"The one bond of love that seems inalienable is that of a mother to her child. Motherhood is one of the greatest blessings in life, I had always been told. And in many ways, it is. That it is also one of the heaviest burdens is kept secret from one generation to the next. The charming smiles, the adorable gurglings of your infant son or daughter are paid for with sleepless nights, and later with the inevitable clashes between you and your growing child. "Little children, little worries. Big children, big worries," isn't that how the saying goes? Yet so strong is the imperative of nature that women uncomplainingly carry out this task and hand down the myth of the joys of motherhood to their unsuspecting daughters. Today I know that the unconditional love a mother is supposed to bear her child is as much of a fable as that child's unconditional love for her. There is as much ambivalence in the mother-child relationship as with the rest of the family members. The nuclear family, so vital to the well-being of the growing child, is also the breeding ground for the psychological damage that characterizes so much of today's civilized society. By the time I was in my thirties I had already seen through these myths. (Chapter Twenty-two)"