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

I feel about mothers the way I feel about dimples: because I do not have one myself, I notice everyone who does.

Although Freud said happiness is composed of love and work, reality often forces us to choose love or work.

I used to anticipate my childhood birthday parties as if each were an annual coronation. Like most kids, I loved sitting at the head of the table with a crown on my head.

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.

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.

The ultra-right would have us believe that families are in trouble because of humanism, feminism, secular education, or sexual liberation, but the consensus of Americans is that what tears families apart is unemployment, inflation, and financial worries.