Quotes About Independence

What really fortifies Frenchwomen against guilt is their conviction that it's unhealthy for mothers and children to spend all their time together. They believe there's a risk of smothering kids with attention and anxiety, or of developing the dreaded relation fusionnelle, where a mother's and a child's needs are too intertwined. Children—even babies and toddlers—get to cultivate their inner lives without a mother's constant interference.

Mommy, I'm not going to have your American childhood, " she says. "I don't want to wake up at seven a.m. and make bracelets. I just don't. Accept it.

French parents don't just think these separations are good for parents. They also genuinely believe that they're important for kids, who must understand that their parents have their own pleasures. "Thus the child understands that he is not the center of the world, and this is essential for his development," the French parenting guide Votre Enfant explains.

Letting children "live their lives" isn't about releasing them into the wild or abandoning them (though French school trips do feel a bit like that to me). It's about acknowledging that children aren't repositories for their parents' ambitions or projects for their parents to perfect. They are separate and capable, with their own tastes, pleasures, and experiences of the world. They even have their own secrets.

It's not enough for French mothers to have pleasures and interests apart from their children. They also want their kids to know about these things. They believe it's burdensome for a child to feel that she's the sole source of her mother's happiness and satisfaction. (A Parisian mother I know told me she was going back to work partly for her daughter's sake.)

the main point of parental authority is to authorize children to do things, not to block them.

That's what I want, she thought, with the fiercest feeling of wanting she'd ever had in her life. She wanted that look her granny had, that look that told the world here I am, I'm somebody, and here is my life. I been young and old and in between, I loved a man, raised my children, worked, laughed, cried, and, see, even after all that, here I still am. "I'll be

?hat's when I found faith, when my young'uns growed up and I had to let them go.

Maybe we should freak him out and start following him for a change. That would force him to either do his own thinking or give up.

Yes, Eli was gorgeous and sexy and she was still in love with him. That made her vulnerable. But being vulnerable was not the same as being defenseless. She was learning to be strong, she was learning not to settle for less than the kind of love she knew was out there, somewhere.

Everything inside her rebelled at the coercion. But he was giving her a choice, and he didn't have to.

Back in the days of Sugar Pops and roller skates, grown-ups had no clue where their kids were, who they were with, or what the hell they were up to, and that suited kids just fine.

by setting out purposefully to raise a reader—you're helping her become someone who controls her own destiny.

There was a shiftiness to kids who secreted themselves in a corner to read God knows what instead of what they should have been doing. Reading when you were supposed to be raking the leaves, reading when you were supposed to be sleeping, reading when you were supposed to be making the bed, not lying in it. I did everything I could to read my way out of doing anything else. It was the one thing I was good at.

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ..... a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black lace bra...

It's rare that I have a boyfriend- that only happens if I fall in love. I've noticed that people who are never in a relationship just to be in a relationship keep their childlike spark because they don't end up settling for things that make them unhappy, and they never feel as if they took less than what was out there for them. So for me, being single is what I do, and falling in love is the exception.

One of the best pieces of advice I've ever received was from my grandmother, who said, "A woman always has to keep something of her own, even if it's a jar of quarters." The other was from my agent, another wise woman, who told me twenty years ago: "You don't have to tell everything you know.

The world can't decide what's beautiful. So you decide, okay?

I had grown up with very little parental input, so I learned to be über-responsible, self-reliant, and self-sufficient. As a result, I never wanted to seem

I had grown up with very little parental input, so I learned to be über-responsible, self-reliant, and self-sufficient. As a result, I never wanted to seem like I needed help or to impose on anyone else.

No, I'm just being real. Women don't leave rich, powerful men. Even when the whole world knows about their man's sexual indiscretions, they stay. Hillary didn't leave Bill. Camille is standing by Cosby and Kobe Bryant appeased his wife with a four million dollar diamond ring. I don't care how smart the woman is or whether she has her own money. The majority of women don't leave.

clanking against the side of a stainless steel pot—signaled that her mother was busy in the kitchen preparing breakfast. Easing the door shut, Brianna leaned against it and closed her eyes. To pull this off, Brianna couldn't just act calm, she had to be calm. Otherwise, her mother would surely notice. But at only thirteen, she'd become pretty good at finding ways around her mother's

A man for you is a desire, not a necessity.

Never let Other's influence you against True Friends.