On Values

"Feminists like to insist that "old-fashioned values"--as garden-variety morality is now called--and the social institutions that supported them are inconsistent with modern life. Yet while it is obviously true that you can't go back in time, it is not true that the teachings and principles that have guided humans since the beginning of civilization have suddenly become irrelevant. The problem we face as modern people--and particularly as modern women--is how to reconcile the old with the new."

"The modern feminist conception of power is actually a very narrow one. It judges women solely by their leadership in politics or the corporate world but belittles the power women have traditionally wielded in civil society: in raising the next generation; in their community, in the countless hours of unpaid work and volunteerism women devote to their neighborhoods and schools. This isn't to say that women can't be, or shouldn't strive to be, leaders. But it is to say--and this is a very old lesson--that worldly power as an end in itself does not necessarily make you happy, especially if you have sacrificed everything else in its attainment."

-What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us