"...When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery ... the difficulty arises from the double meaning of the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home -- as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun a Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then, as I say, I give up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors, and holidays; to be Whiteley in a certain area, providing toys, books, cakes, and boots; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene, I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No, a woman's function is laborious; but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness."
-G. K. Chesterton
So do I. About the best defense of motherhood I've ever seen. From what work?
It's from What's Wrong with the World, in a chapter entitled "The Emancipation of Domesticity" Love it!