Bad Mother Quotes

In reality the world is as full of bad mothers as it is of bad fathers, and it is not the motherless children who become delinquent but the fatherless ones. ~ Louis De Bernieres

Not setting the 'proper and accepted' religious example for them conjured up images of the bad mother, the worst mother. Yet wouldn't the example of a mother being true to her journey, taking a stand against patriarchy, and questing for spiritual meaning and wholeness, even when it meant exiting circles of orthodoxy, be a worthwhile example? ~ Sue Monk Kidd

I don't beat myself up any more about going to work. It doesn't mean I'm being a bad mother just because I want to go and do my job sometimes. ~ Kate Winslet

I didn't feel like a slut, a bad mother, a terrible person. I didn't worry about my nudity or if he liked what I was doing. This shit was natural, like I was born to be in Joe Callahan's bed and it was natural to him too, like Joe Callahan was born to be in me. ~ Kristen Ashley

Social expectations about what constitutes a good or a bad mother haunt every decision, and the rise of the parental advice industry ensures that moms and dads feel inadequate at every turn. ~ Jessica Valenti

A bride who is bullied by her mother-in-law will herself become a bad mother-in-law. ~ Sin-Itiro Tomonaga

Freud, Sigmund: A man so dissatisfied with his own mother and father that he devoted his life to convincing everyone who would listen - or better still, talk - that their parents were just as bad. ~ John Ralston Saul

Good mothers make all kinds of choices. Making a decision that might sound selfish does not make a woman a bad mother. ~ Jada Pinkett Smith

It seems highly unlikely that any mother operating within patriarchy has not received sufficiently stressful messaging about her "duties." But the bad mother is patriarchy's saving throw, its ultimate loophole; by moving the blame for male violence back one generation, it makes guilty parties out of the women who are its victims. ~ Sady Doyle

You get Kandinsky, a bad mother, all them pick-up-sticks pictures ... ~ Donald Barthelme

It used to be the one or the other, right? You were the 'bad girl' or the 'good girl' or the 'bad mother' or 'the good mother,' 'the horrible businesswoman who eschewed her children' or 'the earth mother who was happy to be at home baking pies,' all of that stuff that we sort of knew was a lie. ~ Annette Bening

I lay there and I thought of what that teacher said, and of all the things I'd been: child, rebellious teenager, runaway, whore, lover, bad mother, bad wife. I'm not sure if I can remake myself as a good wife, but a good mother - that I have to try. ~ Paula Hawkins

Aborting my baby is the most serious of the many maternal crimes I tally in my head when I am at my lowest, when the Bad Mother label seems to fit best. Rocketship was my baby. And I killed him. ~ Ayelet Waldman

Admitting that this job isn't always easy doesn't make somebody a bad mother. At least, it shouldn't. We're all on this ride together. We are not the first ones to ever accidentally tell our children to shut up, or wonder - just for a moment - what it would be like if we'd never had children. We aren't the first mothers to feel overwhelmed and challenged and not entirely fulfilled by motherhood. And we certainly won't be the last. Nothing can be lost by admitting our weaknesses and imperfections to one another. In fact, quite the opposite is true. We will be better mothers, better wives, and better women if we are able to finally drop the act and get real. Who are we pretending for, anyway? ~ Jill Smokler

The 'good' mother, with her fixed smile, her rigidity, her goody-goody outlook, her obsession with unnecessary hygiene, is in fact a fool. It is the 'bad' mother, unafraid of a joke and a glass of wine, richly self-expressive, scornful of suburban values, who is, in reality, good. ~ Rachel Cusk

The outrageous madonna/whore duality that we mock in Women's Studies 101 has its subtle, and very insidious, expression in the good/bad mother paradigm that we grapple with every day of our lives. ~ Shannon Drury

Fear is at the root of so many of the barriers that women face. Fear of not being liked. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear of drawing negative attention. Fear of overreaching. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am in fact a bad mother. I love my husband more than I love my children. ~ Ayelet Waldman

As it was, being a bad mother was child's play compared to being a good mother, which was an incessant struggle, a lose-lose situation 24 hours a day; long after the kids were in bed the torment of what I did or didn't do during those hours we were trapped together would scourge my soul. ~ Mary Kubica

CHILD: Mummy, who was Hitler? MOTHER: Hitler? CHILD: Yeah. Who was he? MOTHER: Erm, he was a very bad man from a long time ago. CHILD: Oh. How bad? MOTHER: He was like ... he was like Voldemort. CHILD: Oh! That's really, really bad. Mother: Yes. CHILD: (Pause) So, did Harry Potter kill Hitler, too? ~ Jen Campbell

And that's the insult of it, how always it comes back to a woman being a "good" mother in the world's eyes or a "bad" mother, how everything in a woman's life is funneled through her body between her legs. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

I haven't left a mark on the world, but is that so bad? Considering how deeply the world has marked me? ~ Margaret Stohl

It made him feel indispensable and needed - even if the fact that Jocelyn didn't appear to care wheather he slept in her daughter's bed or not did underscore that Clary's mother apparently regarded him as about sexually threatening as a goldfish. ~ Cassandra Clare

Mother's Day is a torment if your mother is dead. Valentine's Day is a torment if you don't got one. And at some point in our lives, we will be tormented by Valentine's Day even if we're relatively lucky in love. ~ Dan Savage

One of the most difficult things to say to another person is, I hope that you will love me for no good reason. But it is what we all want and rarely dare to say to one another – to our children, to our parents and mates, to our friends, and to strangers. Especially to strangers, who have neither good nor bad reasons to love us. And it's why we tell each other stories that we pray will be transformed in the telling by that angel on the roof, made believable and about us all, no matter who we are to one another and who we are not. ~ Russell Banks

Every day I see Jesus Christ in all his distressing disguises. ~ Mother Teresa

There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him. ~ C.S. Lewis

In the beginning, I was very punk. I was very revolutionary. When they asked me to do Givenchy, I didn't want to do it. My friends pushed me. But the situation with my family was so bad financially. I really did it because, when they told me how much they would pay me, I saw that my sisters and my mom could have a better life. ~ Riccardo Tisci

It's complicated, being an American, Having the money and the bad conscience, both at the same time. ~ Louis Simpson

In each century since the beginning of the world wonderful things have been discovered. In the last century more amazing things were found out than in any other century before. In this new century hundreds of things still more astounding will be brought to light. At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they see it can be done- then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. One of these things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts- just mere thoughts- are as powerful as electric batteries- as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.
The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett
1911 ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

Mathematics is a terrible calling. It's as merciless as gravity. It swallows the soul. There's a point near a black hole called the last stable orbit. Once you drop below that radius, no force in the universe can stop you falling all the way in. That's what happened to your mother – she swam too close to theory, fell below the last stable orbit. ~ Alastair Reynolds

The '67 model was the last good Volks - and the young men knew it. "Hepburn, they stole our fucking car." "Oh Hank, surely not!" "It's gone. It was sitting there." I pointed. "Now it's gone." "Hank, what will we do?" "We'll take a taxi. I really feel bad." "Why do people do that?" "They have to. It's their way out." We ~ Charles Bukowski

A lie for a good reason is better than a truth that destroys. ~ Pawan Mishra

Failure to commit is as bad as failure to start. ~ David Hieatt

When we as a society begin to value mothers as the givers and supporters of life, then we will see social change in ways that matter. ~ Ina May Gaskin

Indira Gandhi had been this very powerful, dominating, ambiguous mother figure. Ambiguous because she was tyrannical, she had imposed ... she had suspended Indian democracy for a few years but she also was the woman who had defeated Pakistan in war at a time when most male politicians in India had secretly feared fighting that war, so that here in India even today Indira Gandhi is called by Indian nationalists the only man ever to have governed India. ~ Aravind Adiga

Making bad decisions and choosing the wrong partner can ruin your life for a long time, perhaps forever. ~ Karrine Steffans

I don't want to do an edgy show, I didn't want bad language. I think edginess is the new hackiness. ~ Zach Galifianakis

I started cooking from watching my mom. My mother was a really, really great cook. ~ Coolio

Saige, Mother is ... " I briefly close my eyes and swallow, clearing my mouth from saliva. "Mother is dead. ~ Jada Berglund

Ideas are impressed on the subconscious through the medium of feeling. No idea can be impressed on the subconscious mind until it is felt, but once felt - be it good, bad or indifferent - it must be expressed. Feeling is the one and only medium through which ideas are conveyed to the subconscious. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

Change is neither good nor bad. It's just change. Frightening, but survivable. ~ Patricia Briggs

Mother Mary," he breathes. "How you shine."
I shake my head. "The light is yours. Right now you can't see it because you sit in shadow, but all I do is reflect you. ~ Ann Aguirre

He put his feet down into the little puddle she'd chosen. They were huge next to hers, and they both stared for a moment. Then he moved in one smooth motion to her rock. // "What are you doing?" she gasped, just like the heroine in a bad play. ~ Eloisa James

I wrote a fair amount of poetry in college. It was really, really bad. I mean, bad. And that's how I found out - by doing it. ~ John McPhee

When I put some Tabasco on things, and there's really nothing in Tabasco, it's not bad for you in any way, so that's kind of become my substitute. Now you got to get used to a hot mouth, but that's okay. ~ Mike Ditka

My mother never finished elementary school. My father didn't, and that was a reality for many of us. ~ Ruben Blades

I only have two kinds of dreams: the bad and the terrible. Bad dreams I can cope with. They're just nightmares, and the end eventually. I wake up. The terrible dreams are the good dreams. In my terrible dreams, everything is fine. I am still with the company. I still look like me. None of the last five years ever happened. Sometimes I'm married. Once I even had kids. I even knew their names. Everything's wonderful and normal and fine. And then I wake up, and I'm still me. And I'm still here. And that is truly terrible. ~ Neil Gaiman

Reunion with the mother is a siren call haunting our imagination. Once there was bliss, and now there is struggle. Dim memories of life before the traumatic separation of birth may be the source of Arcadian fantasies of a lost golden age. ~ Camille Paglia

She's coming here? I knew she was on her way to New Orleans, but I thought we'd have the service at a funeral home. Betts slung the dishrag over her shoulder. This was why her mother hadn't wanted help planning the service - Gigi's final farewell was to be the ultimate fuck-you. It was wrong. It was a sacrilege. ~ Katie Graykowski

In the United States of America, we are so liberal-minded on so many different aspects, but for some reason there's always going to be this weird connection with nudity being a bad thing. Americans can be so prude sometimes. ~ Erin Wasson

Faithfulness is not holding the fort. It's storming the gates of hell and taking back enemy territory that belongs to God.

I'm afraid we've reduced righteousness to the absence of wrongness, but goodness is not the absence of badness. You can do nothing wrong and still do nothing right. Remember the parable of the bags of gold? Breaking even is bad. You've got to ante up everything. ~ Mark Batterson

When I moved to New York out of college, that was my goal. To be a stage actress. And to do dramatic works. Like 'Madea', and 'Night, Mother', and 'Sam Shepard', and all that kind of stuff. That's what I really wanted to do. ~ Rachael Harris