Tiffany

“To emphasize how truly backward our society is...let's finish with a little quiz. Let's do it like Jeopardy.

In 1990, this government required companies to give a new mother a year's leave at 90% pay.
Answer: What was Sweden?

This country provided nurseries for most children over eighteen months.
Answer: What was Sweden?

Nearly half of the children under three in this country were in publicly financed nurseries, and nearly 95% of children three to six were (and are).
Answer: What is Denmark?

In this country, 95% of children aged three to five are in preschool.
Answer: What is France?

This country provides care for one quarter of children under three in wholly or partially subsidized nurseries.
Answer: What is France?

In 1984, this country gave workers twelve weeks of maternity leave with pay.
Answer: What is Brazil? (Yes, Brazil!)

This country mandated eight weeks of maternity leave WITH PAY.
Answer: What is Kenya? (You heard us, Kenya!)

This country provided none of these things; instead, to help mothers and small children, its magazines featured profiles of rich celebrity moms who could show women how to do it all.
Answer: What was the United States?”
― Susan J. Douglas, The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women

“Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you'll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding.”
― Stephen King

“He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“Over and over again, stories in women's magazines insist that women can know fulfillment only at the moment of giving birth to a child. They deny the years when she can no longer look forward to giving birth, even if she repeats the act over and over again. In the feminine mystique, there is no other way for a woman to dream of creation or of the future. There is no other way she can even dream about herself, except as her children's mother, her husband's wife.”
― Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique