It's important to remember that feminism is no longer a group of organizations or leaders. It's the expectations that parents have... for their daughters, and their sons, too. It's the way we talk about and treat one another. It's who makes the money and who makes the compromises and who makes the dinner. It's a state of mind. It's the way we live now.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I realized that, while I would never be my mother nor have her life, the lesson she had left me was that it was possible to love a...nd care for a man and still have at your core a strength so great that you never even needed to put it on display.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If I get the forty additional years statisticians say are likely coming to me, I could fit in at least one, maybe two new lifetime...s. Sad that only one of those lifetimes can include being the mother of young children.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The clearest explanation for the failure of any marriage is that the two people are incompatible--that is, that one is male and th...e other female.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When you grow up you realize that there isn't really any Santa but the monsters are still around. If only they were big and hairy;... now they're just dark and amorphous, and they're no longer afraid of the light. Sometimes they're the guy who climbs in the window and takes your television. And sometimes they're the guy who walks out the front door with your heart in his hand and never comes back. And sometimes they're the job or the bank or the wife or the boss or just that sort of dark heavy feeling that sits between your shoulder blades like a backpack. There are always terrible things waiting to grab you by the ankle, to pull you under, to get you with their long horrible arms. And you lie in bed and look at the shadows on the ceiling and feel, under the covers, just for a moment, like you're safe. One more day alive.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am aghast to find myself in such a position of power over two other people. Their father and I have them in thrall simply by hav...ing produced them. We have the power to make them feel good or bad about themselves, which is the greatest power in the world. Ours will not be the only influence, but it is the earliest, the most ubiquitous, and potentially the most pernicious. Lovers and friends will make them blossom and bleed, but they may move on to other lovers and friends. We are the only parents they will have.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A friend and I flew south with our children. During the week we spent together I took off my shoes, let down my hair, took apart m...y psyche, cleaned the pieces, and put them together again in much improved condition. I feel like a car that's just had a tune-up. Only another woman could have acted as the mechanic.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This is what no one warns you about, when you decide to have children. There is so much written about the cost and the changes in ...your way of life, but no one ever tells you that what they are going to hand you in the hospital is power, whether you want it or not.... I should have known, but somehow overlooked for a time, that parents become, effortlessly, just by showing up, the most influential totems in the lives of their children.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What had I expected of the first child? Everything. Rocket scientist. Neurosurgeon. Designated hitter. We talked wisely at cocktai...l parties about the sad mistake our mothers had made in pinning all their hopes and dreams on us. We were full of it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »