Quotes on Having Children

Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.

Having children is something we think we ought to do because our parents did it, but when it is over the children are just other members of the human race, rather disappointingly.

Having children takes the focus off yourself, which I'm really grateful for. I'm so tired of thinking about myself. I'm sick of myself. You feel you want to be there and not miss out on anything. It's a true joy and a very profound love. You can write a book, you can make a movie, you can paint a painting, but having kids is the most extraordinary thing I've ever taken on.

The commonest fallacy among women is that simply having children makes them a mother - which is as absurd as believing that having a piano makes one a musician.

The crisis of children having children has been eclipsed by the greater crisis of children killing children.

There is no experience like having children...If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children.

Everything I thought I'd hate about having children - the crying, the screaming - nothing fazes me. I love it all and it's relaxed me.

I would have been a terrible mother because I'm basically a very selfish human being. Not that that has stopped most people going off and having children.

All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.

The child supplies the power but the parents have to do the steering.

I've never regretted not having children. My mindset in that regard has been constant. I objected to being born, and I refuse to impose life on someone else.

I'm completely happy not having children. I mean, everybody does not have to live in the same way. And as somebody said, "Everybody with a womb doesn't have to have a child any more than everybody with vocal cords has to be an opera singer."

I think I became more productive through not having children. I never really had the desire to have them. My husband didn't want them either, so it worked out well.

Getting married, having children, and staying together long after all love has died, saying that it's for the good of the children (who are, apparently, deaf to the constant rows).

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world ... Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.

One thing I had learned from watching chimpanzees with their infants is that having a child should be fun.

She wondered if this was true of every parent: if, prior to having children, they all used to be someone else.