Letty Cottin Pogrebin Quotes - Page 2

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Children Conflict Family Friendship Giving Home Illness

I want to visit Memory Lane, I don't want to live there.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Memories, Want, Lanes

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To me, a person's identity is composed of both an 'I' and a 'we.' The 'I' finds itself in love, work, and pleasure, but it also locates itself within some meaningful group identity - a tribe, a community, a 'we.' America is too big and bland a tribe for most of us.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Meaningful, America, Community

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It's smart to be friends with one's sex partner but dumb to have sex with one's friends.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Friends, Sex, Smart

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Housework is the only activity at which men are allowed to be consistently inept because they are thought to be so competent at everything else.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Men, Activity, Competent

Letty Cottin Pogrebin (1983). “Family politics: love and power on an intimate frontier”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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Much is made of the accelerating brutality of young people's crimes, but rarely does our concern for dangerous children translateinto concern for children in danger. We fail to make the connection between the use of force on children themselves, and violent antisocial behavior, or the connection between watching father batter mother and the child deducing a link between violence and masculinity.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Mother, Children, Father

Letty Cottin Pogrebin (1983). “Family politics: love and power on an intimate frontier”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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It angers me that sick people have to wait for everything and everybody - doctors, nurses, callbacks, lab results, prescriptions, medications, technicians, treatment rooms. If illness is the embodiment of powerlessness, which, believe me, is true, then waiting is its temporal incarnation.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Believe, Doctors, Nurse

Letty Cottin Pogrebin (2013). “How to Be a Friend to a Friend Who's Sick”, p.16, PublicAffairs

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The ultra-right would have us believe that families are in trouble because of humanism, feminism, secular education, or sexual liberation, but the consensus of Americans is that what tears families apart is unemployment, inflation, and financial worries.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Believe, Worry, Feminism

Letty Cottin Pogrebin (1983). “Family politics: love and power on an intimate frontier”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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Compared to other parents, remarried parents seem more desirous of their child's approval, more alert to the child's emotional state, and more sensitive in their parent-child relations. Perhaps this is the result of heightened empathy for the child's suffering, perhaps it is a guilt reaction; in either case, it gives the child a potent weapon--the power to disrupt the new household and come between parent and the new spouse.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Children, Emotional, Giving

Letty Cottin Pogrebin (1983). “Family politics: love and power on an intimate frontier”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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Other than life experience, nothing left a deeper imprint on my formative self than the movies.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Movie, Self, Life Experience

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I used to anticipate my childhood birthday parties as if each were an annual coronation. Like most kids, I loved sitting at the head of the table with a crown on my head.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Party, Kids, Childhood

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Mothers remember a child's first words, and quote them in tones usually reserved for Byron.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Mother, Children, Firsts

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Control is a big issue when you're sick. It's the first thing you lose - other losses come later.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Loss, Issues, Sick

Letty Cottin Pogrebin (2013). “How to Be a Friend to a Friend Who's Sick”, p.59, PublicAffairs

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Although Freud said happiness is composed of love and work, reality often forces us to choose love or work.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Love, Happiness, Reality

Letty Cottin Pogrebin (1983). “Family politics: love and power on an intimate frontier”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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America is a nation fundamentally ambivalent about its children, often afraid of its children, and frequently punitive toward its children.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Children, America, Rehabilitation

Letty Cottin Pogrebin (1983). “Family politics: love and power on an intimate frontier”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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Friendships aren't perfect and yet they are very precious. For me, not expecting perfection all in one place was a great release.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Perfect, Perfection, Expecting

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When the president of the United States flicks the switch to light up the Christmas tree on the White House lawn, that house ceases to be an American symbol; it becomes a Christian symbol.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Christian, Light, White

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Over the years, I've found that I either live life or write about it. I can't seem to do both simultaneously - I have to do it sequentially. When I write incessantly, I lose touch with the issues and passions that fuel the work. But when I get too involved in organizations or movement endeavors, I almost forget that I'm a writer. It's a constant struggle to find a balance between these two worlds - the solitary writing life and the life of a social justice activist.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Struggle, Live Life, Passion

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Children's liberation is the next item on our civil rights shopping list.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Children, Rights, Shopping

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I didn't anticipate the primal quality of my pleasure, the raw physicality of it, the way my whole body leaps forward when I see my grandsons after a few days' absence.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Grandparent, Quality, Body

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The all American work ethic, destructive enough by itself, also packs a gender double standard that strip-mines the natural resources of both parents. It has taught us that as their earnings and success increase, men become "more manly," while women become "less feminine." This perverse cultural dynamic gives fathers an incentive to stay away from their families and kill themselves at work, while coercing mothers to limit their career commitment, which in turn limits their wages and shortchanges their families.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Mother, Father, Women

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The risk for a woman who considers her helpless children her "job" is that the children's growth toward self-sufficiency may be experienced as a refutation of the mother's indispensability, and she may unconsciously sabotage their growth as a result.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Mother, Jobs, Children

Letty Cottin Pogrebin (1983). “Family politics: love and power on an intimate frontier”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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If the Richter scale could measure human calamities, the loss of a child would register a ten.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Death, Children, Loss

Letty Cottin Pogrebin (2013). “How to Be a Friend to a Friend Who's Sick”, p.120, PublicAffairs

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Like plowing, housework makes the ground ready for the germination of family life. The kids will not invite a teacher home if beer cans litter the living room. The family isn't likely to have breakfast together if somebody didn't remember to buy eggs, milk, or muffins. Housework maintains an orderly setting in which family life can flourish.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Teacher, Work, Home

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As the mother of a son, I do not accept that alienation from me is necessary for his discovery of himself. As a woman, I will not cooperate in demeaning womanly things so that he can be proud to be a man. I like to think the women in my son's future are counting on me.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Mother, Son, Men

Letty Cottin Pogrebin (1983). “Family politics: love and power on an intimate frontier”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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Like many another romance, the romance of the family turns sour when the money runs out. If we really cared about families, we would not let 'born again' patriarchs send up moral abstractions as a smokescreen for the scandal of American family economics.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Running, Romance, Scandal

Letty Cottin Pogrebin (1983). “Family politics: love and power on an intimate frontier”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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Born: June 9, 1939
Occupation: Author
Cite this Page: Citation

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