To achieve the larger goal of teaching her children consideration of others, a mother can tolerate some frustration of her own wis...hes, she can delay having what she wants, she can be flexible enough to compromise. And this is exactly what her child must also learn: that it is possible to survive frustration, it is possible to wait for what he wants, it is possible to compromise without capitulating.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The belief that there are final and immutable answers, and that the professional expert has them, is one that mothers and professi...onals tend to reinforce in each other. They both have a need to believe it. They both seem to agree, too, that if the professional's prescription doesn't work it is probably because of the mother's inadequacy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Uncertainty about the outcome is a given in child rearing and not a reflection of a mother's inadequacy. She should not be misled ...by her wish to be omnipotent, all-powerful, all-giving, the perfect mother, who will right all the wrongs and make up for all the deprivations of her own childhood. She is simply an imperfect human being with needs of her own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Once a child has demonstrated his capacity for independent functioning in any area, his lapses into dependent behavior, even thoug...h temporary, make the mother feel that she is being taken advantage of....What only yesterday was a description of the child's stage in life has become an indictment, a judgment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Is it impossible not to wonder why a movement which professes concern for the fate of all women has dealt so unkindly, contemptuou...sly, so destructively, with so significant a portion of its sisterhood. Can it be that those who would reorder society perceive as the greater threat not the chauvinism of men or the pernicious attitudes of our culture, but rather the impulse to mother within women themselves?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mothers often are too easily intimidated by their children's negative reactions...When the child cries or is unhappy, the mother r...eads this as meaning that she is a failure. This is why it is so important for a mother to know...that the process of growing up involves by definition things that her child is not going to like. Her job is not to create a bed of roses, but to help him learn how to pick his way through the thorns.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mothers and others who work with children each have their own special expertise; each has something to contribute to a child's wel...l-being. The opinion of each needs to be respected. Together they can work more effectively on behalf of the child. It is not that one is right, the other wrong, that one is good, the other bad. There are no certain answers and all the information available is needed. It is time to stop looking for a villain--and it is certainly time to stop casting mothers in that role.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Unfortunately, mothers interpret the fact that they feel guilty to mean that they are guilty. Professionals have simply confirmed ...this interpretation by telling mothers why they are guilty.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In child rearing it would unquestionably be easier if a child were to do something because we say so. The authoritarian method doe...s expedite things, but it does not produce independent functioning. If a child has not mastered the underlying principles of human interactions and merely conforms out of coercion or conditioning, he has no tools to use, no resources to apply in the next situation that confronts him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All of the assumptions once made about a parent's role have been undercut by the specialists. The psychiatric specialists, the psy...chological specialists, the educational specialists, all have mystified child development. They have fostered the idea that understanding children and promoting their intellectual well-being is too complex for mothers and requires the intervention of experts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »