23 Quotes by Jennifer Senior

That women bring home the bacon, fry it up, serve it for breakfast, and use its greasy remains to make candles for their children's science projects is hardly news. Yet how parenting responsibilities get sorted out under these conditions remains unresolved.

Even when our children are still young and defenseless, we feel intimations of their departure. We find ourselves staring at them with nostalgia, wistful for the person they're about to no longer be.

You don't have a good story until something deviates from the expected," says McAdams. "And raising children leads to some pretty unexpected happenings.

Vocabulary for aggravation is large. Vocabulary for transcendence is elusive.

The author says that one of the difficulties of modern parenting is the uncertainty of what parents are preparing children for. In traditional societies this was clear, as parents prepared children for a society and for roles much like their own. She writes, "There is no folk wisdom.

Children live life as a controlled experiment.

Couples with children may argue more, the author suggests, because children are a reminder of just how crucial our choices are.

The author says this socially respectable option NOT to parent has actually made parenthood more stressful. The knowledge that parents have chosen that role allows for unrealistic buildup of expectations and unavoidable second-guessing.

The phrase "having it all" has little to do with having what we want.