Mary Blakely Quotes

#1. The truth invariably arrives several years after you need it.

Mary Blakely

#2. 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

#3. 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.

Mary Blakely

#4. 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 ...

Mary Blakely

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

Mary Blakely

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

Mary Blakely

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

Mary Blakely

#8. 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.

Mary Blakely

#9. 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

#10. 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.

Mary Blakely

#11. 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

#12. Spooky things happen in houses densely occupied by adolescent boys. When I checked out a four-inch dent in the living room ceilingone afternoon, even the kid still holding the baseball bat looked genuinely baffled about how he possibly could have done it.

Mary Blakely

#13. Certainly, words can be as abusive as any blow ... When a three-year-old yells, "You're so stupid! What a dummy!" it doesn't carry the same weight as when a mother yells those words to a child ... Even if you don't physically abuse young children, you can still drive them nuts with your words.

Mary Blakely

#14. 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.

Mary Blakely

#15. Divorce exposes absolutely ever buried assumption about marriage ... how a husband's sense of entitlement and a wife's sense of duty turned the principle of 'our money, our kids' into the reality of 'his money, her kids.

Mary Blakely

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

Mary Blakely

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

Mary Blakely