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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #motherhood
I wondered if perhaps I'd gone mad. I had known this man less than twenty-four hours and already I wanted to raise his children. ↗
The Mother of God is asked to 'pray zealously to her Son and her God,' and the words of the psalm are put into her mouth:'My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior. for He hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.' It is because of her child that she says this, He will magnify her ('For He that is mighty hath done to me great things'): He is her glory. Any woman could say it. For everyone of them, God is in her child. Mothers of great men must have been familiar with this feeling, but then, all women are mothers of great men-it isn't their fault if life disappoints them later. ↗
#life
Only a woman can carry in her body an eternal being which bears the very image of God. Only she is the recipient of the miracle of life. Only a woman can conceive and nurture this life using her own flesh and blood, and then deliver a living soul into the world. God has bestowed upon her alone a genuine miracle — the creation of life, and the fusing of an eternal soul with mortal flesh. This fact alone establishes the glory of motherhood. Despite the most creative plans of humanist scientists and lawmakers to redefine the sexes, no man will ever conceive and give birth to a child. The fruitful womb is a holy gift given by God to women alone. This is one reason why the office of wife and mother is the highest calling to which a woman can aspire. This is the reason why nations that fear the Lord esteem and protect mothers. They glory in the distinctions between men and women, and attempt to build cultures in which motherhood is honored and protected. ↗
#men
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. ↗
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) ↗
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. ↗
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. ↗
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. ↗
