QuoteProject
[My dad] didn't do much apart from the traditional winning of bread. He didn't take me to get my hair cut or my teeth cleaned; he didn't make the appointments. He didn't shop for my clothes. He didn't make my breakfast, lunch, or dinner. My mom did all of those things, and nobody ever told her when she did them that it made her a good mother.
Michael Chabon
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote reflects on the unrecognized yet essential roles mothers play in family life, contrasting them with fathers who may be celebrated for traditional roles.

Michael Chabon highlights the often-overlooked contributions of mothers in a family setting, emphasizing that while fathers may fulfill traditional roles such as providing for the family, it is the mothers who handle daily caregiving tasks. This quote calls attention to the inequity in recognition for these nurturing roles and suggests that society often overlooks the valuable contributions of mothers in shaping family life.

Themes

MotherFatherFamilyRecognitionRolesCaregiving

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be shared in a discussion about gender roles in parenting.

More from Michael Chabon

I took comfort, as a kid, in knowing that things had always been as awful and as wonderful as they were now, that the world was always on the edge of total destruction.
Michael ChabonRead
A story begins with this nebulous feeling that’s hard to get a hold of and you’re testing your feelings and assumptions, testing what you believe. They end up turning into keepsakes and mementos –like amber in which a memory gets trapped.
Michael ChabonRead
I smoked and looked down at the bottom of Pittsburgh for a little while, watching the kids playing tiny baseball, the distant figures of dogs snatching at a little passing car, a miniature housewife on her back porch shaking out a snippet of red rug, and I made a sudden, frightened vow never to become that small, and to devote myself to getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
Michael ChabonRead
It's always thrilling to encounter the sweep of time in a work of fiction in a way that feels authentic and real.
Michael ChabonRead
You need three things to become a successful novelist: talent, luck and discipline. Discipline is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have to focus on controlling, and you just have to hope and trust in the other two.
Michael ChabonRead
The two dozen commonplace childhood photographs - snowsuit, pony, tennis racket, looming fender of a Dodge - were an inexhaustible source of wonder for him, at her having existed before he met her, and of sadness for his possessing nothing of the ten million minutes of that black-and-white scallop-edged existence save these few proofs.
Michael ChabonRead

Similar quotes

I've often said that the most important thing you can give your children is wings. Because, you're not gonna always be able to bring food to the nest. You're... sometimes... they're gonna have to be able to fly by themselves.
Elizabeth EdwardsRead
Returning to your family and where you came from, and your history... this is what makes you strong. It's not looking out that's going to do that - it's looking in.
Lady GagaRead
The central struggle of parenthood is to let our hopes for our children outweigh our fears.
Ellen GoodmanRead
It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of every moment.
Honore De BalzacRead
Only later did I come to understand that to be a mother is to be an illusion. No matter how vigilant, in the end a mother can't protect her child - not from pain, or horror, or the nightmare of violence, from sealed trains moving rapidly in the wrong direction, the depravity of strangers, trapdoors, abysses, fires, cars in the rain, from chance.
Nicole KraussRead
As I contemplate the kind of future I want for children-my own and other people's-I believe we must look inward to God for guidance and strength and backward to draw on the values and legacies of our families, ancestors, and communities.
Marian Wright EdelmanRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.