Motherhood Quote by Peter De Vries

De Vries lands the punchline with surgical timing: one biological delivery, then an endless loop of chauffeuring. The gag is built on a bleak symmetry. “Obstetrically once” sounds clinical, almost dignified, the official language of motherhood as life-giving vocation. “And by car forever after” yanks that grandeur into the fluorescent purgatory of errands, carpools, and drop-offs. The joke isn’t just that suburbia is boring; it’s that modern motherhood gets repackaged from sacred purpose into logistical service, measured in mileage.

The intent is satirical but not airy. De Vries is skewering the mid-century suburban bargain: domestic stability purchased with an economy of roles, where women’s identities are narrowed to reproduction and the management of children as mobile cargo. The car matters because it’s the suburb’s circulatory system; it turns the home into an island and the mother into the bridge. She isn’t simply “busy,” she’s structurally trapped in motion that never counts as progress.

Subtext: liberation is promised in the form of technology and prosperity, yet the result is a more efficient kind of confinement. The line also needles the culture’s emotional outsourcing. If community, walkability, and shared childcare evaporate, the mother becomes the default infrastructure.

Contextually, De Vries writes from an America drunk on postwar expansion, automobiles, and idealized domesticity. His wit performs a small act of dissent: it exposes how a society can praise motherhood while quietly converting it into unpaid transport labor, forever.