Control is a big issue when you're sick. It's the first thing you lose - other losses come later.

Apathy is the self-defense of the powerless.

The risk for a woman who considers her helpless children her "job" is that the children's growth toward self-sufficiency may be experienced as a refutation of the mother's indispensability, and she may unconsciously sabotage their growth as a result.

Lifestyles and sex roles are passed from parents to children as inexorably as blue eyes or small feet.

I feel about mothers the way I feel about dimples: because I do not have one myself, I notice everyone who does.

When a family is free of abuse and oppression, it can be the place where we share our deepest secrets and stand the most exposed, a place where we learn to feel distinct without being better, - and sacrifice for others without losing ourselves.

Work-family conflicts - the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child - would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.