In order to become spoiled ... a child has to be able to want things as well as need them. He has to be able to see himself as a b...eing who is separate from everyone else.... A baby is none of these things. He feels a need and he expresses it. He is not intellectually capable of working out involved plans and ideas like "Can I make her give me...?" "If I make enough fuss he will...?" "They let me do ... yesterday and I want to do it again today so I'll...."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Loving a baby is a circular business, a kind of feedback loop. The more you give the more you get and the more you get the more yo...u feel like giving.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I think that carrying a baby inside of you is like running as fast as you can. It feels like finally letting go and filling yourse...lf up to the widest limits.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Parenthood always comes as a shock. Postpartum blues? Postpartum panic is more like it. We set out to have a baby; what we get is ...a total take-over of our lives.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have always felt that too much time was given before the birth, which is spent learning things like how to breathe in and out wi...th your husband (I had my baby when they gave you a shot in the hip and you didn't wake up until the kid was ready to start school), and not enough time given to how to mother after the baby is born.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A child is nothing like a racing car. . . . Souping up babies doesn't work that way. The child is what she is. There is a certain ...irreducible if elusive core. Pushing, pulling, stretching, and shrinking will not really change it. There may be spectacular interim results. The baby may say the alphabet before she walks, master two-times or even ten-times table at three. In the long run, however, this forced precocity tends to be irrelevant. . . . Whatever gains there are become unimportant. The losses can be irrevocable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Writing a book is like rearing children--willpower has very little to do with it. If you have a little baby crying in the middle o...f the night, and if you depend only on willpower to get you out of bed to feed the baby, the baby will starve. You do it out of love. Willpower is a weak idea; love is strong. You don't have to scourge yourself with a cat-o'-nine tails to go to the baby. You go to the baby out of love for that particular baby. That's the same way you go to your desk.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Having a book is somewhat like having a baby, as many woman writers have observed before me: the conception, the long preparation,... the wait, the growing heaviness (not of body in this case but of the spirit and the manuscript) toward the end, the initial delight at the sight of the product, fully formed and seemingly perfect, and then the usual postpartum depression. What will people whose opinion I care about, and those whose views I don't value but have weight in the world of reader, think of it?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »