Mary Kay Blakely

Famous quotes containing the words mary kay blakely, kay blakely, mary kay, mary, kay and/or blakely:

    The absolute dependence of a newborn infant inspired many things in me, but it did not activate any magical knowledge about what to do for the next twenty years.
    Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)

    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 Kay Blakely (20th century)

    Our Lamaze instructor . . . assured our class . . . that our cervix muscles would become “naturally numb” as they swelled and stretched, and deep breathing would turn the final explosions of pain into “manageable discomfort.” This descriptions turned out to be as accurate as, say a steward advising passengers aboard the Titanic to prepare for a brisk but bracing swim.
    Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)

    Parenting is the one area of my life where I can feel incompetent, out of control and like a total failure all of the time.
    —Attorney Father. As quoted in Reviving Ophelia, by Mary Pipher, ch. 4 (1994)

    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.
    —Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)

    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 Kay Blakely (20th century)