Mary Blakely Quotes - Page 2

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• Never accept an expert's opinion if it violates your own because the experts can change their minds.

  Mary Blakely

  Mind, Experts, Opinion

  Mary Kay Blakely (1995). “American Mom: Motherhood, Politics, and Humble Pie”, p.34, Simon and Schuster

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• 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.

  Mary Blakely

  Crush, Daughter, Home

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• In a culture that gives men irresponsible power and women powerless responsibility, the advancement of civilization cannot be a serious goal.

  Mary Blakely

  Responsibility, Men, Civilization

  Mary Kay Blakely (1995). “American Mom: Motherhood, Politics, and Humble Pie”, p.152, Simon and Schuster

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• The truth invariably arrives several years after you need it.

  Mary Blakely

  Years, Needs, Too Late

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• In motherhood, where seemingly opposite realities can be simultaneously true, the role of nurturer invariably conflicts with the role of socializer. When trouble came as it surely must, was I the good cop who understood, the bad cop who terrorized, or both?

  Mary Blakely

  Motherhood, Reality, Opposites

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• We are expected, somehow, not to offend anyone on our way to liberation. There's an absurd expectation that the women's movement must be the first revolution in history to accomplish its goals without hurting anyone's feelings.

  Mary Blakely

  Hurt, Goal, Expectations

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• However diligent she may be, however dedicated, no mother can escape the larger influences of culture, biology, fate . . . until we can actually live in a society where mothers and children genuinely matter, ours is an essentially powerless responsibility. Mothers carry out most of the work orders, but most of the rules governing our lives are shaped by outside influences.

  Mary Blakely

  Mother, Children, Responsibility

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• If a woman is to know herself, then periods of solitude should be courted, planned, and embraced.

  Mary Blakely

  Solitude, Should, Periods

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• In an ideal society, mothers and fathers would produce potty- trained, civilized, responsible new citizens while government and corporate leaders would provide a safe, healthy, economically just community.

  Mary Blakely

  Mother, Father, Government

  Mary Kay Blakely (1995). “American Mom: Motherhood, Politics, and Humble Pie”, p.15, Simon and Schuster

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• Although a firm swat could bring a recalcitrant child swiftly into line, the changes were usually external, lasting only as long as the swatter remained in view....Permanent transformation had to be internal....The habits of self discipline, as laborious and frustrating as they were to achieve, offered the only real possibility of keeping children safe from their own excesses as well as the omnipresent dangers of society.

  Mary Blakely

  Children, Real, Self

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• Our humor turns our anger into a fine art.

  Mary Blakely

  Art, Anger, Fine

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• What stunned me was the regular assertion that feminists were "anti-family." . . . It was motherhood that got me into the movementin the first place. I became an activist after recognizing how excruciatingly personal the political was to me and my sons. It was the women's movement that put self-esteem back into "just a housewife," rescuing our intelligence from the junk pile of "instinct" and making it human, deliberate, powerful.

  Mary Blakely

  Powerful, Self Esteem, Son

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• 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.

  Mary Blakely

  Home, Compelling Reason, World

  Mary Kay Blakely (1995). “American Mom: Motherhood, Politics, and Humble Pie”, p.30, Simon and Schuster

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• Most literature on the culture of adolescence focuses on peer pressure as a negative force. Warnings about the "wrong crowd" read like tornado alerts in parent manuals. . . . It is a relative term that means different things in different places. In Fort Wayne, for example, the wrong crowd meant hanging out with liberal Democrats. In Connecticut, it meant kids who weren't planning to get a Ph. D. from Yale.

  Mary Blakely

  Mean, Kids, Yale

  Mary Kay Blakely (1995). “American Mom Motherhood Politics and Humble Pie”, Pocket

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• 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.

  Mary Blakely

  Mother, Real, Book

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• However global I strove to become in my thinking over the past twenty years, my sons kept me rooted to an utterly pedestrian view,intimately involved with the most inspiring and fractious passages in human development. However unconsciously by now, motherhood informs every thought I have, influencing everything I do. More than any other part of my life, being a mother taught me what it means to be human.

  Mary Blakely

  Mother, Mean, Son

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• It takes twenty or so years before a mother can know with any certainty how effective her theories have been--and even then thereare surprises. The daily newspapers raise the most frightening questions of all for a mother of sons: Could my once sweet babes ever become violent men? Are my sons really who I think they are?

  Mary Blakely

  Mother, Sweet, Son

  Mary Kay Blakely (1995). “American Mom: Motherhood, Politics, and Humble Pie”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

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