I Understood Somehow My Mother's Frustration. And

It Is Frightening When A Woman Finally Realizes That There Is No Answer To The Question 'who Am I' Except The Voice Inside Herself.

Why The Increasing Emphasis By Professional Age Experts And The Media On - And Public Acceptance Of - The Nursing Home As The Locus Of Age When, In Fact, More Than Ninety Percent Of Those Over Sixty-five Continue To Live In The Community?

Men Weren't Really The Enemy - They Were Fellow Victims Suffering From An Outmoded Masculine Mystique That Made Them Feel Unnecessarily Inadequate When There Were No Bears To Kill.

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.

Protectiveness Has Often Muffled The Sound Of Doors Closing Against Women.