Raising boys has made me a more generous woman than I really am. Undoubtedly, there are other routes to learning the wishes and dreams of the presumably opposite sex, but I know of none more direct, or more highly motivating, than being the mother of sons.

Divorce is the psychological equivalent of a triple coronary by pass. After such a monumental assault on the heart, it takes years to amend all the habits and attitudes that led up to it.

After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I'd read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers--especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.

If my sons are to become the kind of men our daughters would be pleased to live among, attention to domestic details is critical.The hostilities that arise over housework...are crushing the daughters of my generation....Change takes time, but men's continued obliviousness to home responsibilities is causing women everywhere to expire of trivialities.

It's an old trick now, God knows, but it works every time. At the very moment women start to expand their place in the world, scientific studies deliver compelling reasons for them to stay home.

Our humor turns our anger into a fine art.

A mother can legitimately be said to 'have a baby' - but in a civilization such as ours, she can never claim to own a teenager.