Bits and pieces


This page is a place to collect some of the funny, inspirational or quirky pieces of advice that I have picked up along the way and wouldn't otherwise make it into the blog. I’ll be adding to these every now and then. Here's hoping they give you some food for thought too.



‘The following advice offered by this professional couple resonated with us: “Children must come in pairs for harmony in the household, just as paired electrons with spin up and spin down can form a stable atomic orbital. One or three children would not work as well as two or four!”’ Aviva Brecher talking about advice from mentor Professor Mildred Dresselhaus, in Emily Monosson, ed., Motherhood, The Elephant in the Laboratory: Women Scientists Speak Out (2008), p 27 

‘Whether they are eating, sleeping, running or interacting with others, I invariably watch them with curiosity through my primate lens. When the kids fight ... I think with relief that at least they are not likely to kill each other like sibling hyenas.’ Devin Reese in Monosson, ed., Motherhood, The Elephant in the Laboratory, p 132

Supermum is still out there somewhere as an ideal. I do not recall reading anywhere in the popular magazines the serious suggestion that men should do anything more than help out. Even today, working mothers who run themselves ragged are merely offered time management classes. mobile phones and nappy delivery services to help them acquit themselves a little better. Now we are told that ‘having it all’ is  a dream that died, and that many women actually prefer to stay at home rather than continue the juggling act. Yet a third option seems to be habitually overlooked, and that is the notion of ‘sharing it all.’ Aminatta Forna, The Mother of All Myths (1998), p 228 

The answer to the role strain and marital conflicts that occur in modern families is not to refurbish old gender relationships, however comforting they seem on the surface. Rather, we must re-organise both marriage and work to accommodate the needs of working parents and their children.Changes in cultural and personal values about marriage are essential if we are to move past the ‘stalled revolution’ in male-female relations that leads to so much stress. As therapist Betty Carter has commented, if any other institution in this country was failing half the people who entered it, we’d demand that the institution change to fit people’s new needs, not the other way round. Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms with America’s Changing Families (1998), p 72. 

"Every woman needs to be self-sufficient .... You hear these yummy mummies talk about being the best possible mother and they put all their effort into their children. I also want to be the best possible mother, but I know that my job as a mother includes bringing my children up so actually they can live without me."  Cherie Booth QC (aka Cherie Blair) cited in Lucy Cavendish, 'Everything that is wrong...', The Independent, 24 June 2012.

I am almost willing to buy that argument: that boys are the ones who are more limited; that little girls need to feel beautiful, that being on display, being admired for how they look, is critical to their developing femininity and fragile self-esteem ... Except that, after meeting with the preschool moms, I had flipped through a stack of drawings each child in Daisy’s class had made to complete the sentence ‘If I were a [blank], I’d [blank] to the store (One might say, for instance, ‘If I were a ball, I’d bounce to the store.’) The boys had chosen to be a whole host of things: firemen, spiders, super-heroes, puppies, tigers, birds, athletes, raisins. The girls fell into exactly four camps: princess, fairy, butterfly and ballerina (one particularly enthusiastic girl claimed them all: a ‘princess, butterfly, fairy, ballerina’) How precisely does that ... expand their horizons? The boys seemed to be exploring the world; the girls were exploring femininity. Peggy Orenstein, Cinderella Ate My Daughter (2011) p 22 

Gloria Steinem said it best: “You can’t do it all. No-one can have two full-time jobs, have perfect children, and cook three meals and be multi-orgasmic ‘til dawn ... Superwoman is the adversary of the women’s movement.' Gloria Steinem cited in Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women Work and the Will to Lead, (2013) p 124