Conflict is inevitable, the source of all growth, and an absolute necessity if one is to be alive.
Jean Baker MillerMost so-called women's work is not recognized as real activity. One reason for this attitude may be that such work is usually associated with helping others' development, rather than with self-enhancement or self-employment.
Jean Baker MillerIn a basic sense, the greater the development of each individual the more able, more effective, and less needy of limiting or restricting others she or he will be.
Jean Baker MillerWomen are taught that their main goal in life is to serve others--first men, and later, children. This prescription leads to enormous problems, for it is supposed to be carried out as if women did not have needs of their own, as if one could serve others without simultaneously attending to one's own interests and desires. Carried to its "perfection," it produces the martyr syndrome or the smothering wife and mother.
Jean Baker MillerPractically everyone now bemoans Western man's sense of alienation, lack of community, and inability to find ways of organizing society for human ends. We have reached the end of the road that is built on the set of traits held out for male identity-advance at any cost, pay any price, drive out all competitors, and kill them if necessary.
Jean Baker Miller