Women are taught that their ...

Women are taught that their main goal in life is to serve others--first men, and later, children. This prescription leads to enormous problems, for it is supposed to be carried out as if women did not have needs of their own, as if one could serve others without simultaneously attending to one's own interests and desires. Carried to its "perfection," it produces the martyr syndrome or the smothering wife and mother.
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 Jean Baker Miller

Quotes from the same author

They [women] can use their abilities to support each other, even as they develop more effective and appropriate ways of dealing with power.... Women do not need to diminish other women[they] need the power to advance their own development, but they do not "need" the power to limit the development of others.
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 Jean Baker Miller
In a basic sense, the greater the development of each individual the more able, more effective, and less needy of limiting or restricting others she or he will be.
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 Jean Baker Miller
Conflict is inevitable, the source of all growth, and an absolute necessity if one is to be alive.
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 Jean Baker Miller
Women will not advance except by joining together in cooperative action.... Unlike other groups, women do not need to set affiliation and strength in opposition one against the other. We can readily integrate the two, search for more and better ways to use affiliation to enhance strength--and strength to enhance affiliation.
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 Jean Baker Miller