There’s in a miss and in a Mrs.A difference that no one ought to missFor their bodies and hearts are scripts apartTheir journeys and worries are each a loneI’ll speak for the Mrs. since me...

Mothers give us life, love, and the heartfelt inclination to cry, ‘I want my mommy,’ no matter how old we get.

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...

In much the same way, motherhood has become the essential female experience, valued above all others: giving life is where it’s at. “Pro-maternity” propaganda has rarely been so extreme. They must be joking, the modern...

If you have three or four –or more – chickabiddies, you’re dancing on a hot griddle all the time. You don’t have time to think about anything else. And if you’ve only got one or...

Why had no one told me that my body would become a battlefield, a sacrifice, a test? Why did I not know that birth is the pinnacle where women discover the courage to become mothers?...

One thing is certain: When the time has come, nothing which is man made will subsist. One day, all human accomplishments will be reduced to a pile of ashes. But every single child to whom...

And now the bad Mommy was here – outside his window. With a little whimper, he ran back to the bed, jumped in, and pulled the covers over his head.Good Mommy was gone now…and bad...

Breastfeeding is a beautiful thing, one of the most beautiful things that exist in nature. Think about how a woman can literally feed her baby with her body! In my eyes, this is a certain...

Reflection can be painful, but reflection can also be productive.

Motherhood furnishes us with, not just giving life — but, partaking of life’s learning.

I know less than you thought, but more than you realize.

snips and snails and puppydog tails.

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...

There are things that mothers can manage best when they do their duty.

(24/7) once you sign on to be a mother, that’s the only shift they offer.

The natural state of motherhood is unselfishness. When you become a mother, you are no longer the center of your own universe. You relinquish that position to your children.

Mama said it’s probably because of Suzanne, and that you are never the same after a child dies. That made me wonder what she was like before Clover died, because I don’t think I really...

It’s tough being AWESOME all the time, but the kids need someone to look up to!

What is success, after all, but doing what you really want to do?

Aku ibunya, ya dari sekian anak. Jadi kan tahu, yang satu butuh apa, yang lain memerlukan apa lain lagi. Adil kan tidak berarti sama rata sama rasa. (Yuniati, p.115)

Every woman is a gift when she becomes a daughter, Every woman is beautiful when she becomes a lover, Every woman is special when she becomes a wife, Every woman is a god when she...

…after all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us, helped us with homework, kissed and hugged us, poured her love into us. That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing...

I didn’t say any of this to my sister. How I saw her being broken into mediocrity and motherhood; her body broken and then her mind – or did her mind go first, it’s sort...

Although I wasn’t there to bear witness, I imagine Lot’s wife scanned the masses for her children. Perhaps she sought out the curves of their mouths and the shapes of their faces, trying to memorize...

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...

Women are responsible for the people in the family having pants.

She had had her momentary flowering, a year, perhaps, of wildrose beauty, and then she had suddenly swollen like a fertilized fruit and grown hard and red and coarse, and then her life had been...

Maybe what my sister wanted was to stay here and get married and have a family.Maybe that was her color of extraordinary.

Such a mysterious business, motherhood. How brave a woman must be to embark on it.

I snap and storm around and then spend long nights thinking of the most damaged adults I know and wondering if my particular brand of maternal fuckups are how they ended up like that.

I wrote about the rush of love, the changing of a woman into a mother—a process that happened without conscious thought, as if the heart knew what the mind and body took time to learn....

I cannot admit this out loud. In the first place, we are expected to be supermoms these days, instead of admitting that we have flaws. It is tempting to believe that all mothers wake up...

A mother, a real mother with a little child, thinks day and night about the welfare of the little one in her arms. A mother knows what dangers the child will have to encounter as...

I think being a mother is the cruelest thing in the world.

A mother knows what her child’s gone through, even if she didn’t see it herself.

Maggie had learned a long time ago that each day with a child was filled with two kinds of battles: those that won the war, and those that did not.

It’s 5:22pm you’re in the grocery checkout line. Your three-year-old is writhing on the floor, screaming, because you have refused to buy her a Teletubby pinwheel. Your six-year-old is whining, repeatedly, in a voice that...

Why did they have kids then? Why did they have children if they didn’t want to love and nurture them? Weren’t you supposed to cherish every moment you got with your kids? The wives sounded...

I used to fear their deaths–the car! the dog! the sea! the germ!–until I realized it need never be a problem: on the trolley, on the way to the mortuary, I would put my hands...

my mother, poor fish,wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times aweek, telling me to be happy: “Henry, smile!why don’t you ever smile?”and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was...

A true mother is known for her compassion, love and passion; she is everly dedicated to her calling.

The children seemed to cast their Precursors like shadows about the house, sometimes tangibly, in the sound of a voice, sometimes by suggestion, because it was striking the hour for their return from a walk,...

Hormones can determine what the brain is interested in doing. In that context the law of nature is that women come to life to be a mother. This is the strongest instinct of most women...

You know what they say – sleep is the mother’s drug of choice, but like heroin, only the very rich and the very poor can afford it.

Sometimes it’s hard to see the rainbow when there’s been endless days of rain.

God gives us these raw, little people, and we have to form them and mold them and teach them how to operate in society. And if we get a glimpse of all the ugliness that...

A few days after we came home from the hospital, I sent a letter to a friend, including a photo of my son and some first impressions of fatherhood. He responded, simply, ‘Everything is possible...

I hope someday she meets just the right man and has babies – a whole passel of babies, more than I could have – so she understands how it kills me now that she won’t...

For too many women in America are becoming sick with exhaustion and stress as they try to do things that can’t be — shouldn’t be — done. Too many are eaten up by resentment toward...