Motherhood Quote by Anne C. Weisberg

The sting in Weisberg's line is how neatly it exposes a status hierarchy disguised as common sense. The difference isn’t workload or competence; it’s narrative. Women are cast as mothers first, with law as a kind of ambitious side project. Men get the inverse: professionals by default, parents as a charming footnote. That asymmetry is the engine of a lot of workplace inequality precisely because it can be denied with a straight face. No one has to say "she’s less serious" when the framing already does the work.

Her phrasing is strategic: "perceived" is doing heavy lifting, pointing to a cultural bias that lives in glances, assumptions, and small decisions rather than explicit policy. It’s about who gets presumed dependable, who gets offered stretch assignments, whose schedule flexibility is read as irresponsibility versus efficiency. The line also shows how gender roles police identity. Motherhood, in this schema, isn’t just a life fact; it becomes an all-consuming identity that crowds out professional legitimacy. Fatherhood, by contrast, can even boost a man’s image, signaling stability without threatening his "seriousness."

The context here is the modern professional workplace that claims meritocracy while relying on old scripts: the "ideal worker" who is unencumbered, always available, quietly male. Weisberg isn’t asking for applause for working moms; she’s naming the double bind. When women lean into caregiving, they’re discounted at work. When they resist it, they’re judged as deficient at home. The quote works because it turns a private frustration into a crisp diagnosis of how inequality reproduces itself through perception.