A Quote by Martha Wainwright

Being a woman in music and having kids, it's very hard to do both without neglecting one a bit. — © Martha Wainwright
Being a woman in music and having kids, it's very hard to do both without neglecting one a bit.
I would say the biggest challenge I had as a woman in science is be a mom. It's really hard. It's very hard work having children, and I tell kids this all the time.
I think the art world is one of the last bastions of this kind of sexism where there is a mythology about a woman not being able to be both and artist and a mother: that some very important creative crystal inside a woman would be shattered by the idea of having a child.
Most kids are very seriously interested in something - friends, math, shopping, sports. For me it happened to be music and the violin. I had the chance to pursue it without having it get in the way of my life.
Try to relax, and you will find out that you feel more tense than ever. Try harder and you will feel more tense and more tense. Relaxation is not a consequence, is not a result of some activity; it is the glow of understanding. This is the first thing I would like to relate to you: life is purposeless. It is very hard to accept it. And why is it so hard to accept that life is purposeless? It is hard because without purpose the ego cannot exist. It is hard to conceive that life has no goal because without any goal being there, there is no point in having a mind, in having an ego.
I think people tend to believe that women who are successful are probably neglecting their children, possibly a bit hard-nosed and that they don't really support other women very much - that they're men-haters and ball-breakers. I've certainly been on the receiving end of those 'compliments' for most of my career.
I wouldn't have known when I was a teenager that when I was coming up to being a sixty-year-old woman that I'd be making music, I'd be recording music, talking about music, and incorporating my views on the world into the music-making. So it's a very rarefied place to be, and I'm very grateful for that.
I find so often, you know, just on a very mundane level; you've got a meeting and your child's acting in a school play. You can't do both things. And it's not simply that you can't do both, but whatever you do, you're going to be neglecting something that's really important.
When a father puts in long hours at work, he's praised for being dedicated and ambitious. But when a mother stays late at the office, she's sometimes accused of being selfish, neglecting her kids.
It's hard having kids. It's hard having a job. It's hard having a relationship - for anybody.
I told my kids I just want three words on my tombstone, if I have one. I'll probably be cremated. One is "woman." I'm very comfortable in that role. I've loved being a woman, I've loved being a mother, I've loved being a grandmother. I want three words: Woman, Atheist, Anarchist. That's me.
I worry about kids and all they are exposed to. Kids get so bombarded with hard, commercial sounds. They don't even have a chance to develop the softer part of themselves without fear of being ridiculed.
No man or woman can be strong, gentle, pure, and good, without the world being better for it and without someone being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness.
I try to encourage all my teammates, and I sure hope that some day all athletes - my kids, high school kids - get the same level of care I get. Because you can play for a long period of time without having knee replacements, without having all the major head trauma that people are dealing with.
There are many fans of hard rock music that have been wrongly pigeonholed as apathetic. This music is not music for the elitist coffeehouse culture in SoHo. It' s rock 'n' roll music for kids across the land, and I think that makes it much more subversive in a way, in that it has the form and the function of a powerful, populist music, but it can carry very incendiary messages.
No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle and good, without the world being better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness.
My heroes in real life are definitely my mom for being true to herself, for having a foot in both worlds, for being so very polite - Canadian and also such a traditional Greek woman. I would sum it up this way: the life lesson she would say is be polite while you're breaking the rules.
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