My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.
Interpretation
This quote expresses the complex and conflicting emotions a parent experiences regarding their children, encompassing both love and struggle.
Adrienne Rich reflects on the intense and often contradictory feelings that come with motherhood. The quote illustrates the dual nature of parental love, revealing how it can be accompanied by struggles with ambivalence, where moments of deep joy and gratitude coexist with feelings of frustration and resentment. This emotional complexity emphasizes the challenges inherent in nurturing children, highlighting how a parent's passionate feelings can oscillate between pride and distress, ultimately showcasing the depth of love intertwined with the burdens of responsibility.
In practice
During a heartfelt conversation about parenting at a family gathering.
The word revolution itself has become not only a dead relic of Leftism, but a key to the deadendedness of male politics: the revolution of a wheel which returns in the end to the same place; the revolving door of a politics which has liberated women only to use them, and only within the limits of male tolerance.
A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.'”
There is no 'the truth','a truth' - truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. the pattern of the carpet is a surface. When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet
It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness
It's as if, in the mother's eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:'You are there!'
Pride is a tricky, glorious, double-edged feeling.
Did you know a child is orphaned by AIDS every 15 seconds. Millions of children are going it alone. Missing their childhood. Missing their mother. Missing their father. AIDS is devastating families around the globe. Children are missing your support. Unite for children. Unite against AIDS.
Whole communities are growing up without fathers or male role models. Bringing up a family in the best of circumstances is not easy. To try to do it by placing the entire burden on women - 91% of single-parent families in Britain are headed by the mother, according to census data - is practically absurd and morally indefensible.
The family exists for many reasons, but its most basic function may be to draw together after a member dies.
Every child needs at least one adult who is irrationally crazy about him or her.
I can tell you in all honesty that I am highly connected to my family, my wife, and my three children, though I don't get to spend dollops of hours with them.
I wonder if other mothers feel a tug at their insides, watching their children grow up into the people they themselves wanted so badly to be.
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