The Difficult Role of a Mother

by Anne Marie Zanzucchi

Anne Marie Zanzucchi doesn't theorize about how to be a mother: she is a mother, and everything she says about this difficult role comes from her experience. She sees the mother as an educator—24 hours a day; and at the same time she insists that her children have also been her educators. The key to the mother's role, she says, is love. She does her work out of love; and her ultimate task is to teach her children how to love, as free and mature people. Her practical, yet penetrating approach to the everyday problems of family life will both reassure and inspire the mother of today. Among specific subjects treated: How she transformed her feelings of being trapped within four walls; how she discerns the strengths and weaknesses of each child, so that she can help each develop harmoniously; how she re-establishes peace within herself in difficult situations; how she accepts her children as they are, rather than as she would like them to be; how she "lets go" of her children; the place of suffering in a mother's life.

90 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1979