In the supposedly enlightened ...

In the supposedly enlightened eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, parental indifference, child neglect, and raw cruelty appearedamong Europeans of all classes.... In mid-nineteenth- century France, families abandoned their children at the rate of thirty-three thousand a year.... It took sixty years after the criminalization of cruelty to animals for cruelty to children to be made punishable under English law.... Industrialized America added brutalizing child labor to the oppressions of the young.
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 Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Quotes from the same author

We mothers are learning to mark our mothering success by our daughters' lengthening flight.
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 Letty Cottin Pogrebin
As the mother of a son, I do not accept that alienation from me is necessary for his discovery of himself. As a woman, I will not cooperate in demeaning womanly things so that he can be proud to be a man. I like to think the women in my son's future are counting on me.
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 Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Mothers remember a child's first words, and quote them in tones usually reserved for Byron.
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 Letty Cottin Pogrebin
I feel about mothers the way I feel about dimples: because I do not have one myself, I notice everyone who does.
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 Letty Cottin Pogrebin
The all American work ethic, destructive enough by itself, also packs a gender double standard that strip-mines the natural resources of both parents. It has taught us that as their earnings and success increase, men become "more manly," while women become "less feminine." This perverse cultural dynamic gives fathers an incentive to stay away from their families and kill themselves at work, while coercing mothers to limit their career commitment, which in turn limits their wages and shortchanges their families.
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 Letty Cottin Pogrebin