Sexual freedom is about choice. It's the freedom to say no as well as yes.

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

Personal change, growth, development, identity formation--these tasks that once were thought to belong to childhood and adolescence alone now are recognized as part of adult life as well. Gone is the belief that adulthood is, or ought to be, a time of internal peace and comfort, that growing pains belong only to the young; gone the belief that these are marker events--a job, a mate, a child--through which we will pass into a life of relative ease.

No revolution creates a wholly new universe. Rather, it reflects the history and culture that spawned it.

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

That myth--that image of the madonna-mother--has disabled us from knowing that, just as men are more than fathers, women are morethan mothers. It has kept us from hearing their voices when they try to tell us their aspirations . . . kept us from believing that they share with men the desire for achievement, mastery, competence--the desire to do something for themselves.

Intimacy. We hunger for it, but we also fear it.