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

Illness is the proving ground of friendship.

A toy has no gender and no idea of whether a girl or boy is playing with it.

We mothers are learning to mark our mothering success by our daughters' lengthening flight.

Friendships aren't perfect and yet they are very precious. For me, not expecting perfection all in one place was a great release.

Compared to other parents, remarried parents seem more desirous of their child's approval, more alert to the child's emotional state, and more sensitive in their parent-child relations. Perhaps this is the result of heightened empathy for the child's suffering, perhaps it is a guilt reaction; in either case, it gives the child a potent weapon--the power to disrupt the new household and come between parent and the new spouse.

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.