Margaret Mead Quotes About Mothers

Quotes about: Mothers

• [Among the Arapeh... both father and mother are held responsible for child care by the entire community...] If one comments upon a middle-aged man as good-looking, the people answer: 'Good-looking? Ye-e-e-s? But you should have seen him before he bore all those children'.

  Margaret Mead

  Mother, Children, Father

  "Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies". Book by Margaret Mead, p. 55, 1935.

• I had my father's mind, but he had his mother's mind. Fortunately, his mother lived with us and so I early realized that intellectual abilities of the kind I shared with my father and grandmother were not sex-linked.

  Margaret Mead

  Mother, Sex, Father

  Margaret Mead, Rhoda Bubendey Métraux (1979). “Margaret Mead, some personal views”, Angus & Robertson

• Every act of motherhood contains a dual intent, as the mother holds the child close and prepares it to move way from her, as she supports the child and stands it firmly on its own feet, and as she guards it against danger and sends it out across the yard, down by the stream, and across the traffic-crowded highway. Unless a mother can do both - gather her child close and turn her child out toward the world - she will fail in her purpose.

  Margaret Mead

  Mother, Children, Moving

• Women are scolded both for being mothers and for not being mothers, for wanting to eat their cake and have it too, and for not wanting to eat their cake and have it too.

  Margaret Mead

  Mother, Cake, Being A Mother

• Sisters, while they are growing up, tend to be very rivalrous and as young mothers they are given to continual rivalrous comparisons of their several children. But once the children grow older, sisters draw closer together and often, in old age, they become each other's chosen and most happy companions. In addition to their shared memories of childhood and of their relationship to each other's children, they share memories of the same home, the same homemaking style, and the same small prejudices about housekeeping that carry the echoes of their mother's voice.

  Margaret Mead

  Mother, Children, Growing Up

• And as I had my father's kind of mind-which was also his mother's-I learned that the mind is not sex-typed.

  Margaret Mead

  Mother, Sex, Father

  Margaret Mead (1972). “Blkberry Winter”

• Much of the ill-tempered railing against women that has characterized the popular writing of the last two years is a half-heartedattempt to find a way back to a more balanced relationship between our biological selves and the world we have built. So women are scolded both for being mothers and for not being mothers, for wanting to eat their cake and have it too, and for not wanting to eat their cake and have it too.

  Margaret Mead

  Mother, Writing, Self

• Of all the peoples whom I have studied, from city dwellers to cliff dwellers, I always find that at least 50 percent would prefer to have at least one jungle between themselves and their mothers-in-law.

  Margaret Mead

  Mother, Law, Cities

  Attributed to Margaret Mead in Caroline Adams Miller "Bright Words for Dark Days: Meditations for Women Who Get the Blues" (p. 10), 1994.

• Envy of the male role can come as much from an undervaluation of the role of wife and mother as from an overvaluation of the public aspects of achievement that have been reserved for men.

  Margaret Mead

  Mother, Men, Envy

  "Male and Female". Study by Margaret Mead, 1949.

• Mothers are a biological necessity; fathers are a social invention

  Margaret Mead

  Mother, Father, Women

• Female animals defending their young are notoriously ferocious and lack the playful delight in combat which characterizes the mock combats of males of the same species. There seems very little ground for claiming that the mother of young children is more peaceful, more responsible, and more thoughtful for the welfare of the human race than is her husband or brother.

  Margaret Mead

  Mother, Brother, Husband

  Male and Female introduction (1955 edition)

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