Indeed, it is that ambiguity and ambivalence which often is so puzzling in women

Indeed, it is that ambiguity and ambivalence which often is so puzzling in women--the quality of shifting from child to woman, theseeming helplessness one moment and the utter self-reliance the next that baffle us, that seem most difficult to understand. These are the qualities that make her a mystery, the qualities that provoked Freud to complain, "What does a woman want?

The structure of the family is not born in nature but in human design. What we can do, we can also undo.

The authoritarian child-rearing style so often found in working-class families stems in part from the fact that parents see aroundthem so many young people whose lives are touched by the pain and delinquency that so often accompanies a life of poverty. Therefore, these parents live in fear for their children's future--fear that they'll lose control, that the children will wind up on the streets or, worse yet, in jail.

Society and personality live in a continuing reciprocal relation with each other. The search for personal change without efforts to change the institutions within which we live and grow will, therefore, be met with only limited reward.

Women find ways to give sense and meaning to daily life--ways to be useful in the community, to keep mind active and soul growingeven while they change diapers and cook vegetables.

Sometimes we choose a friend who mirrors our fantasies, dreams of a self we wish we could be.