The art of living is to function in society without doing violence to one's own needs or to the needs of others. The art of mother...ing is to teach the art of living to children.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The emotional stress of mothering . . . is intensified by a mother's idea that her own feelings are suspect, and by her fear that ...they will erupt into negative, aggressive behavior toward her child. She needs the confidence of knowing that she can experience these feelings without expressing them in destructive behavior toward her child. Her goal is gradually to help her child become aware that she is another person whose needs must be considered. She can only do this if she believes it herself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Women do not have to sacrifice personhood if they are mothers. They do not have to sacrifice motherhood in order to be persons. Li...beration was meant to expand women's opportunities, not to limit them. The self-esteem that has been found in new pursuits can also be found in mothering.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is...nothing to indicate any biological need for an exclusive primary bond; nothing to suggest that mothering cannot be shar...ed by several people.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In different life prints, stress will be felt intensely at different times. The woman who is trying to juggle young children and a... demanding job may feel the most pressure in her late twenties and early thirties, but by her forties her investment in the job will be paying off and the demands of the family will be lessening. The woman who has been a homemaker in a very traditional pattern may experience a great deal of stress around the issue of redefining her life as the active role of mothering comes to an end.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I love my mother for all the times she said absolutely nothing. . . . Thinking back on it all, it must have been the most difficul...t part of mothering she ever had to do: knowing the outcome, yet feeling she had no right to keep me from charting my own path. I thank her for all her virtues, but mostly for never once having said, "I told you so."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We mothers are learning to mark our mothering success by our daughters' lengthening flight. When they need us, we are fiercely the...re. But we do not need them to need us--or to become us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Fashions change, and with the new psychoanalytical perspective of the postwar period [WWII], child rearing became enshrined as the... special responsibility of mothers ... any shortcoming in adult life was now seen as rooted in the failure of mothering during childhood.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As motherhood as a "private enterprise" declines and more mothers rely on the work of lower-paid specialists, the value accorded t...he work of mothering (not the value of children) has declined for women, making it all the harder for men to take it up.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Wild air, world-mothering air, Nestling me everywhere,... That each eyelash or hair Girdles; goes home betwixt The fleeciest, frailest-fixed Snowflake; that's fairly mixed With, riddles, and is rife In every least thing's life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »