Motherhood Quote by Dorothy Fields

“The man in our society is the breadwinner; the woman has enough to do as the homemaker, wife and mother” lands like a tidy proverb, which is exactly the trick. It packages a whole social order as common sense: not an argument, a dismissal. The phrase “in our society” does heavy lifting, turning a historically specific arrangement into something natural and inevitable, as if the culture itself is the author and individual choice is just noise.

Fields’ wording is tellingly managerial. “Breadwinner” flatters male labor with purpose and heroic clarity, while the woman “has enough to do” makes domestic work sound both abundant and contained. It’s a rhetorical pat on the head: you’re already busy, so don’t reach for more. The subtext isn’t merely that women belong at home; it’s that ambition outside the home is unnecessary, even ungrateful, because the role has been pre-filled with moral importance.

Context sharpens the edge. Fields worked in a mid-century entertainment industry that was glamorous onstage and deeply conservative backstage: a world where women could write hits yet still be treated as exceptions, anomalies who had to sound agreeable to stay employable. Read one way, the quote can be the period’s script spoken aloud, a line that reassures audiences unsettled by women’s growing public presence. Read another way, it hints at the compromises demanded of successful women: to participate in modernity while publicly endorsing its limits. Either way, its power is in how effortlessly it turns hierarchy into harmony.