PROTECT CHILDHOOD

“For some women, it's like a life-changing moment where they look at this child and the dependency, the attachment starts right away. For other women, dependency, this level of need of this child on you doesn't open up happy doors of, doesn't open up a door to the past of a beautiful relationship with your mother or a beautiful relationship with your parents. Instead it opens up terror, fear, even rage.”

“We don't value mothering in modern times because we value things like self-sufficiency and independence and self-determination, nurturing, caregiving. We don't value these things in the Western world. And I also think that the women's movement of the 60s, although it did a lot of good for women, a lot of great things for women in terms of giving them freedom, it also did a lot of terrible things for children because the messaging should have been, work outside the home is something you should have the right to choose.”

“The messaging should have been, work outside the home is something you should have the right to choose. It should be something that brings meaning to your life and brings money into your home, but it shouldn't replace nurturing your children. And that if you have young children, they need you, but you can do everything in life, you just can't do it all at the same time. That should have been the messaging.”

“It took women from the patriarchy of being ruled by men to being in institutions where they behave like men, where they didn't allow themselves to be the best female leaders they could be, because as female leaders, we would never abandon our children. So, we would find ways to, we would do workarounds. We would, you know, in other parts of the world, children go with you to work, children go to your store that you keep, children go to the farm, while you're picking potatoes.”

“There's a very famous piece of research by a man named Michael Meany. And he researched mammals. And he said that the mammal mothers who, the rat mothers who licked and groomed their young passed down generationally the ability in the next generation to lick and groom their young. But if a mother could not lick and groom her young, she did not pass down the ability to lick and groom to the next generation. Now that's not genetic. That's called the inheritance of acquired characteristics.”