Being a mother Quote by Mary Blakely

“However global I strove to become in my thinking over the past twenty years, my sons kept me rooted to an utterly pedestrian view,intimately involved with the most inspiring and fractious passages in human development. However unconsciously by now, motherhood informs every thought I have, influencing everything I do. More than any other part of my life, being a mother taught me what it means to be human.”

Mary Blakely

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 3.4 out of 5 (6 ratings)

More by Mary Blakely

The truth invariably arrives several years after you need it.

Mary Blakely

Image

However diligent she may be, however dedicated, no mother can escape the larger influences of culture, biology,fate . . . until we can actually…

Mary Blakely

Image

In motherhood, where seemingly opposite realities can be simultaneously true, the role of nurturer invariably conflicts with the role of socializer. When trouble came…

Mary Blakely

Image

Mothers are likely to have more bad days on the job than most other professionals, considering the hours: round-the-clock, seven days a week, fifty-two…

Mary Blakely

Image

By now, legions of tireless essayists and op-ed columnists have dressed feminists down for making such a fuss about entering the professions and earning equal pay that everyone's attention has been distracted from the important contributions of mothers working at home. This judgment presumes, of course, that prior to the resurgence of feminism in the '70s, housewives and mothers enjoyed…

Mary Blakely

Families don't always realize that mother is exhausted, because mother is always exhausted. Exhausted is what looks normal.

Mary Blakely

Image

If my sons are to become the kind of men our daughters would be pleased to live among, attention to domestic details is critical.The…

Mary Blakely

Image

After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I'd read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers--especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a…

Mary Blakely

A "snapshot" feature in USA Today listed the five greatest concerns parents and teachers had about children in the '50s: talking out of turn, chewing gum in class, doing homework, stepping out of line, cleaning their rooms. Then it listed the five top concerns of parents today: drug addiction, teenage pregnancy, suicide and homicide, gang violence, anorexia and bulimia. We…

Mary Blakely

Most literature on the culture of adolescence focuses on peer pressure as a negative force. Warnings about the "wrong crowd" read like tornado alerts in parent manuals. . . . It is a relative term that means different things in different places. In Fort Wayne, for example, the wrong crowd meant hanging out with liberal Democrats. In Connecticut, it meant…

Mary Blakely

In the range of things toddlers have to learn and endlessly review--why you can't put bottles with certain labels in your mouth, why you…

Mary Blakely

Image

When trouble comes no mother should have to plead guilty alone. The pediatricians, psychologists, therapists, goat herders, fathers, and peer groups should all be…

Mary Blakely

Image

Explore all 34 Mary Blakely quotes

More Being a mother quotes

More than any other personality trait, my mother seemed to be ruled by anger and sadness. She seemed to hate being a mother. Watching her unhappiness as I grew up made me conclude that the answer was to try and be as unemotional as I could, which many therapists have taught me is a bad idea. It also made me…

Merrill Markoe

Women are scolded both for being mothers and for not being mothers, for wanting to eat their cake and have it too, and for…

Margaret Mead

Image

We help God's children best by providing ways to build faith in Jesus Christ and in His restored gospel when they are young.

Henry B. Eyring

Image

I can count all the ways in which being a mother has enriched my understanding of the world, of character, my sense of the…

Barbara Kingsolver

Image

I dig being a mother...

Whoopi Goldberg

Image

I’ve come to realize that being a mother makes me a better executive, because motherhood forces prioritization. Being a mom gives you so much…

Marissa Mayer

Image

“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 form of beauty, of divinity! To know that my body can not only form and bring another human being into the world, but that I…

C. JoyBell C

When you're pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again; yet after giving birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all sorts of dangers and disappearance, so you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out how to keep her close enough for comfort.…

Jodi Picoult

My mom is my hero. [She] inspired me to dream when I was a kid, so anytime anyone inspires you to dream, that's gotta…

Tim McGraw

Image

The work of a mother is hard, too often unheralded work. Please know that it is worth it then, now, and forever.

Jeffrey R. Holland

Image

The sort of the template of being a mother is that you're endlessly giving to the point of exhaustion. You know, that's amazing if you can do that, but for that to be seen as the norm of motherhood, that women are always supposed to give until they're exhausted, you know, to always take on all these burdens - and…

Caitlin Moran