"I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me"
About this Quote
The subtext is less about sex than about authorship and control. In Tristram Shandy, being “begot” is the first of many accidents that steal sovereignty from the protagonist. Sterne turns metaphysical anxiety into comedy by letting bureaucratic language invade the bedroom; “minded what they were about” makes procreation sound like a botched paperwork task. It’s bawdy, but it’s also epistemological: if your origin is contingent, your story can’t be neat, your identity can’t be stable, and any attempt to narrate yourself becomes a farce of over-explanation.
Context matters: mid-18th-century Britain was saturated with Enlightenment confidence in reason, systems, and improvement. Sterne needles that confidence by showing how easily “reason” becomes after-the-fact rationalization. The line’s intent is to announce a novel that will refuse straight lines and tidy origins, using wit as a scalpel to expose the absurdity of demanding order from biology, family, and narrative itself.
Quote Details
| Topic | Parenting |
|---|---|
| Source | Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759), opening sentence (first line of the novel). |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Sterne, Laurence. (2026, January 17). I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-wish-either-my-father-or-my-mother-or-indeed-32464/
Chicago Style
Sterne, Laurence. "I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-wish-either-my-father-or-my-mother-or-indeed-32464/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-wish-either-my-father-or-my-mother-or-indeed-32464/. Accessed 21 Feb. 2026.
