For the mother who has opted to stay home, the question remains: Having perfected her role as a caretaker, can she abdicate contro...l to less practiced individuals? Having put all her identity eggs in one basket, can she hand over the basket freely? Having put aside her own ambitions, can she resist imposing them on her children? And having set one example, can she teach another?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So long as the source of our identity is external--vested in how others judge our performance at work, or how others judge our chi...ldren's performance, or how much money we make--we will find ourselves hopelessly flawed, forever short of the ideal.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver's seat, it is our reluctan...ce, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A few [women] warrant our attention not because they have the answer but because they have rejected the mentality that insists the...re must be one answer. What makes them role models is not how much or how little they work, how many or how few hats they wear, but rather how well they understand, and accept, that for all rewards there will be commensurate sacrifice; for all gains, some loss; for any pleasure, some pain.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Stay-at-home mothers, . . . their self-esteem constantly assaulted, . . . are ever more fervently concerned that their offspring t...urn out better so they won't have to stoop to say "I told you so." Working mothers, . . . their self-esteem corroded by guilt, . . . are praying their kids turn out functional so they can stop being defensive and apologetic and instead assert "See? I did do it all."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The very presence of guilt, let alone its tenacity, implies imbalance: Something, we suspect, is getting more of our energy than w...arrants, at the expense of something else, we suspect, that deserves more of our energy than we're giving.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Certainly we expect to maintain both a career and a family, but we expect excellence in one role will come at some cost to the oth...er. Certainly we would like to think we're entitled to . . . Caribbean vacations, but we're chastened by our minimal savings and the specter of our husbands losing their jobs. Certainly we want issues such as child care and family leave to be perceived as problems affecting all of us, not just women--but we recognize, too, that we must then all bear the burden of paying for them and making them work for the businesses upon which our economic survival is based.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Knowing how beleaguered working mothers truly are--knowing because I am one of them--I am still amazed at how one need only say "I... work" to be forgiven all expectation, to be assigned almost a handicapped status that no decent human being would burden further with demands. "I work" has become the universally accepted excuse, invoked as an all-purpose explanation for bowing out, not participating, letting others down, or otherwise behaving inexcusably.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most of us don't have the option of quitting work, even if our care situation drove us to consider it in desperation. . . . It's h...aving no choice but to beat the bushes, having no choice but to "settle" on someone or some institution, having no choice but to hand over our child and hope for the best (or, at least, hope to avoid the worst) that gnaws away at even the most unflappable among us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whatever we're doing, whoever we are, it isn't enough. . . . Little wonder we have trouble finding role models to guide us through... these shoals. No one less than God Herself could be all the things we'd like to be to all the people we'd like to feel approval from.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »