If the family were a boat, it would be a canoe that makes no progress unless everyone paddles.

In the supposedly enlightened eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, parental indifference, child neglect, and raw cruelty appearedamong Europeans of all classes.... In mid-nineteenth- century France, families abandoned their children at the rate of thirty-three thousand a year.... It took sixty years after the criminalization of cruelty to animals for cruelty to children to be made punishable under English law.... Industrialized America added brutalizing child labor to the oppressions of the young.

Mothers remember a child's first words, and quote them in tones usually reserved for Byron.

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.

What I often say to people who are quick to say I’m not a feminist is if you think you’re not a feminist, give it all back.

The all American work ethic, destructive enough by itself, also packs a gender double standard that strip-mines the natural resources of both parents. It has taught us that as their earnings and success increase, men become "more manly," while women become "less feminine." This perverse cultural dynamic gives fathers an incentive to stay away from their families and kill themselves at work, while coercing mothers to limit their career commitment, which in turn limits their wages and shortchanges their families.

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