If the Richter scale could measure human calamities, the loss of a child would register a ten.

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

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

America is a nation fundamentally ambivalent about its children, often afraid of its children, and frequently punitive toward its children.

Friends can be said to "fall in like" with as profound a thud as romantic partners fall in love.

Housework is the only activity at which men are allowed to be consistently inept because they are thought to be so competent at everything else.

When the president of the United States flicks the switch to light up the Christmas tree on the White House lawn, that house ceases to be an American symbol; it becomes a Christian symbol.