... we have almost succeeded in leveling all human activities to the common denominator of securing the necessities of life and pr...oviding for their bundance. Whatever we do, we are supposed to do for the sake of "making a living;" such is the verdict of society, and the number of people, especially in the professions who might challenge it, has decreased rapidly. The only exception society is willing to grant is to the artist, who, strictly speaking, is the only "worker" left in a laboring society.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We too are somehow impossible, formed of so many different things, Too many to make sense to anybody.... We straggle on as quotients, hard-to-combine Ingredients, and what continues Does so with our participation and consent.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Between labor and play stands work. A man is a worker if he is personally interested in the job which society pays him to do; what... from the point of view of society is necessary labor is from his point of view voluntary play. Whether a job is to be classified as labor or work depends, not on the job itself, but on the tastes of the individual who undertakes it. The difference does not, for example, coincide with the difference between a manual and a mental job; a gardener or a cobbler may be a worker, a bank clerk a laborer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Orthodox Judaism is a thicket of detailed injunctions, Biblical commandments elaborated during centuries of prohibited proselytizi...ng, functioning to limit interaction with outsiders. At the opposite extreme, Islam, still the most rapidly expanding of faiths, demands little immediate knowledge from those who would convert. The convert is permitted to enter and then to learn by participation, although there are plenty of detailed regulations and abstruse theological ideas to be pursued later, and the regulations do effectively separate believers from nonbelievers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In our world of big names, curiously, our true heroes tend to be anonymous. In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the perso...n of solid virtues who can be admired for something more substantial than his well-knownness often proves to be the unsung hero: the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the honest cop, the hard worker at lonely, underpaid, unglamorous, unpublicized jobs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Helicon: "It takes one day to make a senator and ten years to make a worker." Caligula: "But I am afraid that it takes twenty... years to make a worker out of a senator."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A concern with parenting...must direct attention beyond behavior. This is because parenting is not simply a set of behaviors, but ...participation in an interpersonal, diffuse, affective relationship. Parenting is an eminently psychological role in a way that many other roles and activities are not.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Recent studies that have investigated maternal satisfaction have found this to be a better prediction of mother-child interaction ...than work status alone. More important for the overall quality of interaction with their children than simply whether the mother works or not, these studies suggest, is how satisfied the mother is with her role as worker or homemaker. Satisfied women are consistently more warm, involved, playful, stimulating and effective with their children than unsatisfied women.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Often low-income parents give their children every other thing they need for successful participation in school and the world of w...ork except the planning and organizing skills and habit patterns needed to operate in complex settings. Many intelligent and able college students from low-income backgrounds confront these deficits when faced with a heavy assignment load. . . . These patterns are best acquired at an early age and need to be quite well developed by late elementary school or twelve or thirteen years of age.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Juggling produces both practical and psychological benefits.... A woman's involvement in one role can enhance her functioning in a...nother. Being a wife can make it easier to work outside the home. Being a mother can facilitate the activities and foster the skills of the efficient wife or of the effective worker. And employment outside the home can contribute in substantial, practical ways to how one works within the home, as a spouse and as a parent.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »