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

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

Over the years, I've found that I either live life or write about it. I can't seem to do both simultaneously - I have to do it sequentially. When I write incessantly, I lose touch with the issues and passions that fuel the work. But when I get too involved in organizations or movement endeavors, I almost forget that I'm a writer. It's a constant struggle to find a balance between these two worlds - the solitary writing life and the life of a social justice activist.

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

Illness is the proving ground of friendship.

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

Like many another romance, the romance of the family turns sour when the money runs out. If we really cared about families, we would not let 'born again' patriarchs send up moral abstractions as a smokescreen for the scandal of American family economics.