Lillian Breslow Rubin

Famous quotes containing the words lillian breslow rubin, breslow rubin, lillian breslow, lillian, breslow and/or rubin:

    Indeed, it is that ambiguity and ambivalence which often is so puzzling in women—the quality of shifting from child to woman, the seeming helplessness one moment and the utter self-reliance the next that baffle us, that seem most difficult to understand. These are the qualities that make her a mystery, the qualities that provoked Freud to complain, “What does a woman want?”
    Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)

    She has problems with separation; he has trouble with unity—problems that make themselves felt in our relationships with our children just as they do in our relations with each other. She pulls for connection; he pushes for separateness. She tends to feel shut out; he tends to feel overwhelmed and intruded upon. It’s one of the reasons why she turns so eagerly to children—especially when they’re very young.
    —Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)

    Children crawl before they walk, walk before they run—each generally a precondition for the other. And with each step they take toward more independence, more mastery of the environment, their mothers take a step away—each a small separation, a small distancing.
    Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)

    I had heard so much about how hard it was supposed to be that, when they were little, I thought it would be horrible when they got married and left. But that’s silly you know. . . . By the time they grow up, they change and you change. Eventually, they’re not the same little kids and you’re not the same mother. It’s as if everything just falls into a pattern and you’re ready.
    —Anonymous Mother. As quoted in Women of a Certain Age, by Lillian B. Rubin, ch. 2 (1979)

    How then can we account for the persistence of the myth that inside the empty nest lives a shattered and depressed shell of a woman—a woman in constant pain because her children no longer live under her roof? Is it possible that a notion so pervasive is, in fact, just a myth?
    —Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)

    Friends serve central functions for children that parents do not, and they play a critical role in shaping children’s social skills and their sense of identity. . . . The difference between a child with close friendships and a child who wants to make friends but is unable to can be the difference between a child who is happy and a child who is distressed in one large area of life.
    —Zick Rubin (20th century)