Childcare Responsibilities Quotes

Caring for children has always been one of the deepest and most satisfying things that a human being does, and yet it is hard to keep a healthy attitude toward it in our competitive, outcome-oriented society.

All mothers are working mothers.

I find being a mother harder than I though it was going to be. That is a tremendous revelation for me personally. Much more time, more care, more attention and more effort needs to be spent on care for the children. That will save the world at large.

Were women meant to do everything - work and have babies?

A good mother remembers to serve fruit at breakfast, is always cheerful and never yells, manages not to project her own neuroses and inadequacies onto her children, is an active and beloved community volunteer. She remembers to make play dates, her children's clothes fit, she does art projects with them and enjoys all their games.

That's the main reason I gave up my career after John was born and I was pregnant with Andrew. I could not handle going away day after day. The thought of going away before they got up and coming back after they were in bed was intolerable.

Defining child care primarily as women's sphere reinforces the devaluing of women and prevents their equal access to power.

No one's raising children any more. To love a child, you've got to work for it. You have to change its diapers and feed it at night!

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.

Before, back in the '50s, women didn't have as many rights as men, so they had to be that stay-at-home wife and take care of the kids all day. But now, with marriage, it's a partnership. It's not like this old traditional marriage that it once was.

I have a two-year-old at home, and my whole life is - besides revolved around keeping this little person alive, just watching them on the stairs and eating food and everything of every minute of every day - you plan what time you're going to bed so that you can be your best self first thing in the morning.

First thing in the morning, we're really tired, and we look at each other and we wonder, 'Are we ever going to get sleep?' And yet, it doesn't matter if you don't get sleep. It's an honor to take care of them.

Since I had children I have taken huge amounts of time off. In a way it's a really good thing, in this show business especially, to have lots of private time, having lots of time to be in the world to observe people and read and take care of my kids helps me to come back into work with a thrill.

An imaginary baby is so much easier than a real baby. No diapers to change.

Even with flexible time off to vote, it's still difficult for our people to juggle work, polls, childcare, and other responsibilities.

I kept working during my campaign because I needed to feed my family. As a single mom of three kids, I have a lot of child care that I needed to juggle, and I was a first-time candidate.

When I knew I was going to be able to write full time, I wondered, "What's going to happen to the relationships within my family?" Are they going to change? Is it going to be the kind of deal where you say, "I can't take this! Get me out of here! I can't stand these screaming kids!" The way it turned out was, I was able to change the diapers okay, after I stuck the pin through my fingers a few times. I had a dawning realization that children are not particularly hard to deal with.

I took 18 months away to have my son, Joseph, and it was the biggest break I'd ever had in my working life of nearly 20 years.

One thing I always want to clear up was the notion that I 'took time off to have a baby.' A lot people leapt to that conclusion because becoming a parent happened to coincide with film roles tapering off.

All of these things we do without children, and suddenly we don't do them anymore, and it comes home to us in a real way, that it's very different to have the responsibility of a child.

Again, with two small children it's incredibly hard to commit yourself to anything because you're just getting interested in it and someone comes along and goes I want Thomas The Tank Engine on, and screams the place down until you put it on.

To have kids and not be there every night is tough.

I wanted to stay on TV because I've got kids who are school-aged, so I get to see them most days as opposed to going away for movies months and months at a time.

The kind of man who thinks that helping with the dishes is beneath him will also think that helping with the baby is beneath him, and then he certainly is not going to be a very successful father.

We [women] have borne and bred and washed and taught, perhaps to the age of six or seven years, the one thousand six hundred and twenty-three million human beings who are, according to statistics, at present in existence, and that ... takes time.