My father fought on the side of the Central Powers, as a soldier in the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Army, my maternal grandfather fought in the British Army, on different sides, and both were so traumatized by the experience that they never talked about it.
President Obama has made maternal health one of the core priorities of U.S. international aid funding.
I think obviously we need to work harder at extending the women's movement. How do women who have prepared for careers and have a child get back to the workplace and still fulfill maternal roles?
At 11, I went to live with my maternal nan and granddad temporarily, after my parents separated, and Nan would let me have a go on her piano. My grandparents were like something out of the Noel Coward play, 'This Happy Breed,' and it was magical to hear them sing music-hall songs.
I was always very maternal with my friends. I wasn't the kind of little girl that played with dolls and pretended I was the mommy. I wasn't that child, so when I say I was always maternal, I don't mean in that sense - but I've always been a nurturer.
I think a beautiful quality that's a biological, hormonal imperative for women, whether they have children or not, is that we're built to be empathic. For me, it was finally being maternal in an appropriate way instead of trying to mommy ex-boyfriends.
I was my parent's first child, Joanna Catherine Going, named for my great-great grandmother Catherine, and my father's maternal aunt Johanna Burke, and bearing the initials of my father's father, John Christopher, who passed away just months before I was born.
In my late 30s, I flirted with the idea of having a child without necessarily being in a steady relationship. But I've never had a strong maternal urge, and then I got cancer of the womb - luckily caught at an early stage - so that put paid to that.
For millions of girls around the world, motherhood comes too early. Those who bear children as adolescents suffer higher maternal mortality and morbidity rates, and their children are more likely to die in infancy.
In the world of maternal health, cell phone technology is being used to provide prenatal care, linking pregnant women to health care providers when they can't otherwise reach healthcare facilities.
It's interesting, I had absolutely no maternal instinct. I'm much more interested in young people now.
My maternal grandmother made fantastic ox tongue with velvety roasted potatoes. She cooked sweet red cabbage and lovely cauliflower with butter and bread crumbs.
I expend far too much of my maternal energies on guilt and regret.
My maternal desires are fully satisfied with my dogs.
Aborting my baby is the most serious of the many maternal crimes I tally in my head when I am at my lowest, when the Bad Mother label seems to fit best. Rocketship was my baby. And I killed him.
I was worried - I wasn't sure I had the maternal instinct. But the minute my son came out, he was my favorite person on earth. I was crazily in tune with him, and I knew we were going to be fine.
My maternal granddad, Leonard, was full of amazing stories. He was an orphan, with 11 or 12 brothers and sisters, and he used to tell us about growing up near the Irrawaddy river and how one brother was eaten by a crocodile.
My mom is from New Orleans. And all of my maternal relatives were there during Katrina. We couldn't even find my uncle for four months. We literally didn't know where he was. I had been there just four days before the storm hit.
For me, true beauty has nothing to do with wrinkles and everything to do with the fact that my maternal grandmother raised five children just after the war and remained a fighter throughout her life. True beauty is the slick of red lipstick my paternal grandmother would put on before going to church on Sunday.
