"To give birth is a fearsome thing; there is no hating the child one has borne even when injured by it"
About this Quote
Birth here isn’t framed as miracle or fulfillment; it’s pitched as a dangerous, bodily wager with moral consequences. Sophocles starts with the blunt premise: creation is terrifying. Not because it’s “hard,” but because it binds you to what you’ve made in a way reason can’t dissolve. The second clause lands like a verdict: even if the child harms you, hatred won’t quite take. The bond is not sentimental; it’s fatalistic.
That’s classic Greek tragedy logic. In Sophocles, love and obligation aren’t chosen feelings; they’re structural forces, as inescapable as kinship curses and civic law. The line’s power comes from its refusal to flatter parental virtue. It doesn’t praise mothers for being selfless; it describes an emotional limit, a kind of psychological law. You can be wounded, betrayed, publicly ruined by your own offspring - and still find hatred unavailable, because the child isn’t merely “someone you love.” They’re an extension of your body and your fate.
The subtext is unsettlingly modern: harm doesn’t automatically sever attachment. Sophocles is tracing how intimacy can trap, how the deepest ties can survive on inertia, biology, identity. In a world where family allegiance often collides with justice, this becomes a loaded ethical statement: if you can’t hate what hurts you because you made it, what does that do to responsibility, punishment, and truth? Tragedy thrives in that gap between what should be possible and what human nature won’t allow.
That’s classic Greek tragedy logic. In Sophocles, love and obligation aren’t chosen feelings; they’re structural forces, as inescapable as kinship curses and civic law. The line’s power comes from its refusal to flatter parental virtue. It doesn’t praise mothers for being selfless; it describes an emotional limit, a kind of psychological law. You can be wounded, betrayed, publicly ruined by your own offspring - and still find hatred unavailable, because the child isn’t merely “someone you love.” They’re an extension of your body and your fate.
The subtext is unsettlingly modern: harm doesn’t automatically sever attachment. Sophocles is tracing how intimacy can trap, how the deepest ties can survive on inertia, biology, identity. In a world where family allegiance often collides with justice, this becomes a loaded ethical statement: if you can’t hate what hurts you because you made it, what does that do to responsibility, punishment, and truth? Tragedy thrives in that gap between what should be possible and what human nature won’t allow.
Quote Details
| Topic | Mother |
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