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.
Letty Cottin PogrebinMothers remember a child's first words, and quote them in tones usually reserved for Byron.
Letty Cottin PogrebinThe family endures because it offers the truth of mortality and immortality within the same group. The family endures because, better than the commune, kibbutz, or classroom, it seems to individualize and socialize its children, to make us feel at the same time unique and yet joined to all humanity, accepted as is and yet challenged to grow, loved unconditionally and yet propelled by greater expectations. Only in the family can so many extremes be reconciled and synthesized. Only in the family do we have a lifetime in which to do it.
Letty Cottin PogrebinI feel about mothers the way I feel about dimples: because I do not have one myself, I notice everyone who does.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin