#motherhood

The Vatican won't prosecute pedophile priests but I decide I'm not ready for motherhood and it's condemnation for me? These are the same people that won't support national condom distribution that PREVENTS teenage pregnancy. ↗

— Sonya Renee Taylor

#catholic #feminism #feminist #motherhood #organized-religion

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

Having kids — the responsibility of rearing good, kind, ethical, responsible human beings — is the biggest job anyone can embark on ↗

— Maria Shriver

#ethics

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

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

It is vital that there is a narrator figure whom people believe. That's why I never do commercials. If I started saying that margarine was the same as motherhood, people would think I was a liar. ↗

— David Attenborough

#commercials #figure #i #liar #motherhood

The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute. ↗

— Honore de Balzac

#detail #devotion #finds #involves #minute

The best thing that could happen to motherhood already has. Fewer women are going into it. ↗

— Victoria Billings

#best #could #fewer #going #happen

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. ↗

— Barbara Ehrenreich

#about #ago #brash #career #century

I never really wanted kids. I didn't not want them, but motherhood just wasn't something that pulled at me. ↗

— Edie Falco

#just #kids #me #motherhood #never