25 Greatest Feminist quotes about Motherhood

As a lot of the quotes below will show you, feminism and feminists can have a rather interesting relationship with motherhood. These feminist quotes about motherhood tell a story of an often unintentional struggle between being a mother and being the different things that a feminist is.

Feminist quotes about motherhood show that for many years, a woman who believes in and might be actively fighting for equality with men in any sphere of life might find herself in an interesting position if she decides to become a mother.

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The below feminist quotes about motherhood will explain why.

These feminist quotes also celebrate mothers who are feminist and look at the vital role of the mother in society!

Table of Contents

25 Feminism and motherhood quotes

“…matrophobia has impeded feminist engagements with mothering and created damaging divisions within feminism itself.” – Charlotte Beyer

Matrophobia is defined as the fear of becoming your own mother.

For some feminists, the goal of achieving equality with men or the ability to function in society as they please can become interrupted by trying not to take on the attributes or qualities of their mother that they see as negative.

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“Every mother is a working mother.”

Contrary to what some believe, whether you are working a job part time, full time, own or operate your own business or unemployed, as long as you are a mother, you are working everyday.

“Someone said once that not everyone with vocal chords is an opera singer. And not everyone with a womb needs to be a mother… When the pill came along we were able to give birth – to ourselves.” – Gloria Steinem

“Motherhood has a very humanising effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.” – Meryl Streep

“…the maternal archetype is harmful to feminism, because in advancing the construct of “motherhood” as a feminine universal, it denies women access to other identities.” – Lynn Stearney

Feminism is truly about a woman being able to pursue her dreams and self-actualise. It is about becoming the person that she always saw herself as becoming and changing that along the way as she sees fit without societal, political or economic obstruction.

By that definition, the existence of any archetype is indeed obstructive to feminism because an archetype seeks to put women in a box.

“My mother paid a high price for caring so much, yet being able to do so little about it. In this way, she led me toward an activist place where she herself could never go.” — Gloria Steinem

“Ending patriarchal domination of children, by men or women, is the only way to make the family a place where children can be safe, where they can be free, where they can know love” – bell hooks

bell hooks is one of my favourite feminists and her quotes are always some of my favourite feminist quotes. You will find some more of her quotes below.

“Be a full person. Motherhood is a glorious gift, but do not define yourself solely by motherhood. Be a full person. Your child will benefit from that.” – Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie

This is an important quote for all moms to reflect on.

“Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father.” – Gloria Steinem

This is one of those feminist quotes that emphasises the importance of balance in society and in the family as the foundation of society.

Children benefit from learning from both mother and father figures.

“I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.” — E. M. Forster

“The strongest lesson I can teach my son is the same lesson I teach my daughter: how to be who he wishes to be for himself. And the best way I can do this is to be who I am and hope that he will learn from this not how to be me, which is not possible, but how to be himself. And this means how to move to that voice from within himself, rather than to those raucous, persuasive, or threatening voices from outside, pressuring him to be what the world wants him to be.” – Audre Lorde

Let us not forget that boys need to learn how to function in the world too. Not just girls. Boys also need to be able to cook, clean and generally fend for themselves without the help of a woman. They need to be able to express emotion in a healthy way without fear of being ridiculed.

RELATED: Toxic masculinity

READ: How to raise your son to be the perfect gentleman

“Often men who have been emotionally neglected and abused as children by dominating mothers bond with assertive women, only to have their childhood feelings of being engulfed surface. While they could not ‘smash their mommy’ and still receive love, they find that they can engage in intimate violence with partners who respond to their acting out by trying harder to connect with them emotionally, hoping that the love offered in the present will heal the wounds of the past. If only one party in the relationship is working to create love, to create the space of emotional connection, the dominator model remains in place and the relationship just becomes a site for continuous power struggle.” – bell hooks

“Our mothers and grandmothers…moving to music not yet written.” – Alice Walker

“Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother.” – Oprah Winfrey

“What I increasingly felt, in marriage and in motherhood, was that to live as a woman and to live as a feminist were too different and possibly irreconcilable things.” – Rachel Cusk

“Right now, after giving birth, I really understand the power of my body… I just feel my body means something completely different. I feel a lot more confident about it. Even being heavier, thinner, whatever. I feel a lot more like a woman. More feminine, more sensual. And no shame.” – Beyoncé

“I wanted what we all want: everything. We want a mate who feels like family and a lover who is exotic, surprising. We want to be youthful adventurers and middle-aged mothers. We want intimacy and autonomy, safety and stimulation, reassurance and novelty, coziness and thrills. But we can’t have it all.” ― Ariel Levy

“Chosen motherhood is the real liberation. The choice to have a child makes the whole experience of motherhood different, and the choice to be generative in other ways can at last be made, and is being made by many women now, without guilt.” ― Betty Friedan

“Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.” – Alice Walker

It is important for kids to know that their mothers are not perfect. This gives them a true picture of humanity and also helps them to be more empathetic with others.

“In retrospect, perhaps the biggest reason my mother was cared for but not helped for twenty years was the simplest: Her functioning was not that necessary to the world.” – Gloria Steinem

“Usually adult males who are unable to make emotional connections with the women they choose to be intimate with are frozen in time, unable to allow themselves to love for fear that the loved one will abandon them. If the first woman they passionately loved, the mother, was not true to her bond of love, then how can they trust that their partner will be true to love. Often in their adult relationships these men act out again and again to test their partner’s love. While the rejected adolescent boy imagines that he can no longer receive his mother’s love because he is not worthy, as a grown man he may act out in ways that are unworthy and yet demand of the woman in his life that she offer him unconditional love. This testing does not heal the wound of the past, it merely reenacts it, for ultimately the woman will become weary of being tested and end the relationship, thus reenacting the abandonment. This drama confirms for many men that they cannot put their trust in love. They decide that it is better to put their faith in being powerful, in being dominant.” – bell hooks

A child’s relationship with their mother is likely to affect their adult relationships. That is why it is important for people to deal with any childhood trauma linked to their relationships with their parents.

“My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady, and the other was to be independent.” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“And the truth is, the ten or twenty minutes I was somebody’s mother were black magic. There is nothing I would trade them for. There is no place I would rather have seen.” ― Ariel Levy

“Many people oppose the idea of tax-funded public child care because they see it as an attempt by women to avoid parenting. They need to know that the extent to which the isolated parenting that women do in this society is not the best way to raise children or treat women who mother.” – bell hooks

The difficulties of motherhood are real and not an excuse. Mothers should not be expected to struggle if they can get help.

“In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.” – Alice Walker

This feminist quote speaks to that link between a mother and her child. It is a connection that exists for most people whereby when you lose your mother, you feel like you have lost your very anchor to the earth.