The truth about your own life is not always easy to accept, and sometimes hasn't even occurred to you.

Well, we tell our kids things like 'don't gossip' and then an hour later they hear us on the phone. Stuff like that.

All of the qualities that you need to be a good opinion columnist tend to be qualities that aren't valued in women.

Having children can smooth the relationship, too. Mother and daughter are now equals. That is hard to imagine, even harder to accept, for among other things, it means realizing that your own mother felt this way, too--unsure of herself, weak in the knees, terrified about what in the world to do with you. It means accepting that she was tired, inept, sometimes stupid; that she, too, sat in the dark at 2:00 A.M. with a child shrieking across the hall and no clue to the child's trouble.

That's what makes life so hard for women, that instead of thinking that this is the way things are, we always think it's the way we are.

In life, the classroom is everywhere. The exam comes at the very end.

Kids and violent TV, violent TV and violence, violence and kids. The only people missing from this discussion are the parents. Where are we? Gone. Abdicated.