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Motherhood Quotes

Browse 1829 quotes about Motherhood.

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Motherhood Quotes

“Making a home, she realized immediately, was much more than having the dust cleared and the lawn trimmed. For years—decades, even—she and her brothers had taken for granted the way their mother tucked extra blankets around them on nights that turned especially cold or how their father set down his tools and bent over to look them in the eyes when they spoke. Or better yet, handed them a tool and let them work alongside him. As children, they had been oblivious to all their parents did—perfectly, contentedly oblivious. But she wasn’t anymore. She felt it all. Like a forehead kiss when thought to be sleeping, the love was there whether noticed or not. All give, no take. However, the thing about abundant love is that it needs somewhere to go.”

LoveHomeMotherFatherDaughterMotherhoodParentsChildGiveAbundant
Book:The Ocean's Daughter :
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“When did I lose that natural sense of accomplishment that came with everyday tasks? Was it upon the birth of baby number two, three, or four? Or did I retain it even through my sixth pregnancy, when I bleached everything in sight, washing my cotton nightgown so frequently that the bright bluebell pattern faded to a dull gray? To this day, I can recall the fresh scent of the bleached and sun-dried gown and bedsheets. It wasn’t until I’d gotten through a difficult labor and delivery, and my head hit the hospital pillow, that I realized I’d attempted to replicate the smell of hospital linens—the one place I was able to get some rest.”

HomeCreativityMotherhoodSimple Things
Book:Called to Be Creative: A Guide to Reigniting Your Creativity
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“The civil law, as well as nature herself, has always recognized a wide difference in the respective spheres and destinies of man and woman. Man is, or should be, woman's protector and defender...The constitution of the family organization, which is founded in the divine ordinance, as well as in the nature of things, indicates the domestic sphere as that which properly belongs to the domain and functions of womanhood. The harmony, not to say identity, of interests and views which belong, or should belong, to the family institution is repugnant to the idea of a woman adopting a distinct and independent career from that of her husband...The paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfil the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator. 1872”

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Author:Joseph P. Bradley
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“But why should she not announce to the family that she was going to change, was in the process of changing? She could not. They would see it as a claim on their attention, their compassion. (...) (That was not how people changed; they didn't change themselves: you got changed by being made to live through something, and then you found yourselve changed.)”

ChildrenChangeFamilyWifeMotherhoodMetamorphose
Book:The Summer Before the Dark
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“If you claim to want a family, then you must seek a woman who wants a family. She may not say so at 22, but does she have the signs of a future mother? Place a baby in her arms. The more she looks at it and the less she looks at you holding the baby, the better. Watch her around children. Watch her around her grandparents. Watch her behavior when a friend is ill. Watch her with her dog. If a woman can dress up a dog and cry at its vet visits, she will cry for a child and already wants one, even if she doesn’t know it yet. She just has not found a man to lead her to motherhood, one who satisfied her primal standards.”

DatingMotherhood
Book:Masculinity Amidst Madness
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“When you're a passenger on an airplane, you are told that in the event of a change in cabin pressure, you should put your mask on first and then assist your children. You can't help them if you are unconscious. A similar principle applies with your day to day health. Mothers tend to put others first. While this is admirable in one sense, it is not a good practice in the long run. You cannot strike a balance between your needs and the needs of your family if you are constantly run down. Stop abusing your body.”

StressMotherhoodBurnout
Author:Kathleen Kendall-Tackett Ph.D
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“They wanted the real mother, the blood mother, the great womb, mother of fierce compassion, a woman large enough to hold all the pain, to carry it away. What we needed was someone who bled, someone deep and rich as a field, a wide-hipped mother, awesome, immense, women like huge soft couches, mothers coursing with blood, mother's big enough, wide enough for us to hide in, to sink down to the bottom of of, mother's who would breathe for us when we could not breathe anymore, who would fight for us, who would kill for us, die for us.”

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Book:White Oleander
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“Grief is shameless; it refuses to be ignored. If you let it have its way, it becomes fatal. If you try to remove it piece by piece, it only multiplies like a tumor. And if you try to fight it, it becomes like quicksand; you try to claw your way back to the surface, and for a second you feel the fresh air against your face, thinking you've survived, only to be pulled fiercely back down again, swallowed whole, nothing left.”

LifePainDeathMotherSufferingGriefMissingMotherhoodMissing SomeoneLebanonAccidentBeirutArabMiddle Eastern
Book:Crossing
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“I don't think I ever fully understood before now the old saying that goes: "A mother's heart loves her young one until he grows; her ill one until he heals; and her traveler until he returns." I have experienced all kinds of waiting; I've waited for my young to grow and the sick to heal, but I am still waiting on my little traveler and I do not know how long it will be until I see him again.”

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Book:Crossing
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“I couldn't help concluding that disabled people with adequate resources and support are, as a group, particularly equipped to weather the adjustment to parenthood. Physical weakness and change do not scare us as they do others. We have spent years decoupling joy from physical or mental function.”

CareIdentitySocial JusticeMotherhoodParenthoodDisabilityAbleismReproductive JusticeBody PoliticsDisabled Parents
Book:Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World
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“When I was little my balloon burst as we were walking home from a children’s party one afternoon. I saw a balloon about once a year so it was a huge loss. Mum bent down, picked the flaccid piece of rubber off the pavement, stretched it tight across her lips and twisted it as she sucked in her breath. Then she tied the old piece of string tightly around the little piece of rubber dangling from her lips and pulled a miniature balloon out of her mouth. She said the balloon had had a baby, it was a baby balloon. I stopped crying and trailed it after me all the way home. A baby balloon.”

LoveCareChildhoodParentingMotherhoodInnocenceMother And ChildBalloon
Book:To Throw Away Unopened
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“I have started looking into the mirror more often. I have pigmentation, a few blemishes. My body never looked like this, never felt like this- heavy, tired, exhausted, swollen, achy, weak. There are a million reasons to not like myself right now. But one reason that outgrows all these emotions- I am the first home to my baby. A woman can dislike her body, can she really dislike her baby’s abode? Therefore, I love the way it’s swelling- it gives my baby’s tiny arms and legs more space. I love the way it’s pigmenting, it gives my baby better protection from the sun. I love the way it’s exhausted, it prioritises baby’s nutritional requirements over mine. And I would love all the stretch marks in the end too. That’s my baby’s name plate at his first home.”

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Author:Jasleen Kaur Gumber
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“A woman's body is a sacred temple. A work of art, and a life-giving vessel. And once she becomes a mother, her body serves as a medicine cabinet for her infant. From her milk she can nourish and heal her own child from a variety of ailments. And though women come in a wide assortment as vast as the many different types of flowers and birds, she is to reflect divinity in her essence, care and wisdom. God created a woman's heart to be a river of love, not to become a killing machine.”

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Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
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“In thirty years, the narratives of my sons will be different from mine. Because today I am telling my truth and standing in a pool of my trauma, making myself uncomfortable and, hopefully, making you uncomfortable too. Today, I am making it known that when color is clear, when race and inequity are not ignored, and when our differences are not only acknowledged but championed as one of the most valuable aspects of life, we can work together to make meaningful strides toward true social justice.”

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Author:Bellamy Shoffner
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“How apart she felt, how apart she had felt for years, and she wished it was a feeling she could get used to. But it wasn’t. One by one, everyone else her age had married and had children, yet for her, the years of her twenties had slipped away, waving at her like hands from a leaving train. As they all moved on, she was left standing on the platform, absolutely alone, surrounded only by the smoke that stung her eyes and throat. It was no different now.”

WaitingMarriageLonelinessLonelyAgingMotherhoodAbandonedLeft BehindSingle LifeSingleness
Book:The Ocean's Daughter :
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“In fact I've got to thinking not that there's a baby growing inside me, but that there's another heart inside. Lying very still on my back at night, I can feel it beating away. Zig, zig, zig, zig, goes the tiny heart, beating at a faster pace and to a different rhythm than my own. Holding my breath, I have to lie completely still in order to sense the tenuous vibrations. Zig, zig, zig, zig, the fragile and busy motion of this second heart.”

LoveSelfIdentityMotherhoodPregnancy
Book:I'll Go On
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“I don't want to be a mother. I want to be a writer. I want to be taken seriously. I want money. I want more time. I want to lose weight. I want to be beautiful. I want a day completely to myself, though I don't even remember what I used to do with them, when days to myself were a thing I had.”

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Book:And Now We Have Everything: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready
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“When I fell, I instantly had my "Oh, That's Why" realization and I would have known not to rollerskate through the house again, even if I had been alone. There is a loss of dignity that a child experiences when they've just suffered the consequences of something they were warned against by the Wiser One while the Wiser One gloats for being wiser, especially when the gloating is packaged as anger. But I was too young to examine gloating or anger or wisdom and she, the mother of a timid child who rarely got hurt, had not had many opportunities to consider the vulnerable state of an injured kid. We were both green and hurt and scared in this new way, together. As an adult, it helps me to view my mom as a singular woman beyond her role in my life, but also, as a child herself who does not, in fact, possess knowledge of all things. Our mother-daughter relationship was this huge, life-altering thing that we are both experiencing for the first time, at the same rate and we don't have answers, we only have things that we're trying out. This was true for my grandmother too; she was learning to be alive for the first time.”

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Book:Handsome Vanilla
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“Marilla looked at her with a tenderness that would never have been suffered to reveal itself in any clearer light than that soft mingling of fireshine and shadow. The lesson of a love that should display itself easily in spoken word and open look was one Marilla could never learn. But she had learned to love this slim, gray-eyed girl with an affection all the deeper and stronger from its very undemonstrativeness. Her love made her afraid of being unduly indulgent, indeed. She had an uneasy feeling that it was rather sinful to set one's heart so intensely on any human creature as she had hers set on Anne, and perhaps she performed a sort of unconscious penance for this by being stricter and more critical than if the girl had been less dear to her.”

LoveEmpathyShameMotherhoodAuthoritarianismLegalismEmotional NeglectStrictness
Book:Anne of Green Gables
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“Marilla looked at her with a tenderness that would never have been suffered to reveal itself in any clearer light than that soft mingling of fireshine and shadow. The lesson of a love that should display itself easily in spoken word and open look was one Marilla could never learn. But she had learned to love this slim, gray-eyed girl with an affection all the deeper and stronger from its very undemonstrativeness. Her love made her afraid of being unduly indulgent, indeed. She had an uneasy feeling that it was rather sinful to set one's heart so intensely on any human creature as she has hers set on Anne, and perhaps she performed a sort of unconscious penance for this by being stricter and more critical than if the girl had been less dear to her.”

LoveEmpathyShameMotherhoodLegalismEmotional NeglectStrictness
Book:Anne of Green Gables
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