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

Children's liberation is the next item on our civil rights shopping list.

Friends seem to be like aspirin; we don't really know why they make a sick person feel better, but they do.

The ultra-right would have us believe that families are in trouble because of humanism, feminism, secular education, or sexual liberation, but the consensus of Americans is that what tears families apart is unemployment, inflation, and financial worries.

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.

If the family were a fruit, it would be an orange, a circle of sections, held together but separable - each segment distinct.

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.