"Even as we enumerate their shortcomings, the rigor of raising children ourselves makes clear to us our mothers' incredible strength. We fear both. If they are not strong, who will protect us? If they are not imperfect, how can we equal them?"
About this Quote
Quindlen turns a familiar pastime - cataloging our mothers flaws - into a trapdoor. The sentence begins in the cool voice of appraisal ("enumerate their shortcomings"), the way grown children like to sound rational and in control. Then experience kicks the chair out from under that posture. Once you are the one doing the nightly logistics and emotional triage of childrearing, criticism stops being a hobby and becomes a kind of ingratitude you can finally measure.
The engine of the quote is its double fear: we fear our mothers strength and we fear its absence. That tension captures the adolescent fantasy of wanting a parent to be both a fortress and a person. Strength is comforting because it promises safety; strength is also humiliating because it reminds you how small you once were, and how dependent you still feel under stress. Quindlen names the unflattering subtext: we do not just want mothers to be good, we want them to be beatable. Imperfection becomes a psychological permission slip. If she had limits, then your limits are survivable; if she made mistakes, your mistakes can be redeemed.
As a journalist who built a career on domestic realism and moral clarity, Quindlen writes with that signature mix of tenderness and unsentimental candor. She is pushing back against two late-20th-century cultural tics at once: the easy irony of mother-bashing and the equally punishing pedestal of the flawless supermom. The paradox lands because it admits what rarely gets said aloud: our judgments of our parents are often less about them than about our own need to feel safe - and to feel capable.
The engine of the quote is its double fear: we fear our mothers strength and we fear its absence. That tension captures the adolescent fantasy of wanting a parent to be both a fortress and a person. Strength is comforting because it promises safety; strength is also humiliating because it reminds you how small you once were, and how dependent you still feel under stress. Quindlen names the unflattering subtext: we do not just want mothers to be good, we want them to be beatable. Imperfection becomes a psychological permission slip. If she had limits, then your limits are survivable; if she made mistakes, your mistakes can be redeemed.
As a journalist who built a career on domestic realism and moral clarity, Quindlen writes with that signature mix of tenderness and unsentimental candor. She is pushing back against two late-20th-century cultural tics at once: the easy irony of mother-bashing and the equally punishing pedestal of the flawless supermom. The paradox lands because it admits what rarely gets said aloud: our judgments of our parents are often less about them than about our own need to feel safe - and to feel capable.
Quote Details
| Topic | Mother |
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