Best Mother Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 39

“And, oh God, in my misspent youth as a housewife, I, too, used to bake bread, in those hectic and desolating days just prior to the woman's movement, when middle-class women were supposed to be wonderful wives and mothers, gracious hostesses.... I used to feel so womanly when I was baking my filthy bread.”

Source: Expletives Deleted: Selected Writings

“it's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes-- I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible”

Love Wanted Mother Girl Impossible Shoes Odd Bergman Impossible Love

Author:Gregory Corso

“[My mother told me:] "You must decide whether you want to get married someday, or have a career."... I set my sights on the career. I thought, what does any man really have to offer me?”

Men Want Doe Mother Careers Offers Married Sight Someday

Author:Annie Elizabeth Delany

“My mother saved our home with a minimum wage job. But in the 1960s, a minimum wage job would support a family of three above the poverty line. Not today. Not even close. I understood right then that people can work hard, they can play by the rules, and they can still take a hard smack.”

“Morality measured in centimeters: all mothers believe that only their daughters dance decently.”

Believe Mother Morality Daughter Dance Mother Daughter

Author:Jose Bergamin

“Single mothers have as much to teach their children as married mothers and as much love to share--maybe more. Yet their motives are often labeled selfish and single-minded--never mind all the babies brought into the world to snag husbands, "save" faltering marriages or produce heirs.”

World Mind Children Mother Teach Share Produce Baby Husband Married Selfish Motive Heirs Much Love Single Mother Faltering

Author:Anne Cassidy

“My father said he was going to write to the Jinzhou City Party Committee asking for permission to 'talk about love'...My mother supposed it was a bit like asking permission from the head of the family...the Communist Party was the new patriarch.”

Writing Said Mother Father Bits Party Cities Asking China Communist Permission Committees Communist Party Patriarch Asking Permission

Author:Jung Chang

“My grandmother's feet had been bound when she was two years old. Her mother...first wound a piece of white cloth about twenty feet long round her feet, bending all the toes except the big toe inward and under the sole. Then she placed a large stone on top to crush the arch.”

Years Firsts Long Two Bigs Mother White Pieces Feet Stones Twenties Bounds Rounds China Wounds Crush Grandmother Two Years Sole Inward Toes My Grandmother Arches Bending Two Year Olds

Author:Jung Chang

“In the summer after kindergarten, a friend introduced me to the joys of building plastic model airplanes and warships. By the fourth grade, I graduated to an erector set and spent many happy hours constructing devices of unknown purpose where the main design criterion was to maximize the number of moving parts and overall size. The living room rug was frequently littered with hundreds of metal “girders” and tiny nuts and bolts surrounding half-finished structures. An understanding mother allowed me to keep the projects going for days on end.”

“my belonging to relief society has renewed, strengthened, and committed me to be a better wife and mother and daughter of God. my heart has been enlarged with gospel understanding and with love of the Savior and what He's done for me. so to you, dear sisters, i say: come to relief society! it will fill your homes with love and charity; it will nurture and strengthen you and your families. your home needs your righteous heart.”

“When women reach the age of maturity, Mother Nature sometimes overworks their frustration to the point of irrationalism. Like themiddle-aged man...who finds himself looking longingly at a girl in her early twenties.”

Men Sometimes Age Mother Girl Women Twenties Maturity Frustration Middle Ages Mother Nature Overwork

Author:Mark Hanna

“In a famous Middletown study of Muncie, Indiana, in 1924, mothers were asked to rank the qualities they most desire in their children. At the top of the list were conformity and strict obedience. More than fifty years later, when the Middletown survey was replicated, mothers placed autonomy and independence first. The healthiest parenting probably promotes a balance of these qualities in children.”

Years Firsts Children Mother Desire Values Quality Study Balance Independence Lists Obedience Fifty Conformity Strict Autonomy Surveys Indiana

Author:Richard Louv

“As a child, our house had a backyard lined with roses tended vigilantly by my mother. So the fragrance fills me with nostalgia for my youth.”

Children Mother House Youth Rose Nostalgia Fragrance Backyards

Author:Thelma Golden

“Not rarely, and this is especially true of wives and mothers, the motive behind assuming a disproportionate share of work and responsibility is completely unselfish. We want to protect, to spare those of whom we are fond. We forget that, regardless of the motive, the results of such action are almost always destructive and unproductive.”

Want Action Mother Forget Results Behinds Responsibility Wife Share Protect Assuming Motherhood Motive Destructive Spares Unselfish Unproductive Wives And Mothers

Author:Hortense Odlum

“Did I ever tell my constituents that if they liked their plan they could keep it? I would have if I'd ever met anybody who liked his or her plan. But that was not my experience.”

“Most of us don't have mothers who blazed a trail for us--at least, not all the way. Coming of age before or during the inception of the women's movement, whether as working parents or homemakers, whether married or divorced, our mothers faced conundrums--what should they be? how should they act?--that became our uncertainties.”

Way Should Age Mother Parent Women Movement Married Uncertainty Coming Of Age Trails Divorced Inception Conundrums Homemaker Working Parents

Author:Anne Roiphe

“How deep is our desire to do better than our mothers--to bring daughters into adulthood strong and fierce yet loving and gentle, adventurous and competitive but still nurturing and friendly, sweet yet sharp. We know as working women that we can't quite have it all, but that hasn't stopped us from wanting it all for them.”

Knows Stills Mother Desire Strong Work Sweet Daughter Gentle Friendly Fierce Adulthood Adventurous Nurturing Working Women

Author:Anne Roiphe

“They want to play at being mothers. So let them. Expressing tenderness in their own way will not prevent girls from enjoying a successful career in the future; indeed, the ability to nurture is as valuable a skill in the workplace as the ability to lead.”

Way Want Play Mother Girl Enjoy Ability Careers Successful Skills Valuable Tenderness Nurture Workplace Being A Mother Successful Career

Author:Anne Roiphe

“I recall my mother asking in about 1946 what I was and I replied proudly that I was a professor. A decade later she repeated her question and I repeated my answer. "No promotion?" was her comment.”

Mother Answers Economy Asking Decades Comment Professors Recalls Promotion

Author:George Stigler

“You never know in retrospect whether you did or didn't do exactly the right thing, stay-at-home mothers, gone-away mothers, all ofus worry whether we should have done something differently than we did.”

Knows Should Done Home Mother Worry Gone Should Have Right Thing Retrospect Stay At Home Gone Away

Author:Hillary Clinton

“All my life I've felt like somebody's wife, or somebody's mother or somebody's daughter. Even all the time we were together, I never knew who I was. And that's why I had to go away. And in California, I think I found myself.”

Thinking Together Mother Found Felt Wife Daughter California Going Away

Author:Robert Benton

“Most baby books also tend to romanticize the mother who stays at home, as if she really spends her entire day doing nothing but beaming at the baby and whipping up educational toys from pieces of string, rather than balancing cooing time with laundry, cleaning, shopping and cooking.”

Ifs Book Home Mother Pieces Baby Cooking Educational Strings Shopping Toys Cleaning Doing Nothing Laundry Stay At Home Whipping

Author:Susan Chira

“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish ora German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making "ladies" dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”

“Current conflicts and guilt about being a woman who is a mother and a person in her own right are a socially defined malaise, notan individual problem.... The conflict is not between being a mother and having a career; it is between nineteenth-century ideas about children and today's ideas about women.”

Children Persons Ideas Problem Today Mother Individual Women Work Careers Century Conflict Guilt Currents Defined Men Women Being A Woman Nineteenth Century Being A Mother Malaise

Author:Sandra Scarr

“Ideas about mothers have swung historically with the roles of women. When women were needed to work the fields or shops, experts claimed that children didn't need them much. Mothers, who might be too soft and sentimental, could even be bad for children's character development. But when men left home during the Industrial Revolution to work elsewhere, women were "needed" at home. The cult of domesticity and motherhood became a virtue that kept women in their place.”

“Not until Freud's writings became popular did descriptions of infants center on relationships with their mothers. The idea that children have feelings of any lasting importance for their development is a very recent invention (or insight if you wish).”

Ifs Writing Children Ideas Feelings Mother Wish Development Importance Insight Invention Description Lasting Infant

Author:Sandra Scarr

“The time-use studies also show that employed women spend as much time as nonworking women in direct interactions with their children. Employed mothers spend as much time as those at home reading to and playing with their young children, although they do not, of course, spend as much time simply in the same room or house with the children.”

Children Use Shows Home Young Mother Courses Reading House Rooms Study Direct Interaction Employed Young Children

Author:Sandra Scarr

“Fortunately for common sense, psychological research has shown that babies with more than one attachment are less distressed whenmother leaves to go to work. They are more content and playful in the presence of other adults, meaning that they feel secure with people other than Mother.”

People Feels Mother Common Baby Research Adults Separation Common Sense Psychological Secure Attachment Bonding Psychological Research

Author:Sandra Scarr

“Given Freudian assumptions about the nature of children and the biological predestination of mothers, it is unthinkable for mothers voluntarily to leave their babies in others' care, without guilt about the baby's well-being and a sense of self-deprivation. Mothers need their babies for their own mental health, and babies need their mothers for their mental health--a reciprocal and symbiotic relationship.”

Needs Wells Children Self Care Mother Given Baby Guilt Mental Health Well Being Assumption Sense Of Self Unthinkable Deprivation Reciprocal Predestination

Author:Sandra Scarr

“Mothers have not always had the most important role in their children's upbringing, when they had other economic roles to play. Inpast centuries, fathers were the key parent in the upbringing of the next generation, because moral training, not emotional sensitivity, was thought to be central to successful child-rearing. Mothers were thought to corrupt their little ones with too much affection and not enough stern training.”

“Mothers and fathers act in mostly similar ways toward their young children. Psychologists are still highlighting small differencesrather than the overwhelming similarities in parents' behaviors. I think this is a hangover from the 1950s re-emergence of father as a parent. He has to be special. The best summary of the evidence on mothers and fathers with their babies is that young children of both sexes, in most circumstances, like both parents equally well. Fathers, like mothers, are good parents first and gender representatives second.”

“All we know is that the school achievement, IQ test score, and emotional and social development of working mothers' children are every bit as good as that of children whose mothers do not work.”

Knows Children School Mother Social Bits Emotional Development Achievement Tests Score Social Development Mother Child Test Scores

Author:Sandra Scarr

“When I feel like I'm not doing what I am supposed to as a mother, I will torture myself. I don't know how to deal with it. I find some consolation in the fact that all mommies feel it. If there was a way to cure mommy guilt, I would bottle it and be a bazillionaire.”

Ifs Knows Way Feels Facts Mother Deals Know How Guilt Cures Torture Bottles Consolation

Author:Angie Harmon

“A mother! What are we worth really? They all grow up whether you look after them or not.”

Looks Children Mother Grows Growing Up Motherhood

Book:The Man Who Loved Children

Source: The Man Who Loved Children

“Why is it every careerist tries to turn his mother into a Madonna--to prove his intellect is a virgin birth, papa had nothing to do with it? It's the sign of the misogynist.”

Trying Mother Turns Birth Prove Intellect Misogyny Virgins Papa Virgin Birth

Book:For Love Alone

Source: For Love Alone

“As I grew up I got cynical. I'd see Mother enthusiastic and involved with charlatans. Numerologists and astrologists who charged five hundred dollars for a 'reading' which was so vague you could twist the meaning any way you wanted.”

Way Wanted Mother Reading Five Grew Involved Grew Up Hundred Dollars Cynical Vague Twists Enthusiastic Charlatans

Book:Green Darkness

Source: Green Darkness

“I haven’t come from the typical path or background of someone who would make it to this level as a ballerina. When it came to my childhood-growing up in a single-parent home, often struggling financially-my mother definitely instilled in me and my siblings this strength, this will, to just continue to survive and succeed.”

Home Mother Parent Levels Struggle Growing Up Path Growing Childhood Havens Succeed Backgrounds Typical Sibling Ballerina Single Parent My Siblings Parents Home

Author:Misty Copeland

“Who has not watched a mother stroke her child's cheek or kiss her child in a certain way and felt a nervous shudder at the possessive outrage done to a free solitary human soul?”

Way Humans Children Soul Done Mother Certain Felt Family Kissing Nervous Cheeks Solitary Strokes Human Soul Outrage Possessive

Author:John Cowper Powys

“Operation Peter Pan spanned from 1960-62 whereby over 14,000 children were sent away from their families in Cuba, some never to reunite again. Pan Am flights took the children to Miami FL, 'Never-Never Land', and the children became known as the 'Peter Pans.' I wrote this song for my daughter, and it is sung for all the daughters and mothers, fathers and brothers who felt this pain of separation all because of governments and their politics.”

“Mother Liberty caresses with generous affections...[those] who, armed with the weapons of high-minded honesty,...have grasped that the freedom of each is rooted in the freedom of all.”

Mother Liberty Honesty Weapons Affection Generous Rooted Caress

Author:Emma Goldman

“Both at-home and working mothers can overmeet their mothering responsibilities. In order to justify their jobs, working mothers can overnurture, overconnect with, and overschedule their children into activities and classes. Similarly, some at-home mothers,... can make at- home mothering into a bigger deal than it is, over stimulating, overeducating, and overwhelming their children with purposeful attention.”

Children Home Jobs Mother Order Deals Attention Responsibility Class Activity Bigger Justify Overwhelming Mothering

Book:Your Maternity Leave

Source: Your Maternity Leave

“Keep telling yourself and others there are no supermoms, there are only wonderful mothers.”

Mother Wonderful Wonderful Mother

Book:Your Maternity Leave

Source: Your Maternity Leave

“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody "had about enough to live on," and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”

Men Years Wells Enough Young Mother Wealth Wife Fashion Daughter Hundred Dollars Dare Queens Forty Display Vulgar Alas Boston Victoria Young Ladies Shabby Wives And Mothers Plainness

Author:M. E. W. Sherwood

“A taxonomy of abilities, like a taxonomy anywhere else in science, is apt to strike a certain type of impatient student as a gratuitous orgy of pedantry. Doubtless, compulsions to intellectual tidiness express themselves prematurely at times, and excessively at others, but a good descriptive taxonomy, as Darwin found in developing his theory, and as Newton found in the work of Kepler, is the mother of laws and theories.”

Law Mother Certain Found Ability Students Theory Type Intellectual Strikes Developing Compulsion Impatient Newton Pedantry Kepler Taxonomy

Author:Raymond Cattell

“the first day i shot dope was on a sunday. i had just come home from church got mad at my mother cuz she got mad at me. u dig?”

Firsts Home Mother Church Shots Anger Mad Sunday Coming Home Dope Cuz

Author:Sonia Sanchez

“Women are taught that their main goal in life is to serve others--first men, and later, children. This prescription leads to enormous problems, for it is supposed to be carried out as if women did not have needs of their own, as if one could serve others without simultaneously attending to one's own interests and desires. Carried to its "perfection," it produces the martyr syndrome or the smothering wife and mother.”

Source: Toward a New Psychology of Women

“Have you ever been through a painful season in life and wished for something new, something fresh, or even something healing to come along? Take this journey with Robin Price, a widow and single mother with a big heart and passion for those closest to her as she wades through trying to live, let go, and love again. Wishing on Willows is a story of hope that will find you stepping up to the willow tree and daring to make wishes”

“Confession is something we will never outgrow, even if we become the saints God made us to be. Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa of Calcutta were revered even during their lifetime; but both made frequent use of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.”

Ifs Made Use Mother Lifetime Saint Confession Pope Sacraments Reconciliation Calcutta Teresa John Paul John Paul Ii Pope John Paul

Author:Donald Wuerl

“I guess a man's best friend is his mother.”

Men Mother Friendship Friends

Author:Vina Delmar

“[Michael] Brown's mom, Lesley McSpadden, is the latest African American mother whose tear-streaked face forces the nation to remember the name of yet another unarmed black teenager gunned down under questionable circumstances.”

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