. ↗

— Anna Quindlen

#freedom

Motherhood is a Sisyphean task. You finish sewing one seam shut, and another rips open. I have come to believe that this life I'm wearing will never really fit. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#life

To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours, and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, boots, cakes and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can imagine how this can exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? 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. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#motherhood #womanhood #imagination

I sighed and deleted the message, imagining the dirty clothes multiplying like rabbits, because that’s what they do when I’m not around. ↗

— Alex Owens

#motherhood #sarcasm #imagination

She [my mother] was the force around which our world turned. My mother was propelled through the universe by the brute force of reason. She was the judge in all our arguments. One disapproving word from her was enough to send us off to hide in a corner, where we would cry and fantasize our own martyrdom. And yet. One kiss could restore us to princedom. Without her, our lives would dissolve into chaos. ↗

— Nicole Krauss

#love

For men, the answer was always the same and never farther away than the nearest sword. For a woman, a mother, the way was stonier and harder to know. ↗

— George R.R. Martin

#ice-and-fire #motherhood #men

It would seem that something which means poverty, disorder, and violence every single day should be avoided entirely, but the desire to beget children is a natural urge. ↗

— Phyllis Diller

#motherhood #parents #nature

I remember the shift 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