Lillian Breslow Rubin

Famous quotes containing the words lillian breslow rubin, breslow rubin, lillian breslow, lillian, breslow and/or rubin:

    Women find ways to give sense and meaning to daily life—ways to be useful in the community, to keep mind active and soul growing even while they change diapers and cook vegetables.
    Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)

    That myth—that image of the madonna-mother—has disabled us from knowing that, just as men are more than fathers, women are more than mothers. It has kept us from hearing their voices when they try to tell us their aspirations . . . kept us from believing that they share with men the desire for achievement, mastery, competence—the desire to do something for themselves.
    —Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)

    Indeed, it is that ambiguity and ambivalence which often is so puzzling in women—the quality of shifting from child to woman, the seeming helplessness one moment and the utter self-reliance the next that baffle us, that seem most difficult to understand. These are the qualities that make her a mystery, the qualities that provoked Freud to complain, “What does a woman want?”
    Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)

    For me, it’s enough! They’ve been here long enough—maybe too long. It’s a funny thing, though. All these years Fred was too busy to have much time for the kids, now he’s the one who’s depressed because they’re leaving. He’s really having trouble letting go. He wants to gather them around and keep them right here in this house.
    —Anonymous Parent. As quoted in Women of a Certain Age, by Lillian B. Rubin, ch. 2 (1979)

    How then can we account for the persistence of the myth that inside the empty nest lives a shattered and depressed shell of a woman—a woman in constant pain because her children no longer live under her roof? Is it possible that a notion so pervasive is, in fact, just a myth?
    —Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)

    Friends serve central functions for children that parents do not, and they play a critical role in shaping children’s social skills and their sense of identity. . . . The difference between a child with close friendships and a child who wants to make friends but is unable to can be the difference between a child who is happy and a child who is distressed in one large area of life.
    —Zick Rubin (20th century)