When I Whisper, Everyone Listens

The cousins and Machiavelli, the whisperer

My second daughter Michelle seemed so much easier than Anne, her sister two years older. I was bamboozled. By 18 months, Michelle had concluded that Anne's confrontational style was too exhausting and unreliable. Charm worked much better. When asking for something, Michelle would preface it with so many appreciative compliments that I was eager to do what she asked. Michelle was almost grown before I realized that she had gotten her way much more than Anne had.

My favorite Michelle story occurred when she had just turned 3. She fell in the playground and needed ten stitches. The ER was a horror as I had to fight tooth and nail to stay with her. Right after the accident we went on vacation with my parents, my brother Joe, his wife, and their three kids from Kansas City. Michelle was very close to my parents. Whenever she was angry at me, she insisted, "I need to call Grandma." She had never had to share Grandma and Grandpa with anyone but Anne, and by 15 months she had mastered getting her big sister in trouble.

Immediately after her cousins arrived, my chatterbox ceased talking. After a day of absolute silence, she deigned to whisper, but only to me and my mom. Her absolute command was terrifying. Even after she woke up from a nightmare, she remembered to whisper. When I was playing with her in the water, I could coax her to make sounds, but she refused to utter sounds that were words. I was frantic, convinced that her fall had caused brain damage or a lasting emotional trauma. Was she upset that I was pregnant with younger sister Rose?

When Grandma Mary asked why she wouldn't talk, Michelle whispered. "With my cousins here, when I talk, nobody listens. But when I whisper, everyone listens." Her ingenious scheme worked wonders. Everyone spent the entire ten days trying to trick Michelle into talking. I had just gotten a tape recorder, and the impact of Michelle's silence is documented. All recorded conversations dealt with the strange silence of a certain three year old.

I was nervous that Michelle had discovered a new way to make us her minions and was going to whsiper for weeks. But the minute Joe and his family drove away, Michelle started talking and has never stopped. Study those pictures. Would you suspect that sweet, smiling little girl in the green bathing suit was Machiavelli in disguise?

Michelle told this story on her college applications. "It is rather funny to think that in my large family of overachievers, a three-year-old's decision not to speak in one of our fondest and most memorable stories. To this day, I cannot speak a word to my Uncle Joe without receiving the loud surprised reaction, "She talks." All colleges eagerly accepted her.

Have you ever tried not talking for an hour at an immediate family gathering of 11 people?

Why Do I Feel This Way?

Some parents have asked me why I feel so passionately about preschool psychiatric diagnoses when my own daughters didn't have such serious problems. I will let you in on a secret. Bright, creative children can have a terrible time adjusting to traditional American grade schools. Bright bored children don't finish worksheets, don't pay attention, daydream, forget assignments, leave books and homework home, ignore the teacher, read ahead of the class and miss their place if called upon, miss many days of school.

My local school insisted on testing a kindergarten boy for development disability; his IQ was genius level. When my writer, pictured above, was in first grade, her teacher refused to assign her to the advanced reading group until she was more "cooperative and compliant." Rose never became compliant. In kindergarten she refused to do assignments because "writers use their own words." In high school she refused to do art projects because "artists paint what they need to, not what the teacher assigns." Now I would be told to have her tested because her "emotional maturity" lagged behind her intelligence. My two high school valedictorians were not given any awards from grade school because they missed too much school. They only truly liked school when they got to Yale.

Your bright preschooler might face as many challenges as your friend's autistic or ADHD son. More schools have special ed services than have gifted services. Again and again, I questioned whether home schooling might be easier than my daily struggle with their school. Younger parents might not anticipate the extent to which they need to be advocates for their kids in American's test-obsessed schools. Getting high test scores is more important than being a gifted musician or artist. Kids who don't adjust to the norm are stigmatized. The most creative, divergent thinkers our society desperately needs can be slapped with a psychiatric label and have their giftedness drugged out of them.

Block Building

Diagnosing Children with Bipolar Disorder

I am concerned that gifted, creative children, who march to a different drummer in our regimented society, are being misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and threatened with a lifetime of dangerous medications and social stigma. Having that dire diagnosis imposed on you at age 6 severely compromises your ability to lead a normal life, marry, have children, go to college, have a career. How would you have reacted at age 6 if you were told you had a broken brain that could not be fixed, only treated with lifelong drugs with dangerous and/or unknown side effects?

Twenty years ago, psychiatry believed that bipolar disorder strikes in the late teens, that it was impossible to diagnose children or adolescents. Now psychiatrists occasionally diagnose bipolar disorder in four year olds, after too brief examination. Is diagnosing kids as bipolar sometimes an unthinking way to squelch kids who are divergent thinkers, who think too fast, talk too fast, question authority, get bored too easily in our increasing test-oriented schools?

Are other countries undergoing the same childhood bipolar epidemic or is this an American phenomena? When and how was the supposed epidemic of childhood bipolar disorder suddenly discovered? How many of the early pioneers were funded by drug companies? Have any longitudinal studies been done, comparing the life trajectory of kids diagnosed and medicated and of kids whose parents refuse medication? Is there any evidence that kids diagnosed as bipolar grow up to be adults with bipolar disorder?

Has the breakdown of the extended family and small, isolated families increased the number of kids in serious trouble? Why is there such a striking absence of social criticism about the so-called epidemic of bipolar children? For the last 30 years American society has conducted an experiment in having babies and toddlers cared for by a rapid turnover of strangers--not parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, neighbors, friends. Babies as young as two months spend their entire days in group care, with almost inevitable disregard for their individual temperament and biological rhythms. Parents have no choice. Both mother and father work long exhausting hours without the support of nearby grandparents, aunts, uncles. Schools are obsessed with testing, neglecting the art, music, writing, sports, exercise, play that nurture a child's creativity.

I only have the questions, not the answers. But the psychiatrists writing the prescriptions too often are unwilling to admit they don't know the answers either. That these prescribed drugs work is not proof of the validity of diagnoses.If any of us took an atypical anti-psychotic, we might appear calmer and more obedient. We might also find it impossible to do our jobs satisfactorily.

Big Pharm runs advertisements on primetime TV and popular magazines to convince patients that atypical anti-psychotics such as risperdal are the magic bullets to make their lives wonderful. Antipsychotics used to be reserved for chronic schizophrenics. Now they are used to make Alzheimer's patients and children easier to manage.

How many psychiatrist prescribing drugs for young children have taken them? Is America in danger of regarding children as high-end luxury items that parents insist on purchasing and then demand that society should take some responsibility for them? Any decent society is committed to all children. We are the least child friendly society in the Western world. Is that why so many more of our children take psychiatric drugs? I question whether bipolar disorder can be distinguished from normal crazy behavior of children and teenagers.

Pop-pop Tickle

Who Is a Good Mother?

1976,1981, 1983

I have been a mother for 35 years. My daughters are 35, 33, 29, and 26. At the moment, they consider me a good mother, who needs to fight her judgmental nature, specifically about the right balance between mothering and careers. I am reluctant to criticize Palin's mothering, because I am not sure what good mothering means. When I had one child, I was much surer than I am now. Who decides whether you are a good mother? All of the following will demand a vote. Of course, I am not suggesting they should be allowed a vote.

• You and your spouse
• Your mother, grandmother, siblings, cousins, friends, or employers
• Your babies, toddlers, preschoolers, teenagers, adult children
• Your children's teachers, coaches, guidance counselors
• Your children's psychiatrists and therapists
• College admissions staffs
• Your children's lovers, partners, spouses
• Your church, the mass media, the USA, most other mothers

What are the criteria? Please, don't imagine I think these questions are reasonable. I just wanted to highlight the insane expectations of mothers, imposed by society and demanded of themselves. Given that none of us are divinely perfect, such crazy demands destroy our confidence and undermine our mothering.

• Whether and how long you breastfed your children
• How long you waited before returning to work
• How often you screamed at your kids, how often you lowered their self-esteem, deservedly or not
• Whether you ever spanked them
• How many trips to the emergency room were necessary
• How many bones they broke
• How many times they got sick
• How clean and orderly you kept your house
• The nutritiousness of your meals
• The amount of TV they watched
• Their hours on the computer
• How many books they read, how many you read to them
• How many times you took them to the library
• How many musical instruments they played
• How many sports they excelled in
• When they first had sex
• How many sex partners they had, whether they got STDs
• Whether you were rich enough to send them to good schools
• What grades they got, what colleges they attended
• Whether they became alcoholics, drug addicts, child abusers, criminals
• Whether they had an abortion
• Whether they chose public service careers
• What candidates they supported
• Whether they got married, became gay, had children of their own
• What careers they pursued, how much money they made
• How often they visit, call, email, share their lives with you?
• Whether they accept your values and your faith
• Whether they honor their grandparents, aunts, and uncles
• Whether they attend family reunions
• Whether they observe birthdays and anniversaries
• Whether they can be relied upon during a family crisis

Can children evaluate your mothering before they become parents and realize what it is like? Can a good mother have rotten children? If you had a rotten childhood, do you get a handicap on motherhood? If your children turn out badly, can they evaluate your mothering fairly? If you remember a thousand instances of bad mothering, are you a good mother if everyone has been deceived or have more perspective?

There is a dark side of motherhood. When I volunteered to counsel parents suspected of child abuse, the volunteer coordinator asked me if I could imagine abusing my children. They refused anyone insufficiently honest or self aware to say yes. Every child at times is an unwanted child:) Raising children on the 20th floor in Manhattan tests your impulse control:) Often it is easier to be a good mother to one child than to another, but that doesn't mean the easy child is your favorite. Good or bad temperamental matches play a crucial role in mother-child relationships.

My mom was a good mother to her 6 children, absolutely there for us all our lives. But she and I had a conflicted relationship because we were so different temperamentally. Watching my mother care for her mother as she aged, I marveled how alike they were. How difficult it must have been to have a daughter who confronted and argued. Ultimately we did well with each other. I will always be grateful that she lived with me the last four years of her life, that she died at home.

Being a good mother, like being a good person, is something you need to work on every day of your life. I am finding the transition to grandmotherhood almost as perplexing. I desperately miss my mother, who knew me and my daughters equally well and could interpret for all of us. Many of us are probably better grandmothers than we were mothers.

1971, Strident Feminist Has Pregnancy Scare

I wrote these appalling journal entries shortly after I dropped out of Columbia Law School in 1971. Who would have guessed that eventually I would become the stay-at-home mother of four? However, this was also the only time in my childbearing life before my husband's vasectomy that I forgot to use birth control.

When I first realized I’d forgotten to take the pill Saturday night, I was terrified, hysterical, uncontrollable. I was going to get pregnant; my life was ruined; I could never face anyone again. I was convinced that somehow I deliberately forgot to take the pill because subconsciously I wanted to be pregnant. That would justify my not having a job, my staying home, my sleeping late, the lazy pattern I’d fallen into the past few weeks since Columbia. Then I would have all the time in the world to read, to think, to learn, to write, and everyone would think any effort on my part was commendable.

I am still torn between two interpretations of my forgetfulness. After religiously remembering to take the pill for three and one half years, it could not be just by accident that I forgot. The other is that in three and one half years it was inevitable that at some time I would forget; no one’s memory is perfect. The actual circumstances are strange too. After I finished my sandwich Saturday evening, I went into the bedroom to take my pill. Instead I put the pills in my pocketbook, thinking Chris and I might spend the night on Long Island. But I remembered taking it, even now I half remember taking it. Often at two in the morning I’ve become convinced that I hadn’t taken the pill and gotten up to check. Always I had. This is the first time I remembered taking the pill when in fact I hadn't. Of course we left for Long Island early about 6:30. Usually I take it around 8 or 9. I must have put it in my bag, thinking I would take it later.

Later I calmed down, realizing how extremely unlikely it was that I would get pregnant by forgetting to take the pill once. But more strangely and more interesting, I also calmed down because I realized getting pregnant wouldn’’t necessarily be the end of my life. I don’t think I could ever reconcile myself to having an abortion. Although I may recognize that my reluctance is the result of Catholic teachings that on the whole I have rejected, that recognition does not vanquish my reluctance. While my Catholic training hasn’t given me certainty, it’s given my doubts--the worst kind of doubts. Can you go ahead and do something when you’re not sure whether it’s murder or not? Don’t some doubts have to be resolved before you can act?

In addition I somehow feel you have to have a better reason for an abortion than we have. We could afford it. Chris’s and my joint income is easily $16,000 or $17,000. In fact, if I built up my free-lancing just a little more, we could afford the two bedroom apartment in the new building. Once I found a full-time job, we could easily afford to hire someone to take care of the baby during the day. Before the crisis I never considered the advantages of having children now, rather than five or six years from now. I have always felt I should be firmly, absolutely, unshakably settled in a career before I could even consider having children. But once you decide you’re not going to stay home and take care of the child, having one now wouldn’t hinder my career much more than having one later. In fact, now my career, being relatively new, would probably demand less than it will five-six-seven years from now.

January 10, 1972
I don’t think I quite realized how suggestible I am. Merely seeing Miriam’s baby, talking to Richard and Kathy, learning Pat was pregnant and seeing her and Peter’s excitement have set my fantasies racing. Yet rationally I know this would be the worst possible time for me to get pregnant. I’m discouraged, depressed, uncertain about what I’m going to do, haunted by the feeling I’m wasting myself, that I am a failure. Having a baby would be the easy way out. On the other hand, this time I would be jumping from the frying pan into the fire for the rest of my life. You can change schools, quit jobs, cease to see friends, but you can’t cease to be a mother. That brief little crisis when I forgot the pill seems to have had serious results. Deciding that my life wouldn’t be ruined if I got pregnant seemed to have had an incredible impact on my thinking. I wonder if such fantasies are in any way related to the fact that it’s a week before my period.

I don’t think I’m in any serious danger of giving way to my fantasies. But somehow I thought I was immune to them. I didn’t realized that I was insulated because none of my friends, none of the women I could conceivably identify with, had children. Perhaps my greatest fear is that when you have a baby some mysterious change comes over you and you either are content to stay at home despite resolutions you made before the baby was born or you are powerless to return to work even thought you might want to. I hate to consider Pat my guinea pig, but I’m very curious to observe whether and how she changes. I can’t entirely identify with her; she’s six years older than I am, and she lacks ambition. Even so I cannot conceive of her fading into a devoted mother, interested in nothing but her precious child or guilty if she is interested in anything else.

Thank God my daughters are nothing like I was at age 26. I got pregnant 6 months after this last entry.

Growing Up with Five Brothers

My dad was an actuary; my mom was a housewife who became a history teacher and activist after I left home. I have 5 brothers, 18 months, 3 years, 7 years, 11 years, and 13 years younger. All married relatively young; one brother divorced and remarried. They have 6, 0, 2, 1, and 2 children respectively. There is a lawyer, a chemistry professor, a teacher, a nurse, and an accountant. They live in Maine, upstate NY, North Carolina, Westchester NY, and Long Island NY.

Taking care of my toddler grandson Michael three days a week, I have recaptured many memories of my brothers as small boys. Growing up, I was extremely close to my brothers; we spent most of our free time together. We loved the beach, ice skating, roller skating, tree climbing, summer vacations, backyard baseball, touch football, and badminton. We played endless ping pong and knock hockey games, card games, Monopoly, and Scrabble. We had the biggest backyard on the block, and our house was always the neighborhood hangout. We had a basketball hoop attached to the garage that was in use day and night. There were no girls on the block, so I always played with the guys. I was passionately interested in baseball, and my brothers used to challenge their friends to ask me a baseball question I couldn't answer.

Looking back, the siblings might have relied on each other too much. Joe, Andrew, and I were not very social; each of us had one best friend and two good ones. We never hung out with a group of peers. We always had each other to play with, argue with, compete with. We always defended our siblings against our parents and against neighborhood bullies. Except for Bob (the 4th child), we never dated in high school.

Rationality, intellect, and academic achievement were the family values, and we all honored them. Competitiveness was subtly encouraged even though my mother would occasionally inveigh against it half-heartedly. Sarcasm and teasing were prevalent; the victim was expected to take the joke. Excessive emotion was scorned; I cried alone in my room. I still find it absolutely humiliating to cry in public and feel critical of women who do. Except for my parents' deaths, I have virtually no members of my brother's crying past 3 or 4. The possibility of my dad's crying was unimaginable. My mother, who had 5 brothers too, always choked back her tears.

We ere encouraged to rejoice in how different we were from most people in our working-class suburban town. We were the intellectuals. When working summers as mail carriers, Joe and Andrew reported that no other families seem to subscribe to the same magazines me read. My dad strongly encouraged us to think for ourselves and not care what other people (except each other) thought. He pointed that the most people were too preoccupied with their own problems to think much about you. My brothers might not be much use for discussing emotional issues, but for intellectually stimulating, challenging conversations, they are terrific.

My brothers can see each other for the first time in 6 months and spend the evening discussing politics, not their personal lives. My brothers insist that they don't have to talk to their siblings frequently to stay close. Each is certain he would come through in a crisis, and their track record is good. We all seem very interested in what the others are doing, but as long as my mom was alive, my brothers would ask my mom instead of calling their brothers. Now I have moved in that family switchboard role.

We still influence each other tremendously. We very much want our siblings' approval. Andrew, the chemistry professor, has been very opinionated about the college and career choices of his nieces and nephews. I have been amused and touched by how each of my brothers checked out my daughters' prospective husbands. We freely borrow each other's expertise. I was worried that the family would scatter after my mom died, but we all have attended the second generation's numerous weddings and sibling milestone birthday parties.

There is now a younger generation; three of us are thriving as grandparents. My parents would have 3 great grandchildren, with 3 more on the way. Everyone adores the babies and showers them with attention and love.

We have always had a strong family identity--intelligent, independent, well-educated, critical, autonomous. Marrying a gorgeous bimbo was not an option for my brothers. When we get together, we all have a good time. We have the same sense of humor, vote for the same candidates, enjoy the same movies. We all take pride in the academic and career success of the second generation. I am aware to what extent this pride in intellectual achievement is a defense against social insecurity and sets us apart from other people. Thankfully, our children have not inherited that limitation.

Having 5 younger brothers has probably shaped me more than any other single influence. I like and sometimes actually understand men and invariably defend them to women. I loathe men-bashing. Until I became a mother, I was far more comfortable in a group of men than a group of women. I enjoyed being the only girl in my political science classes at Fordham, while I was miserable in a girls' Catholic college in freshman year.

I did not consciously want sons. I always told people my 4 girls were my reward for 5 brothers. I always wanted a sister and am sometimes envious of my daughters' closeness. But I love taking care of a grandson and talking to little boys in the playground.

Birth as Child Abuse

Sisters bonding or poor family values?

I kept postponing writing this post, hoping it wouldn't be necessary. But once again I read a blog post and got an e mail from an Obama group, using Palin's childbirth decisions in her last preganancy as proof she is a poor mother, lacking true family values. I loathe having to keep defending a right-wing fundamentalist, when I oppose all her public policies. But this obsession with Palin's childbirth is creepy destructiveness.

I had my last two children at home. The births were planned. My third daughter was delivered by a nurse midwife; my fourth by a family physicians. Both had admitting privileges in nearby hospitals. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists characterizes home births as child abuse.

So I couldn't run for assistant dog catcher, could I?

I don 't want to list the misconceptions and lack of information displayed in the obstetrician-for-a-day posts. That would be doing the same thing I am accusing other bloggers and the media of doing. Short of leaving a baby in the trash pr refusing to take her home from the hospital, what business is ours how a candidate or a candidate's spouse handles birth?

We have absolutely no information on the births of Obama's and Biden's children. We don't even know if they took the time to show up in the delivery room. We don't know if they attended childbirth classes. We don't know if their wives had unnecessary C-sections because they didn't help her research local hospitals or didn't advocate for her when she was in labor.

We have no right to that information, anymore than we need to know how often they make love, whether their wives have had abortions, what kind of birth control they use, whether they ever had an STD.

Some things are none of our business. As all semblance of privacy is stripped from our candidates, the talent pool for our politicians inevitably shrinks.

Obstetricians for a day are not effective Obama supporters.

Why Do I Feel This Way?

Some parents have asked me why I feel so passionately about preschool psychiatric diagnoses when my own daughters didn't have such serious problems. I will let you in on a secret. Bright, creative children can have a terrible time adjusting to traditional American grade schools. Bright bored children don't finish worksheets, don't pay attention, daydream, forget assignments, leave books and homework home, ignore the teacher, read ahead of the class and miss their place if called upon, miss many days of school. My local school insisted on testing a kindergarten boy for development disability; his IQ was genius level. When my writer, pictured above, was in first grade, her teacher refused to assign her to the advanced reading group until she was more "cooperative and compliant." Rose never became compliant. In kindergarten she refused to do assignments because "writers use their own words." In high school she refused to do art projects because "artists paint what they need to, not what the teacher assigns." Now I would be told to have her tested because her "emotional maturity" lagged behind her intelligence. My two high school valedictorians were not given any awards from grade school. They only truly liked school when they got to Yale.

Your bright preschooler might face as many challenges as your friend's autistic or ADHD son. More schools have special ed services than have gifted services. Again and again, I questioned whether home schooling might be easier than my daily struggle with their school. Younger parents might not anticipate the extent to which they need to be advocates for their kids in American's test-obsessed schools. Getting high test scores is more important than being a gifted musician or artist. Kids who don't adjust to the norm are stimatized. The most creative, divergent thinkers our society desperately needs can be slapped with a psychiatric label and have their giftedness drugged out of them.

Ripples

"We drop like pebbles into the ponds of each other's souls, and the orbit of our ripples continues to expand, intersecting with countless others. " J. Borysenko

Most children and their daddies love throwing pebbles into the water. What I loved about being a public librarian was the opportunity to throw thousands of pebbles over the years. Handing the right book to a child going through a difficult time could be worth months of therapy. A ten minute conversation with a distressed mom can help her and her child. Fifteen minutes coaxing an elder to try the internet can open up the world for her. Guiding a frightened new cancer patient to local support groups might lessen their fear. I prefer being a librarian to being a social worker. Insurance companies compell therapists to put numbers of people; librarians only number the books." So many public librarians considered being social workers.

I once treated a young Irishman struggling with gay identity issues. Introducing him to James Baldwin was my crucial intervention. A friend, a ER psychiatric social worker at a large municipal hospital, has an office filled with books that he gives away. Chris believes many people experiencing the spiritual emergency of acute mental distress need a good listener and the right book, not hospital admission and mind-dulling drugs.

Being a La Leche leader was also a deeply rewarding way to create ripples. In the days before cordless phones, I use to have a phone cord that stretched anywhere downstairs, from the front to the back door, so I could give breastfeeding suggestions and make sure my kids weren't painting themselves purple or making potions to feed to the baby or decorating the playroom with talcum power and desitin.

Blogging, commenting, and linking allow us to throw even more pebbles.

When I Whisper, Everyone Listens

The cousins and Machiavelli, the whisperer

Commenting on my Anne post, Beck said she had such placid children. I warned her that my placid children were no less challenging. For years I thanked God that Michelle, my second daughter, was so much easier. But she had carefully observed Anne and realized charm worked much better than confrontation. When asking for something, Michelle would preface it with so many appreciative compliments that I was eager to do what she asked.

Michelle was almost grown before I realized that she had gotten her way much more than Anne had. She is the ultimate iron fist in a velvet glove. I was in awe how she handled doctors and nurses whenever my mom was hospitalized. Both Andy and I have named Michelle to be our health proxy. Once, when her dad and I were squabbling, teenage Michelle suggested, "Mom, you should wear more perfume." I have taken her advice in my second marriage.

My favorite Michelle story occurred when she had just turned 3. I was a La Leche League mom who nursed her kids forever. I had just tried to wean Michelle at 3. Then she fell in the playground and needed ten stitches. The ER was a horror as I had to fight tooth and nail to stay with her. Right after the accident we went on vacation with my parents, my brother Joe, his wife, and their three kids from Kansas City. Michelle was very close to my parents and had no experience sharing them with anyone but Anne. Immediately upon arriving , my chatterbox ceased talking. After a day of absolute silence, she deigned to whisper , but only to me and my mom.

Her absolute command was terrifying. Even after she woke up from a nightmare, she remembered to whisper. When I was playing with her in the water, I could coax her to make sounds, but she refused to utter sounds that were words. I was frantic, convinced that her fall had caused brain damage or a lasting emotional trauma. Was she upset that I was pregnant with Rose?

When her grandma asked why she wouldn't talk, Michelle whispered. "With my cousins here, when I talk, nobody listens. But when I whisper, everyone listens." Her ingenious scheme worked wonders. Everyone spent the entire ten days trying to trick Michelle into talking. I had just gotten a tape recorder, and the impact of Michelle's silence is documented. The main topic of conversations recorded was the strange silence of a certain three year old. The minute Joe and his family drove away, Michelle started talking and has never stopped. Study those pictures. Would you suspect that sweet, smiling little girl in the green bathing suit was a follower of Machiavelli?

Michelle told this story on her college applications. "It is rather funny to think that in my large family of overachievers, a three-year-old's decision not to speak in one of our fondest and most memorable stories. To this day, I cannot speak a word to my Uncle Joe without receiving the loud surprised reaction, "She talks." All colleges eagerly accepted her.

Have you ever tried not talking for an hour at an immediate family gathering of 11 people? Beware of seemingly placid children.

Anne the Bold

From my journals, 1974-1975
From the time Anne was 10 months old, I took her twice a day to Central Park, particularly one very large playground. Anne would casually wander off almost 100 yards away. As long as I was within eye range and met her eyes and waved when she glanced at me, she seemed perfectly confident. One nightmarish day, she managed to slip out between the playground bars and head for Central Park West. I didn't know I could run so fast.

At 15 months Anne would go down slides and climb up jungle gyms that three year olds would avoid. By 2 she was so physically competent that I felt confident about sitting on a bench and watching from a distance as she clambered over a climbing structure designed for children 6 and up. She hardly ever cried if she fell down or bumped into something. Anne was happiest learning new physical feats. She loved the water; at one she would fearlessly walk into the ocean and laugh if she were knocked down. She was physically fearless yet not particularly reckless except about things she could not possibly know about. She was always ahead of other kids in trying something new physically like walking up the slide backward.

Anne in her twenties:
From Niger:
One month ago, I sat in a grass hut in a small village in Niger called Koyetegui, and watched democracy in action, Nigerien style. The five members of the Bureau de Vote sat on overturned pestles normally used for pounding millet, and offered me a seat on a woven mat. And so I sat, as the sun set and the kerosene lantern was lit, and watched as the chickens were chased out of the hut and the entire village crowded into this cramped space to watch the solemn counting and recounting of the 132 votes that had been cast in this tiny district. When the vote counting was over and the report had been filled out and duly sealed with wax, I rode back to the regional capital of Dosso with the ballot box to turn in the election results. It was only the next day that I learned from my driver that the chief of the village had presented me with a gift of an enormous river squash. I spent the entire ride back to Niamey replaying the events of the past few months in my mind, wondering how I had ever gotten to be so lucky.


From applications to graduate schools in International Relations:
In three and a half years, I visited over 75 cities in 53 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. In several countries–Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Nepal, Benin, Curacao–I was the first AIRINC representative to conduct a survey. I have had the opportunity to do amazing things in my life. I have seen some of the truly wondrous places in the world, from the Sahara desert, to Machu Picchu, to the Mekong River Delta. I have jumped out of a plane in Maine and been seventy feet underwater in the Caribbean. I have witnessed one of the poorest countries on earth usher in a new era of hope and democracy.

My post to a Salon Group, 2001:
My 28-year-old daughter has just accepted a summer internship in Rwanda. Seven years ago, a million people were killed in three months in the worst genocide since the Holocaust. She is getting a master's degree in international affairs at Columbia, specializing in human rights, transitional justice, and Africa. If she wasn't going to Rwanda, she would have gone to the Congo. I am fiercely proud of her. But I worry about how to handle my fears as she goes from one world flash point to the next. I want to support her, not burden her with my anxieties.

You can imagine how happy I am that Anne is working for an international peace organization in Manhattan and mothering her 5-month-old son. She is only 50 minutes away by Long Island Railroad. However, I have not learned my lesson. I gave my grandson the globe beachball.

Favie

This post needs to be read after reading the earlier one on inconsistency. When I forbade Anne to bring her blanket to the playground, I forgot to add, "And you can't bring it to Niger when you are 28 either." This essay was part of Anne's grad school application to Columbia's School of International Affairs, which accepted her. Reading this should bring comfort to all of you who are learning how clueless I was in the early years as Anne's mother. Our children are far easier on us than we are on ourselves.

You are to be photographed with one of your personal belongings. What is the object and why did you select it? Three days after I was born, my father’s mother presented my nervous new parents with a gift: a baby blanket. Loosely woven out of fuzzy white acrylic yarn, interspersed with strands of pale blue, pink, and yellow, and bordered with a satin ribbon, it soon became a permanent fixture in my crib. The earliest black and white photographs taken of me–so early that my newborn legs had not yet uncurled–feature the blanket. There is a photograph, a favorite of my father’s, that shows an infant Anne just learning to hold her head up, sprawled on the blanket with a fledgling copy of Ms. magazine propped over her back.

When I learned to speak, I started calling the blanket “Favey,” a name that baffled my parents until they realized that it was two-year old shorthand for “favorite blanket.” My parents, I now realize, were unusually accepting of security blankets and dependency needs in general. When I was four, there was a famous incident at a dance recital when the teacher refused to let me perform in front of the parents with my blanket. My mother defended me, and I sat out the show. The teacher prophetically warned my mother that I would “make mincemeat” out of her. I prefer to think Anne eroded the old self and help me grow a much more understanding, gentler one. She was not entirely wrong, but I soon learned that there were negotiations in store when I grew older about where it was and was not acceptable to bring Favey: the New York City Ballet was out, but the babysitter’s house was perfectly fine.

I hung on to Favey long after the point that most children give up their security blankets. The blanket suffered its share of wear and tear over the years–the satin border disintegrated, the colored stripes faded, and, most horrifically, my little sister cut a strip out of it to get back at me after a fight–but it stood up remarkably well. It became a standing family joke that I would bring Favey to college. Of course, as I grew older, I developed new and revealing uses for my blanket: I started sleeping with it over my eyes in order to block out the light that I was too lazy to turn off when I had fallen asleep reading in bed; in junior high, I tied it around my wet hair when I went to sleep so that it would be manageable in the morning.

I outgrew these uses for the blanket, but I never seemed to outgrow the blanket itself. When I started college, Favey came with me. I didn’t always sleep with it, but it was always there. It became the only superstition of my life: getting rid of it seemed equivalent to changing your routine when you’re on a batting streak. When I finished college and started traveling around the world as a cost of living surveyor, I brought it with me for good luck, even if I didn’t always remember to unpack it from the suitcase. One of my favorite moments of surveying came when I returned to my hotel room in Hong Kong after a long day only to find that the hotel maid had artfully draped my tattered blanket across the pillow with a mint. When I packed my bags to spend the year in Niger, the blanket came with me. At some point it will need to be retired before it disintegrates completely. I would like to preserve it and hand it down to my own daughter some day.

I have had the opportunity to do amazing things in my life. I have seen some of the truly wondrous places in the world, from the Sahara desert, to Machu Picchu, to the Mekong River Delta. I have jumped out of a plane in Maine and been seventy feet underwater in the Caribbean. I have witnessed one of the poorest countries on earth usher in a new era of hope and democracy. I hope to have a long life in which to add to this list of memories and accomplishments. But ultimately, I believe it is the quality of the love we have shared with others by which our lives should be measured. I can think of no better witnesses to my life than my family–mother, father, three sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins too numerous to count

I love and admire my family for more reasons than I could possibly enumerate on this page. They have always been the most important part of my life: the context in which I first began to define myself as well as my safe haven. That one shredded bundle of acrylic yarn, more gray now than white, is a repository for my memories and a reminder of where I came from. My parents, who respected and trusted a child enough to let her hold on to a security blanket long after others thought she had outgrown it, gave me a valuable gift. I learned from an early age that my own judgment could be trusted, and the confidence that this trust brings has granted me the freedom to strike off in directions that others fear.

Favey at the moment rests at my house. Apparently, now that she is a mother, Anne doesn't need favey. Perhaps she thinks it is a better favey for a daughter. Amusingly, my grandson seems to be getting attached to a burp rag, and everyone is trying very hard to convince Michael to get attached to an adorable light green textured bacon and eggs blanket. My family is taking the question very seriously. Michelle argues that a hotel maid in Hong Kong might be appalled by a 27-year-old burp cloth and Michael will be deprived of his mint.

The Worm Turns; the Younger Sibling Fights Back

I had always been fascinated how early the younger sibling figures out how to annoy the older sibling. From a journal entry in 1974, when Michelle was 15 months old, Anne was 3.

When Anne came home from nursery school, she asked me to read Green Eggs and Ham. She settled on my lap in the small black chair, and I began to read. Michelle immediately came over protesting, tried to climb into the chair. I assumed she wanted to listen to the story so I asked Anne to move to the couch, so we all could fit. But then Michelle started grabbing the book, bringing me her books to read.

I discouraged her, feeling she had had my exclusive attention for 4 hours; now it was Anne's turn. My friend Terry offered to read to Michelle, but she struggled down from her lap 2 or 3 times. I finished reading Green Eggs and Ham. Terry started to read to Anne and Erin, so I could read to Michelle. Michelle got down from my lap and tried to grab the book away from Terry. When that failed, she tried bribery--3 books, her blanket, a slip, her rabbit skin. Erin wanted the rabbit skin, but every time she took it away from Michelle she protested and only stopped when Terry took it back from Erin.

Finally Michelle used one of the cardboard blocks to climb on the ottoman; from there she lunged for the big black chair where Terry was sitting with Anne and Erin. She didn't quite make it and had to be rescued, but she had achieved her purpose--the reading stopped. I've noticed that she often starts fussing if someone picks up Anne, reads to her, pays her exclusive attention in any way, shape, or form

I'm glad to see such self-assertion on her part, even though I feel pulled in two directions now with both of them clamoring for exclusive attention. It frees me from being Michelle's defender. More and more I can let them learn to handle their disputes by themselves. I know Anne's worst won't really hurt Michelle, and Michelle's protests more than enough to warn me if any mayhem is actually occurring. Once or twice lately I've rushed in ready to scold Anne, when Michelle's protests had absolutely nothing to do with her. For the first time since Michelle was born, I can't read to both of them at the same time. Anne's being away at school mornings seems to have encouraged Michelle to increase her demands. If she could get rid of Anne in the mornings, why not all day?

Toddler Playroom

These pictures were taken in January 2008.

Taking care of my grandson is a thrilling, fascinating time travel experience. Anne lives in the same housing complex in Chelsea where I lived when three of my daughters were young. All of my old friends and most of their children live there, because it is a fantastic deal financially. (There is a lottery to get on the waiting list, which is at least ten years; there are strict income limits.) Sitting in the same playgrounds, looking at the same buildings, admiring the same trees, shrubs, and flower beds, I see 1974 to 1981 as a slideshow of memories. I have remembered so much more of my daughters' early years.

There is a huge Toddler Playroom in the building opposite theirs. In cold weather, in rainy weather, and in excessively hot weather, Michael and I hang out there. He loves it; it offers much more room to run, push strollers, learn to master riding toys than an apartment does. There are slides, rocking horses, shopping carts, dollhouses, legos, trucks, garages, dinosaurs, little tables and chairs. There are almost always several toddlers his age. He is disappointed when the room is empty. It is the only place in the universe where I could conceivably have a conversation and keep him safe.

Growing Up With 5 Younger Brothers

My dad was an actuary; my mom was a housewife who became a history teacher and activist after I left home. I have 5 brothers, 18 months, 3 years, 7 years, 11 years, and 13 years younger. All married relatively young; one brother divorced and remarried. They have 6, 0, 2, 1, and 2 children respectively. There is a lawyer, a chemistry professor, a teacher, a nurse, and an accountant. They live in Maine, upstate NY, North Carolina, Westchester NY, and Long Island NY.

Taking care of my toddler grandson Michael three days a week, I have recaptured many memories of my brothers as small boys. Growing up, I was extremely close to my brothers; we spent most of our free time together. We loved the beach, ice skating, roller skating, tree climbing, summer vacations, backyard baseball, touch football, and badminton. We played endless ping pong and knock hockey games, card games, Monopoly, and Scrabble. We had the biggest backyard on the block, and our house was always the neighborhood hangout. We had a basketball hoop attached to the garage that was in use day and night. There were no girls on the block, so I always played with the guys. I was passionately interested in baseball, and my brothers used to challenge their friends to ask me a baseball question I couldn't answer.

Looking back, the siblings might have relied on each other too much. Joe, Andrew, and I were not very social; each of us had one best friend and two good ones. We never hung out with a group of peers. We always had each other to play with, argue with, compete with. We always defended our siblings against our parents and against neighborhood bullies. Except for Bob (the 4th child), we never dated in high school.

Rationality, intellect, and academic achievement were the family values, and we all honored them. Competitiveness was subtly encouraged even though my mother would occasionally inveigh against it half-heartedly. Sarcasm and teasing were prevalent; the victim was expected to take the joke. Excessive emotion was scorned; I cried alone in my room. I still find it absolutely humiliating to cry in public and feel critical of women who do. Except for my parents' deaths, I have virtually no members of my brother's crying past 3 or 4. The possibility of my dad's crying was unimaginable. My mother, who had 5 brothers too, always choked back her tears.

We ere encouraged to rejoice in how different we were from most people in our working-class suburban town. We were the intellectuals. When working summers as mail carriers, Joe and Andrew reported that no other families seem to subscribe to the same magazines me read. My dad strongly encouraged us to think for ourselves and not care what other people (except each other) thought. He pointed that the most people were too preoccupied with their own problems to think much about you. My brothers might not be much use for discussing emotional issues, but for intellectually stimulating, challenging conversations, they are terrific.

My brothers can see each other for the first time in 6 months and spend the evening discussing politics, not their personal lives. My brothers insist that they don't have to talk to their siblings frequently to stay close. Each is certain he would come through in a crisis, and their track record is good. We all seem very interested in what the others are doing, but as long as my mom was alive, my brothers would ask my mom instead of calling their brothers. Now I have moved in that family switchboard role.

We still influence each other tremendously. We very much want our siblings' approval. Andrew, the chemistry professor, has been very opinionated about the college and career choices of his nieces and nephews. I have been amused and touched by how each of my brothers checked out my daughters' prospective husbands. We freely borrow each other's expertise. I was worried that the family would scatter after my mom died, but we all have attended the second generation's numerous weddings and sibling milestone birthday parties.

There is now a younger generation; three of us are thriving as grandparents. My parents would have 3 great grandchildren, with 3 more on the way. Everyone adores the babies and showers them with attention and love.

We have always had a strong family identity--intelligent, independent, well-educated, critical, autonomous. Marrying a gorgeous bimbo was not an option for my brothers. When we get together, we all have a good time. We have the same sense of humor, vote for the same candidates, enjoy the same movies. We all take pride in the academic and career success of the second generation. I am aware to what extent this pride in intellectual achievement is a defense against social insecurity and sets us apart from other people. Thankfully, our children have not inherited that limitation.

Having 5 younger brothers has probably shaped me more than any other single influence. I like and sometimes actually understand men and invariably defend them to women. I loathe men-bashing. Until I became a mother, I was far more comfortable in a group of men than a group of women. I enjoyed being the only girl in my political science classes at Fordham, while I was miserable in a girls' Catholic college in freshman year.

I did not consciously want sons. I always told people my 4 girls were my reward for 5 brothers. I always wanted a sister and am sometimes envious of my daughters' closeness. But I love taking care of a grandson and talking to little boys in the playground.

Struggling Not to Be a Judgmental Grandma

Veronica has a brilliant post about judgment, making an essential distinction beeen judgment as condemnation and judgment as discernment. Becoming a grandma raises these questions all over again. Should a grandma ever be judgmental about her daughters' mothering, either face to face or on her blog? My oldest daughter Anne, 35, has a 15-month-old son Michael. My second daughter Michelle, 33, is expecting a girl at the end of August. My third daughter Rose, 29, is expecting a girl in early December. I live on Long Island; Anne lives in Manhattan, a 40-minute express -train ride away. Michelle lives in Boston, and Rose is moving from Chicago to Boston next month. (My youngest, Carolyn, 26, not yet married, lives in Boston as well.) From Long Island to Boston is about 4 hours by car, without heavy traffic. The bus is more affordable than the train. Air travel is just too much of a time-draining hassle when you are not in the air.

My grandma was only 47 when I was born; my mom was 51 when she became a grandma. I was turning 62 when Michael was born. My girls justly accuse me of being a hypocrite. They went beyond my wildest dreams for their education and careers. Yet occasionally over the last 6 or 7 years, I would plaintively remark how many children grandma had when she was my age. She had 9 by the time she was 62; when she died at age 82, she had 15. I grieve that my mom didn't live to see her great-grandchildren. She would have adored Michael, an incredibly friendly, fearless toddler much like her and his mother.

Perhaps unconsciously I am blaming mom, who shortened her life by her refusal to accommodate to her physical disabilities. She was never the same after she feel down the stairs on her head, stairs she was forbidden to climb without help. Grandma Nolan, who had 7 children and lived to 86, had 23 great grandchildren when she died. Sadly, I realize I probably will not live long enough to meet my great grandchildren. The infrequently discussed bad effect of having children when you are older is that they don't have young or healthy grandparents. I was 50 , the mother of 4, when my grandma died; Carolyn, my youngest (born when I was 37). was only 21 when her grandma died. Michael's dad's parents both died a few years ago.

I was fortunate enough to be able to stay home full-time when my 4 daughters were young. I had originally planned to go back to my editing career, but I fell madly in love with mothering. We had the option of living on one income, which few couples have now. Supporting their career and child care plans is a struggle for me. I take care of toddler Michael 3 days a week while Anne works. She recently decided to return to work four full days and to possibly explore two days a week of day care. Although I could not commit myself to 4 days, I need time for my granddaughters, and I understand Manhattan day care requires a two-day commitment, I interpreted her decision as a criticism of me. We had a difficult few days before we learned to listen to one another. My second daughter Michelle plans to go back to work full-time after a 12-to-14-week maternity leave. She hasn't decided between day care or a nanny. The third daughter Rose has very flexible work options; she is a human rights lawyer whose writing and research skills are essential to her firm. Even though I bite my tongue and question my motives constantly, all three accuse me of being judgmental. I admit I expected at least one of them to stay home the first year at least.

I worry that I will be perceived as favoring Michael, whom I see so much more often. We plan to visit Boston several times a month, but that won't be close to the several times a week I spend with him. I plan to spend two weeks each with Michelle and Rose after the girls were born, but I spent almost three months visiting Vanessa and Michael nearly every day last summer. I need a new external hard drive if I take as many pictures of the girls as of Michael. I have had great fun with a private family Michael blog. I have already announced I am turning that blog over to his parents and will have one daily grandkid blog.

Anne didn't want me there when she was in labor; she and her husband wanted to do it themselves. She wound up with a C-section that she now thinks was unnecessary and wants me to be there next time. When Anne was born, I didn't want my mom to take off from work because my husband and I wanted our privacy. For the other 3, I planned my pregnancies around my mom's schedule. I didn't realize how much I would need my mom after I gave birth. So I should understand why my daughters would react similarly. My being lucky enough to have 4 drug-free births, including two at home, might make my childbirth support threatening. If I had it so easy, what do I know? . My years as a childbirth educator and breastfeeding counselor also contribute to my being perceived as a judgmental
know-it-all.

Being the babysitter who makes it possible for her to work as well as Anne's mother is potentially a quagmire. Anne and I have navigated the challenges reasonably well, considering she is the daughter with whom I have the most turbulent relationship. Anne is very different from me, far more like my mom, who wasn't a worrier. Sometimes I worry that she doesn't worry enough, and then berate myself for judging my daughter.

My mom died 4 years ago. About five times a day I wish I could call her up for grandmothering advice from the one person who knew me and Anne equally well. When I frequently called my mom in tears over my latest struggle with Anne, we used to look forward to watching her struggles with her kids.

I adore my grandson and feel almost no guilt about how I relate to him. I know what I am doing, and I have no other distractions to prevent me from doing it. His parents and I see eye-to-eye on all important parenting decisions. However, I often feel guilt about not knowing how best to support my daughters, how to be genuinely helpful without undermining their confidence in their own decisions. My mom and I struggled with these issues all our lives, so I don't expect any easy answers.

Even writing about this feel fraught with peril. I don't know if my daughters are reading Matriarch or not. Even though I blog under a pseudonym and change all their names, I constantly worry that they will be furious at me for violating their privacy. It is far less problematic to write about them as kids than to discuss our adult relationships.

Thank you again Veronica for inspiring me to write about something I constantly agonize about. Perhaps it will help clarify my thoughts.

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Posted By Matriarch to Matriarch at 8/08/2008 04:24:00 AM

Not Just a Mother

I didn't set out to be the mother of four. With five younger brothers, I had no romantic illusions about motherhood. I felt my mother and my aunts had sacrified their spotential to mother large families. From age 13 to 26, I questioned whether I wanted to be a mother at all. Instead, I was determined to have the challeging, intellectually demanding career that I felt to be incompatible with motherhood.

When I was a child, most of the older working women I knew were Roman Catholic nuns. My mother, my friends' mothers, and my aunts stayed home and raised their children. Although I knew I wanted a career, I never could decide what career. I invariably said "I don't know" when people asked me what I wanted to do. But I always added, "I don't want to be just a mother." I valued intellectual acheivement at the expense of the maternal, emotional, intuitive side of my nature. I was sure I didn't want to be just a teacher, a nurse, or a social worker either; the traditionally feminine fields were not for me. I would aim higher.

I was a shy girl who refused to wear the glasses I desperately needed outside the classroom. If any boy noticed me, I must have come across as a dreadful snob since I couldn't see him. I fervently believed that a girl could be smart or she could date. I was as confident in my intellectual abilities as I was dreadfully insecure about my popularity and attractiveness. One of my uncles kept the letters I wrote him when I was in graduate school. They are so embarrassing. Basically I listed the books I had read and the marks I had gotten, comparing them to the marks of my brothers and my friends.

I Did Not Set Out to Be a Mother of Four

Once upon a time, Janet posed four excellent questions. I seem to be tackling one a month.

In one of your posts you stated "I did not set out to be a mother of four." Prior to becoming pregnant with your first child, how did you envision your life unfolding?

First, remember how old I am. I was a college freshman when Betty Friedan's The Feminist Mystique was published. I came of age at the birth of the second feminist movement. From age 12 until I met my first husband when I was 2o, I didn't plan to be a wife or a mother. I believed women had to chose; guys didn't fall in love with intellectual women. I envisioned a brilliant career, but I was unclear what that career would be. I certainly rejected the traditional female careers--nurse, teacher, librarian, social worker. In college my ambitions were clearer. I wanted to be a college professor of political science. John, my fiance, planned to be a professor of astrophysics. From the beginning, we planned to share childrearing and housework. Having 5 brothers makes a woman a feminist.

John was a year younger than I was, When I was applying to graduate schools, I was not yet sure of our relationship. I didn't mention to my graduate advisor that love might be a complicating factor. So I applied to the best schools that would give me a fellowship. I eventually chose Stanford because John wanted to go to Berkeley. When I left for California in the fall 0f 1967, Peter, Paul, and Mary's song, Leaving on a Jet Plane was popular. I can never hear it without remembering how heartbroken I was to leave John.

I didn't last a semester at Stanford. How I interpret my leaving has varied tremendously over the years. At the time I convinced myself that I hated Stanford. They were trying to make political science scientific while huge anti-Vietnam War protests were occurring right outside the classroom doors. Accepting this interpretation meant I ruled out graduate school as a possible choice. Probably I just could not be 3000 miles away from my fiance; we got engaged over the phone. Still later, I interpreted my leaving as the first sign of my mood disorder. I decided to come back to NY and get a journalism job; I planned to go to Columbia School of Journalism.

I didn't get a journalism job and wound up in book publishing. In my stupidest career move, I rejected a job at the New Yorker because it would involve too much typing. I was intimidated by the writing requirements of the Columbia application and didn't apply. I advanced quickly in publishing, then got stuck as a Supervising Editing. I wanted to work with authors to acquire and develop books. Because I was a good supervising editor, I wasn't being promoted. I felt I was editing the books I left graduate school to avoid writing.

So I decided to go to law school. It was an ill-thought out decision. Whose dreams was I fulfilling? Early in 1971, my brother Andrew commented: "Mom thinks you are wasting yourself in publishing. You should go to law school and make something of yourself." When she retired from teaching, my mom told the interview from the school paper that she would have been a lawyer if she had come of age in the 60s. I had a vague picture of myself as a public defender fighting for the rights of the poor.

Feminism and Motherhood, August 1976

Reading my 1970's journals is both fascinating and disquieting. Do I still know this woman? Would I make friends with her? Would I read her blog? My present husband admits he would have been terrified to talk to her. Part of my confusion is rooted in the times I grew up, in the 1950s and early 1960s, long before feminism. If my oldest daughter Anne had 5 brothers, she wouldn't have received such contradictory messages on achievement and motherhood. All my siblings believe I deserved my struggles with Anne, since I gave my mom such a hard time:) I vividly remember my brother Stephen saying to me right after Anne was born: "Good, you have a daughter to fight with. That must make you very happy."

8/31/76 Since I started journaling, I had many insights into my difficulty in choosing a career. It's intimately bound up with my family, being the only girl with 5 younger bothers. The roots go back a generation; my mother had 5 younger brothers plus a sister she never had very much to do with. In the jargon of early feminism, we were both "male-identified." As a girl, I was very close to my 5 young uncles.

My mom was a tender, attentive mother who adored little children and managed them beautifully. How could I have not wanted to be like her--beautiful, vivacious, outgoing, loving, warm, playful. But I was nothing like her; I was shy, quiet, introverted, likely to be ignored in a crowded classroom. I always preferred reading to socializing. I always struggled with my belief that my mom wanted a daughter who was more like her rather than like my quiet, introverted, mathematician dad. I enjoyed babysitting; I never regretted being the oldest in a large family. As a child and early adolescent, I adored babies. My uncle had twins when I was 12. I often visited and helped them out, and tormented by mom by hoping that her sixth child would be twins. I frequently took care of my younger brothers when they were babies and toddlers.

Everything changed when I started high school and started to get attention for being smart. Early in high school I rejected my mother's world and chose my father's world. But even when my father agreed with me intellectually, he never supported me in my arguments with my mother. Instead he blamed me for getting her upset. After my first daughter Anne was born, my dad told me he preferred wise women to intellectual ones. So I rejected my mother's world, yet I was close to my mother and dependent upon her. No wonder we were constantly fighting. What did my mother symbolize to me? Mindless maternity. A good mind going down the drain with thousands of dishes washed ,thousands of diapers rinsed.

I perceived her as a good mother of young children, but not of troubled adolescents, because she accepted things, did not probe, question, challenge the way things were. She found it easier to put others before self because she did not have a highly developed sense of self. I on the other hand was selfish and immature, putting my own intellectual development above all else. I clearly saw a dichotomy--wife and mother versus intellectual. No woman I had ever personally encountered had combined both. In fact, the nuns were the only career women I knew. All my aunts, mothers of my friends, the neighbors were housewives. I was in the process of rejecting Catholicism, so I never got close to any nun for her to serve as a role model. I began to suspect I never would get married, that the only way to attract a man was to play dumb, something I would never consider. I wasn't really rejecting motherhood; I never thought much about it. But when my first boyfriend wanted to tease me, all he had to say was that I was like my mother. I couldn't imagine anything more insulting.

I always sought out situations where I could be the only woman in a group of men. I didn't want to seduce them; I wanted to excel them. I made the mistake of going to a Catholic women's college my freshman year, Nazareth College of Rochester, because they offered the most scholarship money. Almost immediately I wanted to transfer. I told my parents I wanted to switch my major from English to Political Science,, and Nazareth had no such department. I was only interested in college debate after the assistant dean explained that Nazareth had no debate club because "there's something in the nature of a woman that makes it objectionable for her to compete so openly with men."

At Fordham I was usually the only girl in my political science classes. At Stanford, there was only one other woman among the first year grad students. I was positively crushed when I realized how many women there were at Columbia Law School. It wasn't enough for me to think like a man; I had to think better than a man. I only made friends with women who had also rejected the conventions of femininity.

Everyone in the family perceived my dad as smarter than my mom, particularly her. She would always send us to him for the hard math and science homework. We were amazed when she returned to college and got all A's. Thehe mother who graduated from college in 1967 and grad school in 1968 and taught high school history was a different mother than the one I knew growing up. Looking back, I see my mother's ambivalence. My evident influence over her, that fact that she went to college when her youngest entered school, how hard she worked as a student and a teacher, her still emerging feminism all suggest she might have been giving me contradictory messages.

Unquestionably, she identified with my opportunity to go away to college, my getting a NYC apartment, my opportunity to get a PhD all expenses paid--such chances were unheard of among her friends when she was my age. When I told her I was dropping out of Stanford and marrying John, she attempted to dissuade me. She never attempted to convince me to have a baby before I was ready to have one. Her reluctance to pressure me seemed to indicate that she would have done the same thing if circumstances were different. I was destined to go beyond her wildest dreams, and she would be very happy for me. Throughout my adolescence and young adulthood, the "masculine" intellectual, achieving, ambitious, competitive side of my personalty was nourished and encouraged by everybody.

So many of my school and career problems are unquestionably related to my constant striving to be like my brothers,, to deny my womanhood. That's why I am only discovering child development as a possible career. Any career involving children was feminine and therefore unworthy of my superior intellect. It was against all my principles and preconceptions to feel overwhelmingly maternal toward Anne. I thought the maternal instinct was a myth and suddenly I was wallowing in it. I suddenly understood had my mother could have decided to have six children.

I still cannot understand how I suppressed the woman who can't pass a baby stroller without smiling and flirting with the baby, whose favorite During that first year after Anne's birth, I had to learn that I needed people, not just brilliant intellectuals, ordinary people to talk to, to get ideas from. I needed to relinquish my faith in the overriding importance of rationality and learn to trust my emotions. I could learn from almost every mother I met; I could get support from most mothers I met if I could learn how to ask for it.

However, I should have reread this journal before deciding to become a public librarian and a social worker. Having four daughters has not removed the influence of my five brothers and my five young uncles. I still don't do very well in women-dominated professions. I have always been more comfortable with male psychiatrists, both as a patient and as a therapist. I still love competing with and debating with men. As a social worker, I worked best with clients who were schizophrenics with serious drug problems and often prison records. I suspect I would have done well as a prison social worker. Late at night, I am comfortable in a subway car that is all men. It is still easier to approach a group of men than to approach a group of women. All my life I have struggled with the fear that women won't like me if they really know me. I've never learned tact. Men are easy; they enjoy bright, argumentative women who smile, call them sweetie (because I am not good with names), genuinely admire their ties, shirts, long hair, earings, or beards, and obviously enjoy them.