In the nineteenth century ... explanations of who and what women were focused primarily on reproductive events--marriage, children..., the empty nest, menopause. You could explain what was happening in a woman's life, it was believed, if you knew where she was in this reproductive cycle.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All of women's aspirations--whether for education, work, or any form of self-determination--ultimately rest on their ability to de...cide whether and when to bear children. For this reason, reproductive freedom has always been the most popular item in each of the successive feminist agendas--and the most heavily assaulted target of each backlash.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What had really caused the women's movement was the additional years of human life. At the turn of the century women's life expect...ancy was forty-six; now it was nearly eighty. Our groping sense that we couldn't live all those years in terms of motherhood alone was "the problem that had no name." Realizing that it was not some freakish personal fault but our common problem as women had enabled us to take the first steps to change our lives.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If women's role in life is limited solely to housewife/mother, it clearly ends when she can no longer bear more children and the c...hildren she has borne leave home.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The child-rearing years are relatively short in our increased life span. It is hard for young women caught between diapers and for...mulas to believe, but there are years and years of freedom ahead. I regret my impatience to get on with my career. I wish I'd relaxed, allowed myself the luxury of watching the world through my little girl's eyes.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 »