Michelle Obama Quotes

Working mothers do an hour more per day than working fathers do and working mothers do on average an hour more per day with the kids than working fathers do.

Some women work while they are pregnant, but not me. That was a choice I had made. That's when I took a break. Men can work at whatever stage they are; whether they turn daddy, they still have their own thing. But women can't afford that because by being mothers, they have to be there for their kids.

I don't have the hard everyday life that so many working mothers face.

I think for all the women who are working parents it's difficult to balance your work-life and your home-life. You make obvious sacrifices because you really just want to be with your family.

Women face enough pressures and challenges in a workplace that is still depressingly biased against a female's success. Add to that, the fact that the very thing many women I know find most rewarding (having kids) is now frowned upon.

I think obviously we need to work harder at extending the women's movement. How do women who have prepared for careers and have a child get back to the workplace and still fulfill maternal roles?

Well, I took a sabbatical. I walked away from shooting movies because I couldn't handle the travel. I'm a single parent. I had young kids, and I found that keeping in touch with them from hotel rooms and airports wasn't working for me. So I stopped.

If it hadn't been for the rise of the working woman's wardrobe, I never would have found the time to sneak a kid in.

We are still behaving as if a worker really doesn't have a family because the work pattern really was meant for men who really were the financial support but weren't looking after their families. We need to change this, and we can easily do that.

Why is it our business whether Sarah Palin returned to her job as governor three days after her son was born, or three months? Is there a right answer?

I've been working some really long hours for the last five or six years. Anybody who works on series television knows, and especially women because women spend probably two hours more than the guys with all their hair and makeup crap.

We don't have enough support for maternal leave and the kinds of things that some of the European countries do. So we still make it hard on women to go into the work force and feel that they can be good at work but then doing the most important job, which is raising your children in a responsible and positive way.

As tough as juggling the demands of motherhood and being a Senator can be, I’m hardly alone or unique as a working mother, and my children only make me more committed to doing my job and standing up for hardworking families everywhere. For me to find out that there are issues with the United States Senate’s rules where I may not be able to vote or bring my child onto the floor of the Senate when I need to vote because we ban children from the floor, I thought, ‘Wow, I feel like I’m living in the 19th century instead of the 21st".

There's sacrifice involved. Either you're going to work a lot and not get to spend time with your kid, or you're going to spend a ton of time with your kid, and you're sacrificing your career.

It would be a tragic mistake for Congress ever to adopt any public or tax policy which encourages mothers to assign child care to others and enter the labor force.

When I wrote 'Lean In,' some people argue that I did not spend enough time writing about the difficulties women face when they don't have a partner. They were right.

I think the hardest part of being a working mom is that I miss my kids a lot.

At an ERA fundraiser years ago, one of my favorite buttons was the one that said, 'Every mother is a working mother.'

I think there's a contempt for care work and caregiving in this country that seeps into how we think about mothers, professional workers who are mothers.

There's this idea that motherhood is as American as apple pie, but yet we don't support it with any government assistance.

My greatest mistake? I once took a three-day maternity leave. I had my daughter on a Wednesday, and then went back to the office on the Monday to sack a manager.

The phrase 'working mum' makes me nervous.

A couple of female standup comics I know refer to their kids as their Little Career Killers. I was like, I really do not want to feel that way.

A mother should never be blamed for working.

I have the greatest respect for working mothers.