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Mary Blakely Quotes

Since civilizing children takes the better part of two decades--some twenty years of nonstop thinking, nurturing, teaching, coaxing, rewarding, forgiving, warning, punishing, sympathizing, apologizing, reminding, and repeating, not to mention deciding what to do when--I now understand that one wrong move is invariably followed by hundreds of opportunities to be wrong again.

Children, Civilizing, Deciding, Hundreds, Moving, Teaching

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

Solitude, Should, Periods, Courted, Know

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

Mind, Experts, Opinion, Minds, Accept

The truth invariably arrives several years after you need it.

Years, Needs, Too Late, Several, Truth

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.

Children, Matter, Mother, Powerless, Responsibility

Women aren't trying to do too much. Women have too much to do.

Busy, Too Much, Trying, Women

One life stamps and influences another, which in turn stamps and influences another, on and on, until the soul of human experience breathes on in generations we'll never meet.

Children, Inspiring, Life, Soul, Stamps, Turn

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.

Dream, Dreams, Generous, Mother, Sex, Woman

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.

Mother, Baby, Teenager, Said, Claim

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.

Attitude, Attitudes, Coronary, Divorce, Heart, Led

When trouble comes no mother should have to plead guilty alone. The pediatricians, psychologists, therapists, goat herders, fathers, and peer groups should all be called to the bench as well. . . .

Father, Fathers, Mother, Peer, Should Have, Therapists

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?

Know, Men, Mother, Son, Sweet, Thereare

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.

Book, Knowledge, Life, Mother, Real, Time

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?

Conflicts, Motherhood, Opposites, Reality, Socializer, Trouble

Families don't always realize that mother is exhausted, because mother is always exhausted. Exhausted is what looks normal.

Mother, Looks, Normal, Families, Exhausted

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.

Powerful, Self Esteem, Motherhood, Regular, Recognizing, Feminists

One year, I'd completely lost my bearings trying to follow potty training instruction from a psychiatric expert. I was stuck on step on, which stated without an atom of irony: "Before you begin, remove all stubbornness from the child. ". . . I knew it only could have been written by someone whose suit coat was still spotless at the end of the day, not someone who had any hands-on experience with an actual two-year-old.

Children, Hands, Years, Step, Actual, Potty

Our humor turns our anger into a fine art.

Art, Anger, Fine, Turns, Humor

The naive notion that a mother naturally acquires the complex skills of childrearing simply because she has given birth now seemsas absurd to me as enrolling in a nine-month class in composition and imagining that at the end of the course you are now prepared to begin writing War and Peace.

Acquires, Composition, Mother, Naturally, War, Writing

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.

Children, Real, Remained, Self, Swiftly, Usually

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