Raised By Single Mother Quotes

The truth is, every son raised by a single mom is pretty much born married. I don't know, but until your mom dies it seems like all the other women in your life can never be more than just your mistress.

I could go on all night, Lake. I could go on and on and on about all the reasons I’m in love with you. And you know what? Some of them are the things that life has thrown our way. I do love you because you’re the only other person I know who understands my situation. I do love you because both of us know what it’s like to lose your mom and your dad. I do love you because you’re raising your little brother, just like I am. I love you because of what you went through with your mother. I love you because of what we went through with your mother. I love the way you love Kel. I love the way you love Caulder. And I love the way I love Kel. So I’m not about to apologize for loving all these things about you, no matter the reasons or the circumstances behind them. And no, I don’t need days, or weeks, or months to think about why I love you. It’s an easy answer for me. I love you because of you. Because of every single thing about you.

On her eighteenth birthday, my mother had disposed of a man-eating tiger that had ravaged the villages in the hills north of Hanoi. Now, without a moment's hesitation, she raised my father's gun, took aim and put a single, irreproachable bullet through my husband's head.

I know grace and mercy was raised by the same single mother.

WAKE Dealing with an alcoholic single mother and endless hours of working at Heather Nursing Home to raise money for college, high-school senior Janie Hannagan doesn’t need more problems. But inexplicably, since she was eight years old, she has been pulled in to people’s dreams, witnessing their recurring fears, fantasies and secrets. Through Miss Stubin at Heather Home, Janie discovers that she is a dream catcher with the ability to help others resolve their haunting dreams. After taking an interest in former bad boy Cabel, she must distinguish between the monster she sees in his nightmares and her romantic feelings for him. And when she learns more about Cabel’s covert identity, Janie just may be able to use her special dream powers to help solve crimes in a suspense-building ending with potential for a sequel. McMann lures teens in by piquing their interest in the mysteries of the unknown, and keeps them with quick-paced, gripping narration and supportive characters.

Fathers of the fatherless sons and daughters, How can your lips form words and blame the single mother? You should be thanking her for raising your children without a single helping hand from you.

When day comes, we ask ourselves: Where can we find light In this never-ending shade? The loss we carry, a sea we must wade. We braved the belly of the beast, We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, And the norms and notions of what ‘just is’ Isn’t always justice. And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it, Somehow, we do it. Somehow, we’ve weathered and witnessed A nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished. We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl, descended from slaves and raised by a single mother, can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one.

(I pull the second to last item out of my bag. Her purple hair clip. She told me once how much it meant to her, and why she always keeps it.) This purple hair clip? It really is magic…just like your dad told you it was. It’s magic because, no matter how many times it lets you down…you keep having hope in it. You keep trusting it. No matter how many times it fails you, You never fail it. Just like you never fail me. I love that about you, because of you. (I set it back down and pull out a strip of paper and unfold it.) Your mother. (I sigh) Your mother was an amazing woman, Lake. I'm blessed that I got to know her, And that she was a part of my life, too. I came to love her as my own mom…just as she came to love Caulder and I as her own. I didn’t love her because of you, Lake. I loved her because of her. So, thank you for sharing her with us. She had more advice about Life and love and happiness and heartache than anyone I've ever known. But the best advice she ever gave me? The best advice she ever gave us? (I read the quote in my hands) "Sometimes two people have to fall apart, to realize how much they need to fall back together." (She’s definitely crying now. I place the slip back inside the satchel and take a step closer to the edge of the stage as I hold her gaze.) The last item I have wouldn’t fit, because you’re actually sitting in it. That booth. You’re sitting in the exact same spot you sat in when you watched your first performance on this stage. The way you watched this stage with passion in your eyes…I'll never forget that moment. It's the moment I knew it was too late. I was too far gone by then. I was in love with you. I was in love with you because of you. (I back up and sit down on the stool behind me, still holding her stare.) I could go on all night, Lake. I could go on and on and on about all the reasons I'm in love with you. And you know what? Some of them are the things that life has thrown our way. I do love you because you're the only other person I know that understands my situation. I do love you because both of us know what it's like to lose your mom and your dad. I do love you because you're raising your little brother, just like I am. I love you because of what you went through with your mother. I love you because of what we went through with your mother. I love the way you love Kel. I love the way you love Caulder. And I love the way I love Kel. So I'm not about to apologize for loving all these things about you, no matter the reasons or the circumstances behind them. And no, I don’t need days, or weeks, or months to think about why I love you. It’s an easy answer for me. I love you because of you. Because of every single thing about you.

And although there were countless single dads who were raising daughters, no one could deny that there were milestones that a girl wanted a mother for.

The fathers of the fatherless children are the ones who abandon and neglect their sons and daughters. They are not held responsible for their part in regards to helping raise their children. Where is the justice for our sons and daughters? Father of the fatherless children, you are a sorry excuse for a man.

Father of the fatherless son, you are your son’s missing hero. Let it be known, you do not have the right to take offense when another man steps in and raises your son. If you are alive and well, it is a shame that another man has to step up to the plate to raise your son to be a better man than you. However, it is a lovely thing for your son, because blood doesn’t always run deep. Love runs deep and love conquers all hearts, bodies, and souls.

The challenges I have faced—among them material poverty, chronic illness, and being raised by a single mother—are not uncommon, but neither have they kept me from uncommon achievements.

I forgive because that’s how my mother raised me. I forgive because I have a God who forgives. It’s hard not to wrap your life in a story—a story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A story that has logic and purpose and a bigger reason for why things turned out the way they did. I look for purpose in losing thirty years of my life. I try to make meaning out of something so wrong and so senseless. We all do. We have to find ways to recover after bad things happen. We have to make every ending be a happy ending. Every single one of us wants to matter. We want our lives and our stories and the choices we made or didn’t make to matter.

Dear Fathers of the Fatherless Children, As little girls grow into women, we, as Chief Guardians teach them not to be like you. We school them to not make the same mistakes we made in choosing the wrong men. We raised our daughters to know they are queens and to not accept anything less than that. Our daughters know, they are loved, beautiful, wanted and supported. Our daughters know they can do whatever they set their minds to do.

We will never have any memory of dying. We were so patient about our being, noting down numbers, days, years and months, hair, and the mouths we kiss, and that moment of dying we let pass without a note - we leave it to others as memory, or we leave it simply to water, to water, to air, to time. Nor do we even keep the memory of being born, although to come into being was tumultuous and new; and now you don’t remember a single detail and haven’t kept even a trace of your first light. It’s well known that we are born. It’s well known that in the room or in the wood or in the shelter in the fishermen’s quarter or in the rustling canefields there is a quite unusual silence, a grave and wooden moment as a woman prepares to give birth. It’s well known that we were all born. But if that abrupt translation from not being to existing, to having hands, to seeing, to having eyes, to eating and weeping and overflowing and loving and loving and suffering and suffering, of that transition, that quivering of an electric presence, raising up one body more, like a living cup, and of that woman left empty, the mother who is left there in her blood and her lacerated fullness, and its end and its beginning, and disorder tumbling the pulse, the floor, the covers till everything comes together and adds one knot more to the thread of life, nothing, nothing remains in your memory of the savage sea which summoned up a wave and plucked a shrouded apple from the tree. The only thing you remember is your life." -"Births

Fathers of the fatherless sons and daughters, Your lack of better judgment is so concealed with lies, you do not have the guts to admit you're wrong. As you become upset over your own doing, you want to point fingers at everyone but yourself. Why is that? How dare you think it is your children’s fault? How can your lips form words and blame the single mother? You should be thanking her for raising your children without a single helping hand from you. What makes matters worse is that the fathers of the fatherless sons and daughters all become so angry to the point that they want to cut their children out of their lives. Reminder. Wake up call. Hello, can you hear me? You’ve been there and done that already.

Dear Fathers of the Fatherless Children, As our sons grow into men; we teach our sons not to be like you. They know they are loved, wanted, handsome, and supported. We raise them to respect women and to get an education. Some will make us proud, and some will disappoint; however, as Chief Guardians, we can sleep at night and say that for eighteen years, we did the best we could do alone.

The black mother perceives destruction at every door, ruination at each window, and even she herself is not beyond her own suspicion. She questions whether she loves her children enough- or more terribly, does she love them too much? Do her looks cause embarrassment- or even terrifying, is she so attractive her sons begin to desire her and her daughters begin to hate her. If she is unmarried, the challenges are increased. Her singleness indicates she has rejected or has been rejected by her mate. Yet she is raising children who will become mates. Beyond her door, all authority is in the hands of people who do not look or think or act like her children. Teachers, doctors, sales, clerks, policemen, welfare workers who are white and exert control over her family’s moods, conditions and personality, yet within the home, she must display a right to rule which at any moment, by a knock at the door, or a ring in the telephone, can be exposed as false. In the face of this contradictions she must provide a blanket of stability, which warms but does not suffocate, and she must tell her children the truth about the power of white power without suggesting that it cannot be challenged.

Consider one study that estimates a mom simultaneously and often single-handedly performs as many as seventeen occupations in the course of raising a child, from child-rearing, cooking, cleaning, chauffeuring, and financial planning to resolving family emotional problems (not to mention often doing part-time paid work in addition to it all). That particular study estimated a mother’s worth at $508,700 a year, according to Ann Crittenden’s The Price of Motherhood.

Single Mothers Your shoulders are heavy, but you stand tall and raise your head high, knowing that you are raising kings and queens, future leaders of the world. You are pounding the pavement, kicking butt, making it look easy but we know better; we know the struggle, we understand the pain. The road feels lonely but you are not alone.

On Saturday Ben and I drove to Johns Island to see Skyfall.” “You did?” Hi asked sharply. “Thanks for the invite, jerks.” Shelton raised his palms. “You were at temple. We’re supposed to just wait around? Plus, you’ve seen that move like five times.” “You still could’ve asked,” Hi grumbled. “I don’t—” “Guys!” I clapped my hands once. “The story, please.” “An hour in, I go for a popcorn refill.” Shelton shuddered. “When I get back, Ben’s sitting in the dark, flaring away, and he’s not even wearing his sunglasses! I almost wet myself. He said he wanted to watch the movie in HD. Man, I don’t remember a single minute from the rest of the film.” “In a theater!?” My temper exploded. “That stupid mother—” “Hiram!” Our heads whipped. Ruth Stolowitski was standing on her front stoop. “Get back in here this instant! You’re not dressed.” Ruth wore a fuzzy pink bathrobe, her free hand vising the garment closed. Her eyes darted, as if worried that cagey perverts were surveilling our remote island, waiting for just this opportunity to get an eyeful.

And if there’s one thing I’ve learned being raised by a single mother, it’s that you can’t rely on anyone else to give you security. You have to build it for yourself.

Boys raised in a single-mother household have disproportionately higher crime rates and mental health issues. 73% of adolescent murderers grew up without a father.

The truth is, every son raised by a single mom is pretty much born married

Dear Fathers of the Fatherless Children, As our sons grow into men; we teach our sons not to be like you. They know they are loved, wanted, handsome, and supported. We raise them to respect women and to get an education. Some will make us proud, and some will disappoint; however, as Chief Guardians, we can sleep at night and say that for eighteen years, we did the best we could do alone. As little girls grow into women, we, as Chief Guardians teach them not to be like you. We school them to not make the same mistakes we made in choosing the wrong men. We raised our daughters to know they are queens and to not accept anything less than that. Our daughters know, they are loved, beautiful, wanted, and supported. Our daughters know they can do whatever they set their minds to do.

Children in father-absent homes are five times more likely to be poor. Infant mortality rates are 1.8 times higher for infants of unmarried mothers than for married mothers. Youths in father-absent households still had significantly higher odds of incarceration than those in mother-father families. Youths are more at risk of first substance use without a highly involved father. Being raised by a single mother raises the risk of teen pregnancy. Fatherless children are twice as likely to drop out of school.

Neither of them had wanted children, and Elizabeth still fervently believed that no woman should be forced to have a baby. Yet here she was, a single mother, the lead scientist on what had to be the most unscientific experiment of all time: the raising of another human being.

I grew up watching my mom handle any and every obstacle life put in her way. As a single parent she went through the shit I’m sure kept her up crying at night but she still got up every morning and did an amazing job raising us. I could never be weak. I learned from the best.

My parents were forever making lemonade. Neither responded to problems by drinking too much, taking anti-depressants, overeating, or suggesting they were victims. In fact, I can’t recall a single day my parents slept in—the way many of us might when life throws a wrench in our plans. My parents were (are in the case of my mother—my father died in 2008) unfailingly resilient people, capable of waking up each day with a positive attitude, a new resolve to make things better. Part of this was due to their personalities, but it was also because of the generation in which they were raised.

Yet here she was, a single mother, the lead scientist on what had to be the most unscientific experiment of all time: the raising of another human being. Every day she found parenthood like taking a test for which she had not studied. The questions were daunting and there wasn’t nearly enough multiple choice.

of the problem was that Chaos got a little creation-happy. It thought to its misty, gloomy self: Hey, Earth and Sky. That was fun! I wonder what else I can make. Soon it created all sorts of other problems—and by that I mean gods. Water collected out of the mist of Chaos, pooled in the deepest parts of the earth, and formed the first seas, which naturally developed a consciousness—the god Pontus. Then Chaos really went nuts and thought: I know! How about a dome like the sky, but at the bottom of the earth! That would be awesome! So another dome came into being beneath the earth, but it was dark and murky and generally not very nice, since it was always hidden from the light of the sky. This was Tartarus, the Pit of Evil; and as you can guess from the name, when he developed a godly personality, he didn't win any popularity contests. The problem was, both Pontus and Tartarus liked Gaea, which put some pressure on her relationship with Ouranos. A bunch of other primordial gods popped up, but if I tried to name them all we’d be here for weeks. Chaos and Tartarus had a kid together (don’t ask how; I don’t know) called Nyx, who was the embodiment of night. Then Nyx, somehow all by herself, had a daughter named Hemera, who was Day. Those two never got along because they were as different as…well, you know. According to some stories, Chaos also created Eros, the god of procreation... in other words, mommy gods and daddy gods having lots of little baby gods. Other stories claim Eros was the son of Aphrodite. We’ll get to her later. I don’t know which version is true, but I do know Gaea and Ouranos started having kids—with very mixed results. First, they had a batch of twelve—six girls and six boys called the Titans. These kids looked human, but they were much taller and more powerful. You’d figure twelve kids would be enough for anybody, right? I mean, with a family that big, you’ve basically got your own reality TV show. Plus, once the Titans were born, things started to go sour with Ouranos and Gaea’s marriage. Ouranos spent a lot more time hanging out in the sky. He didn't visit. He didn't help with the kids. Gaea got resentful. The two of them started fighting. As the kids grew older, Ouranos would yell at them and basically act like a horrible dad. A few times, Gaea and Ouranos tried to patch things up. Gaea decided maybe if they had another set of kids, it would bring them closer…. I know, right? Bad idea. She gave birth to triplets. The problem: these new kids defined the word UGLY. They were as big and strong as Titans, except hulking and brutish and in desperate need of a body wax. Worst of all, each kid had a single eye in the middle of his forehead. Talk about a face only a mother could love. Well, Gaea loved these guys. She named them the Elder Cyclopes, and eventually they would spawn a whole race of other, lesser Cyclopes. But that was much later. When Ouranos saw the Cyclops triplets, he freaked. “These cannot be my kids! They don’t even look like me!” “They are your children, you deadbeat!” Gaea screamed back. “Don’t you dare leave me to raise them on my own!

You can't expect a child not to become a product of his environment. If you're a drinker, you'll raise a drunk. If you're a single mother, traipsing men in and out of your bedroom in front of your girl child - mark my words, in time she'll claim a corner and charge money for what you gave away for free. Kings and queens raise princes and princesses. That's just the way it is.

He stood hat in hand over the unmarked earth. This woman who had worked for his family fifty years. She had cared for his mother as a baby and she had worked for his family long before his mother was born and she had known and cared for the wild Grady boys who were his mother's uncles and who had all died so long ago and he stood holding his hat and he called her his abuela and he said goodbye to her in Spanish and then turned and put on his hat and turned his wet face to the wind and for a moment he held out his hands as if to steady himself or as if to bless the ground there or perhaps as if to slow the world that was rushing away and seemed to care nothing for the old or the young or rich or poor or dark or pale or he or she. Nothing for their struggles, nothing for their names. Nothing for the living or the dead. In four days' riding he crossed the Pecos at Iraan Texas and rode up out of the river breaks where the pumpjacks in the Yates Field ranged against the skyline rose and dipped like mechanical birds. Like great primitive birds welded up out of iron by hearsay in a land perhaps where such birds once had been…..The desert he rode was red and red the dust he raised, the small dust that powdered the legs of the horse he rode, the horse he led. In the evening a wind came up and reddened all the sky before him. There were few cattle in that country because it was barren country indeed yet he came at evening upon a solitary bull rolling in the dust against the bloodred sunset like an animal in sacrificial torment. The bloodred dust blew down out of the sun. He touched the horse with his heels and rode on. He rode with the sun coppering his face and the red wind blowing out of the west across the evening land and the small desert birds flew chittering among the dry bracken and horse and rider and horse passed on and their long shadows passed in tandem like the shadow of a single being. Passed and paled into the darkening land, the world to come.

It’s because black, Hispanic and Native-American children are disproportionately likely to live with single mothers. And children living with single mothers misbehave more often than those living with fathers. A study from Great Britain of 14,000 children showed that children were twice as likely to manifest behavioral problems by the age of 7 than those raised by their natural parents. Those numbers continue to diverge as children grow older.

I WAS ON the phone one afternoon with Robin DiAngelo, the white writer who coined the expression “white fragility,” when she took a personal digression from the topic we were discussing. DiAngelo and her two sisters were raised in poverty by their single mom. “She was not able to feed, house, or clothe us,” DiAngelo recalled. “I mean, we were flat out. We lived in our car. We were not bathed. My mother could not take care of us. And yet, anything I ever wanted to touch, like food someone left out—I was hungry, right?—I was reprimanded: ‘Don’t touch that. You don’t know who touched it, it could have been a colored person.’ ‘Don’t sit there. You don’t know who sat there, it could have been a colored person.’ That was the language—this was the sixties. The message was clear: If a colored person touched it, it would be dirty. But I was dirty. Yet in those moments, the shame of poverty was lifted. I wasn’t poor anymore. I was white.

A straight line can be drawn between family breakdown and youth violence. In Chicago’s poor black neighborhoods, criminal activity among the young has reached epidemic proportions. It’s a problem that no one, including the Chicago Police Department, seems able to solve. About 80 percent of black children in Chicago are born to single mothers. They grow up in a world where marriage is virtually unheard of and where no one expects a man to stick around and help raise a child.

Take, for example, someone like Don Lemon. He is a black man, raised by a single mother, and now he is a successful news anchor for a major news network. His outlook seems driven by the notion that if he can make it, anyone can. This is the ethos espoused by people who believe in respectability politics. Because they have achieved success, because they have transcended, in some way, the effects of racism or other forms of discrimination, all people should be able to do the same. In truth, they have climbed a ladder and shattered a glass ceiling but are seemingly uninterested in extending that ladder as far as it needs to reach so that others may climb. They are uninterested in providing a detailed blueprint for how they achieved their success. They are unwilling to consider that until the institutional problems are solved, no blueprint for success can possibly exist. For real progress to be made, leaders like Lemon and Cosby need to at least acknowledge reality.

The grandparents are raising the children because the biological parents have skipped off—for whatever reason, not always meth. The demands of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have often meant that both parents in a military family get deployed at once, and they leave their children with their grandparents. Layoffs of single working mothers lead a lot of families to decide to become multigenerational again. A wave of bipolar disorders and addiction to video games and gambling has also taken a toll on families.

I thought of Atargatis, the First, frightening and beautiful. The mermaid goddess who lived on in the soul of every woman who'd ever fallen in love with the ocean. I thought of Sebastian, my little mermaid queen, how happy he was the day of the parade, just getting the chance to express himself, to be himself. I thought of Vanessa, the story about how she and her girlfriends became feminist killjoys to get a women's literature core in their school, the way she'd accepted me this summer without question, gently pushed me out of my self-imposed shell. Of her mother, Mrs. James, how she'd grabbed that bullhorn at the parade and paved the way for Sebastian's joy. I thought of Lemon, so wise, so comfortable in her own skin, full of enough love to raise a daughter as a single mom and still have room for me, for her friends, for everyone whose lives she touched with her art. I thought of Kirby, her fierce loyalty, her patience and grace, her energy, what a good friend and sister she'd become, even when I'd tried to shut her out. I thought of all the new things I wanted to share with her now, all the things I hoped she'd share with me. I thought of my mother, a woman I'd never known, but one whose ultimate sacrifice gave me life. I thought of Granna, stepping in to raise her six granddaughters when my mom died, never once making us feel like a burden or a curse. She'd managed the cocoa estate with her son, personally saw to the comforts of every resort guest, and still had time to tell us bedtime stories, always reminding us how much she treasured us. I thought of my sisters. Juliette, Martine, and Hazel, their adventures to faraway lands, new experiences. Gabrielle with her island-hopping, her ultimate choice to follow her heart home. And Natalie, my twin. My mirror image, my dream sharer. I knew I hadn't been fair to her this summer—she'd saved my life, done the best she could. And I wanted to thank her for that, because as long as it had taken me to realize it, I was thankful. Thankful for her. Thankful to be alive. To breathe.

Today is the thirty-seventh anniversary of my mother's death. I have thought of her, longed for her, every day of those thirty-seven years, and my father has, I think, thought of her almost without stopping. If fervent memory could raise the dead, she would be our Eurydice, she would rise like Lady Lazarus from her stubborn death to solace us. But all of our laments could not add a single second to her life, not one additional beat of the heart, nor a breath. The only thing my need could do was bring me to her. What will Clare have when I am gone? How can I leave her?

Elizabeth still fervently believed that no woman should be forced to have a baby. Yet here she was, a single mother, the lead scientist on what had to be the most unscientific experiment of all time: the raising of another human being. Every day she found parenthood like taking a test for which she had not studied. The questions were daunting and there wasn’t nearly enough multiple choice. Occasionally she woke up damp with sweat, having imagined a knock at the door and some sort of authority figure with an empty baby-sized basket saying, “We’ve just reviewed your last parental performance report and there’s really no nice way to put this. You’re fired.

All redistribution, regardless of the criterion on which it is based, involves "taking" from the original owners and/ or producers (the "havers" of something) and "giving" to nonowners and nonproducers (the "nonhavers" of something). The incentive to be an original owner or producer of the thing in question is reduced, and the incentive to be a non-owner and non-producer is raised. Accordingly, as a result of subsidizing individuals because they are poor, there will be more poverty. By subsidizing people because they are unemployed, more unemployment will be created. Supporting single mothers out of tax funds will lead to an increase in single motherhood, "illegitimacy," and divorce.

Nicky dug his fingers into Neil's thigh under the table, a silent and desperate reminder to keep his mouth shut. Neil left half-moon marks on the back of Nicky's hand with his fingernails and counted to ten. He only made it to four before Riko opened his mouth again. "What a coward," Riko said with exaggerated disappointment. "Just like his mother." Neil stopped counting. "You know, I get it," Neil said. "Being raised as a superstar must be really, really difficult for you. Always a commodity, never a human being, not a single person in your family thinking you're worth a damn off the court—yeah, sounds rough. Kevin and I talk about your intricate and endless daddy issues all the time.

How long have you known about him?” I asked Jesse, using my free hand to gesture toward his guest. “Forever. Nearly as long as I did about you.” “God, Jesse. Why didn’t you say anything?” “He was a shadow of you.” Jesse shrugged. “His background is diluted, his dragon blood les strong. Even with you in his proximity, I wasn’t certain any of his drakon traits would emerge. He hasn’t anywhere near your potential.” “Pardon me,” Armand said, freezingly polite, “but he is still right here with you in this room.” “Do you mean…I did it?” I asked. “I made him figure it out? What he is?” Jesse gave me an assessing look. “Like is drawn to like. We’re all three of us thick with magic now, even if it’s different kinds. It’s inevitable that we’ll feed off one another. The only way to prevent that would be to separate. And even then it might not be enough. Too much has already begun.” “I don’t want to separate from you,” I said. “No.” Jesse lifted our hands and gave mine a kiss. “Don’t worry about that.” Armand practically rolled his eyes. “If you two are quite done, might we talk some sense tonight? It’s late, I’m tired, and your ruddy chair, Holms, is about as comfortable as sitting on a tack. I want to…” But his voice only faded into silence. He closed his eyes and raised a hand to his face and squeezed the bridge of his nose. I noted again those shining nails. The elegance of his bones beneath his flawless skin. Skin that was marble-pale, I realized. Just like mine. “Yes?” I said, more gently than I’d intended. “Excuse me. I’m finding this all a bit…impossible to process. I’m beginning to believe that this is the most profoundly unpleasant dream I’ve ever been caught in.” “Allow me to assure you that you’re awake, Lord Armand,” I retorted, all gentleness gone. “To wit: You hear music no one else does. Distinctive music from gemstones and all sorts of metals. That day I played the piano at Tranquility, I was playing your father’s ruby song, one you must have heard exactly as I did. Exactly as your mother would have. You also have, perhaps, something like a voice inside you. Something specific and base, stronger than instinct, hopeless to ignore. Animals distrust you. You might even dream of smoke or flying.” He dropped his arm. “You got that from the diary.” “No, I got that from my own life. And damned lucky you are to have been brought into this world as a pampered little prince instead of spending your childhood being like this and still having to fend for yourself, as I did.” “Right. Lucky me.” Armand looked at Jesse, his eyes glittering. “And what are you? Another dragon? A gargoyle, perchance, or a werecat?” “Jesse is a star.” The hand went up to conceal his face again. “Of course he is. The. Most. Unpleasant. Dream. Ever.” I separated my hand from Jesse’s, angling for more bread. “I think you’re going to have to show him.” “Aye.” A single blue eye blinked open between Armand’s fingers. “Show me what?

Recent studies indicate that boys raised by women, including single women and lesbian couples, do not suffer in their adjustment; they are not appreciably less “masculine”; they do not show signs of psychological impairment. What many boys without fathers inarguably do face is a precipitous drop in their socioeconomic status. When families dissolve, the average standard of living for mothers and children can fall as much as 60 percent, while that of the man usually rises. When we focus on the highly speculative psychological effects of fatherlessness we draw away from concrete political concerns, like the role of increased poverty. Again, there are as yet no data suggesting that boys without fathers to model masculinity are necessarily impaired. Those boys who do have fathers are happiest and most well adjusted with warm, loving fathers, fathers who score high in precisely “feminine” qualities.

Then comes the next way cultural values are transmitted to kids, namely by peers. This was emphasized in Judith Rich Harris’s The Nurture Assumption. Harris, a psychologist without an academic affiliation or doctorate, took the field by storm, arguing that the importance of parenting in shaping a child’s adult personality is exaggerated.51 Instead, once kids pass a surprisingly young age, peers are most influential. Elements of her argument included: (a) Parental influence is often actually mediated via peers. For example, being raised by a single mother increases the risk of adult antisocial behavior, but not because of the parenting; instead, because of typically lower income, kids more likely live in a neighborhood with tough peers. (b) Peers have impact on linguistic development (e.g., children acquire the accent of their peers, not their parents). (c) Other young primates are mostly socialized by peers, not mothers.

It means I’m not alone in this. It means Ben is here with me. It means my life, that felt empty and miserable, now feels difficult but manageable. I can be a single mother. I can raise this child by myself. I can tell this child all about his father. About how his father was a gentle man, a kind man, a funny man, a good man. If it’s a girl, I can tell her to find a man like her father. If it’s a boy, I can tell him to be a man like his father. I can tell him his father would have been so proud of him. If he’s gay, I can tell him to be like his father and find a man like his father—which would be the best of all worlds. If she grows up to be a lesbian, she won’t need to be or find anyone like her father, but she’ll still love him. She’ll know that she came from a man that would have loved her. She’ll know she came from two people that loved each other fiercely. She’ll know not to settle for anything less than a love that changes her life.

Agnes Bojaxhiu knows perfectly well that she is conscripted by people like Ralph Reed, that she is a fund-raising icon for clerical nationalists in the Balkans, that she has furnished PR-type cover for all manner of cultists and shady businessmen (who are often the same thing), that her face is on vast highway billboards urging the state to take on the responsibility of safeguarding the womb. By no word or gesture has she ever repudiated any of these connections or alliances. Nor has she ever deigned to respond to questions about her friendship with despots. She merely desires to be taken at her own valuation and to be addressed universally as ‘Mother Teresa’. Her success is not, therefore, a triumph of humility and simplicity. It is another chapter in a millennial story which stretches back to the superstitious childhood of our species, and which depends on the exploitation of the simple and the humble by the cunning and the single-minded.

What if, rather than asking women to bear the burden of responsibility for our nation’s health and intelligence, governments invested money in research for better formulas that can improve health? If what we feed our babies in the first year really has that much of an impact on lifelong health, this should be a priority. Because in reality, not all babies are going to be able to be breastfed, as long as we want to live in a world where women have the freedom to decide how to use their bodies; whether to work or stay home; whether to be a primary caregiver or not. In reality, there are going to be children raised by single dads; there are going to be children raised by grandparents; there are going to be children who are adopted by parents who aren’t able to induce lactation; there are going to be children whose mothers don’t produce enough milk, or who are on drugs not compatible with breastfeeding. Rather than demanding that every mother should be able to—should want to—breastfeed, we should be demanding better research, better resources, better options. We should be demanding better.

The real secret to eliminating poverty is not a secret at all. It’s amazingly simple, but it makes the people living in their tony little bubbles seethe with rage. Ready for this? Marriage. Sounds too simple to be true, but here’s a fact—the Beverly LaHaye Institute researched data in 2012 to discover that if a family has two married parents, the poverty rate is about 7.5 percent. If a family is headed by a single mother, the poverty rate is almost 34 percent. While Hollywood celebrities make it seem quite normal to have a baby now, and think about a husband later (if at all or ever), most young, single women having babies aren’t Hollywood starlets with millions of dollars to afford full-time live-in nannies, private jets, and private schools. And the War on Poverty we discussed earlier was launched fifty years ago when most children were raised by two married parents. The Heritage Foundation has done extensive and admirable research on the economics of the family and found that the poverty rate for white, married couples in 2009 was 3.2 percent. If it was a white nonmarried family, the poverty rate jumped to 22 percent. For black couples who were married, 7 percent were in poverty; if a nonmarried black family, that number soared to almost 36 percent!

Mr. President, Dr. Biden, Madam Vice President, Mr. Emhoff, Americans and the world, when day comes we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry asea we must wade. We’ve braved the belly of the beast. We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace. In the norms and notions of what just is isn’t always justice. And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it. Somehow we do it. Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished. We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one. And yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect. We are striving to forge our union with purpose. To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man. And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another. We seek harm to none and harmony for all. Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true. That even as we grieved, we grew. That even as we hurt, we hoped. That even as we tired, we tried that will forever be tied together victorious. Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division. Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid. If we’re to live up to her own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made. That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb if only we dare. It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit. It’s the past we step into and how we repair it. We’ve seen a forest that would shatter our nation rather than share it. Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy. This effort very nearly succeeded. But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated. In this truth, in this faith we trust for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us. This is the era of just redemption. We feared it at its inception. We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour, but within it, we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves so while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe? Now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us? We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be a country that is bruised, but whole, benevolent, but bold, fierce, and free. We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation. Our blunders become their burdens. But one thing is certain, if we merge mercy with might and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright. So let us leave behind a country better than one we were left with. Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one. We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the West. We will rise from the wind-swept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution. We will rise from the Lake Rim cities of the Midwestern states. We will rise from the sun-baked South. We will rebuild, reconcile and recover in every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country our people diverse and beautiful will emerge battered and beautiful. When day comes, we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid. The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light. If only we’re brave enough.

Mom,” Vaughn said. “I’m sure Sidney doesn’t want to be interrogated about her personal life.” Deep down, Sidney knew that Vaughn—who’d obviously deduced that she’d been burned in the past—was only trying to be polite. But that was the problem, she didn’t want him to be polite, as if she needed to be shielded from such questions. That wasn’t any better than the damn “Poor Sidney” head-tilt. “It’s okay, I don’t mind answering.” She turned to Kathleen. “I was seeing someone in New York, but that relationship ended shortly before I moved to Chicago.” “So now that you’re single again, what kind of man are you looking for? Vaughn?” Kathleen pointed. “Could you pass the creamer?” He did so, then turned to look once again at Sidney. His lips curved at the corners, the barest hint of a smile. He was daring her, she knew, waiting for her to back away from his mother’s questions. She never had been very good at resisting his dares. “Actually, I have a list of things I’m looking for.” Sidney took a sip of her coffee. Vaughn raised an eyebrow. “You have a list?” “Yep.” “Of course you do.” Isabelle looked over, surprised. “You never told me about this.” “What kind of list?” Kathleen asked interestedly. “It’s a test, really,” Sidney said. “A list of characteristics that indicate whether a man is ready for a serious relationship. It helps weed out the commitment-phobic guys, the womanizers, and any other bad apples, so a woman can focus on the candidates with more long-term potential.” Vaughn rolled his eyes. “And now I’ve heard it all.” “Where did you find this list?” Simon asked. “Is this something all women know about?” “Why? Worried you won’t pass muster?” Isabelle winked at him. “I did some research,” Sidney said. “Pulled it together after reading several articles online.” “Lists, tests, research, online dating, speed dating—I can’t keep up with all these things you kids are doing,” Adam said, from the head of the table. “Whatever happened to the days when you’d see a girl at a restaurant or a coffee shop and just walk over and say hello?” Vaughn turned to Sidney, his smile devilish. “Yes, whatever happened to those days, Sidney?” She threw him a look. Don’t be cute. “You know what they say—it’s a jungle out there. Nowadays a woman has to make quick decisions about whether a man is up to par.” She shook her head mock reluctantly. “Sadly, some guys just won’t make the cut.” “But all it takes is one,” Isabelle said, with a loving smile at her fiancé. Simon slid his hand across the table, covering hers affectionately. “The right one.” Until he nails his personal trainer. Sidney took another sip of her coffee, holding back the cynical comment. She didn’t want to spoil Isabelle and Simon’s idyllic all-you-need-is-love glow. Vaughn cocked his head, looking at the happy couple. “Aw, aren’t you two just so . . . cheesy.” Kathleen shushed him. “Don’t tease your brother.” “What? Any moment, I’m expecting birds and little woodland animals to come in here and start singing songs about true love, they’re so adorable.” Sidney laughed out loud. Quickly, she bit her lip to cover.

His tears couldn’t change that stony outcropping in his character any more than a single summer cloudburst can change the shape of rock. There were good uses for such hardness—she knew that, had known it as a woman raising a boy on her own in a city that cared little for mothers and less for their children—but Larry hadn’t found any yet. He was just what she had said he was: the same old Larry. He would go along, not thinking, getting people—including himself—into jams, and when the jams got bad enough, he would call upon that hard streak to extricate himself. As for the others? He would leave them to sink or swim on their own. Rock was tough, and there was toughness in his character, but he still used it destructively. She could see it in his eyes, read it in every line of his posture … even in the way he bobbed his cancer-stick to make those little rings in the air. He had never sharpened that hard piece of him into a blade to cut people with, and that was something, but when he needed it, he was still calling on it as a child did—as a bludgeon to beat his way out of traps he had dug for himself. Once, she had told herself Larry would change. She had; he would. But this was no boy in front of her; this was a grown-up man, and she feared that his days of change—the deep and fundamental sort her minister called a change of soul rather than one of heart—were behind him. There was something in Larry that gave you the bitter zing of hearing chalk screech on a blackboard. Deep inside, looking out, was only Larry. He was the only one allowed inside his heart. But she loved him.

Imagine you’re a male lab rat. Your mother raises you with everything a young rat needs, normal and healthy. In addition to that normal, healthy development, the researchers train you to associate the smell of lemons with sexual activity.12 Ordinarily, lemons mean as much to rat sexuality as they do to human sexuality: nothing. But you’ve been trained to link lemons and sex in your brain. So when you’re presented with two receptive female rats, one of whom smells like a healthy, receptive female rat and the other smells like a healthy, receptive female rat plus lemons, you’ll prefer the one who smells like lemons—and by “prefer,” I mean you’ll copulate with both females, but 80 percent of your ejaculations will be with the lemony partner, and only about 20 percent of your ejaculations will be with the nonlemony partner. Your ratty sexual accelerator learned that lemons are sex-related, so the lemony partner hits your accelerator more. Let’s look at another experiment. This time, imagine that your brother was raised in the normal, healthy rat way, without the lemon thing. But during his first opportunity to copulate with a receptive female, the researchers put him into a rodent harness, a comfortable little jacket.13 If your brother is wearing his little rat jacket the first time he copulates with the receptive female, then the next time he’s with a receptive female but not wearing the jacket, he’ll actually self-inhibit. His brakes will stay on because during that single first experience, his brain learned that “jacket + female in estrus = sexytimes.” It did not learn simply “female in estrus = sexytimes.

As the year went on, I felt I was handling my grief and depression better, but the pressures kept piling up. You don’t really ever feel “comfortable” being a widow. You endure, maybe get through it, but you don’t ever truly own it. And still, a part of me didn’t want to get beyond it. My pain was proof of my love. One night I went over to a friend’s house and just started bawling. I had been going through photos of Chris when he was in his twenties and thirties. I’m going to be an old woman somewhere, and he’s going to be young. So many other emotions ran through me every day. People suggested that I might find someone else. “No,” I’d tell them. “No one will ever take his place.” School forms would ask about the kids’ family situation. Were their parents married, divorced? I’m not a single mother. I’m raising the kids with my husband! Even if he’s not here. I always think about what he would want to do. One night, alone in my bedroom, I picked up the laundry basket off the treadmill. I suddenly felt as if Chris was there with me, somehow hovering two feet off the ground. He grinned. “I’m working on something for you,” he said. And I knew he meant he was trying to hook me up with a man. I jerked back. Had I really heard that? Was he really there? The room was empty, but I had the strongest feeling that he was there. I could feel his grin. I became furious. “How dare you!” I screamed in my head. “I don’t want anyone else. I want you! What’s wrong with you?” I walked out of the room. I blocked him out for a while, partly because of that incident, partly because of how overwhelming the emotions were. Finally I realized I didn’t want to do that. And one night toward the end of the year, I said aloud, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to block you out.” The room was empty, but I sensed he might be with me. “I am so sorry!” I repeated. Then I started bawling. I felt as if he came over and put his arm around my waist. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. His voice, in a whisper, but one I felt rather than heard: I didn’t want to hurt you. I cried and cried. I felt a million things--sorry, crazy, insane. I finally glanced up and looked in the mirror. I was alone. “I’m not losing it,” I told myself. “What little I have left, I’m not losing it.” I slumped off to bed, exhausted.

Driscoll preached a sermon called “Sex: A Study of the Good Bits of Song of Solomon,” which he followed up with a sermon series and an e-book, Porn-again Christian (2008). For Driscoll, the “good bits” amounted to a veritable sex manual. Translating from the Hebrew, he discovered that the woman in the passage was asking for manual stimulation of her clitoris. He assured women that if they thought they were “being dirty,” chances are their husbands were pretty happy. He issued the pronouncement that “all men are breast men. . . . It’s biblical,” as was a wife performing oral sex on her husband. Hearing an “Amen” from the men in his audience, he urged the ladies present to serve their husbands, to “love them well,” with oral sex. He advised one woman to go home and perform oral sex on her husband in Jesus’ name to get him to come to church. Handing out religious tracts was one thing, but there was a better way to bring about Christian revival. 13 Driscoll reveled in his ability to shock people, but it was a series of anonymous blog posts on his church’s online discussion board that laid bare the extent of his misogyny. In 2006, inspired by Braveheart, Driscoll adopted the pseudonym “William Wallace II” to express his unfiltered views. “I love to fight. It’s good to fight. Fighting is what we used to do before we all became pussified,” before America became a “pussified nation.” In that vein, he offered a scathing critique of the earlier iteration of the evangelical men’s movement, of the “pussified James Dobson knock-off crying Promise Keeping homoerotic worship . . .” where men hugged and cried “like damn junior high girls watching Dawson’s Creek.” Real men should steer clear. 14 For Driscoll, the problem went all the way back to the biblical Adam, a man who plunged humanity headlong into “hell/ feminism” by listening to his wife, “who thought Satan was a good theologian.” Failing to exercise “his delegated authority as king of the planet,” Adam was cursed, and “every man since has been pussified.” The result was a nation of men raised “by bitter penis envying burned feministed single mothers who make sure that Johnny grows up to be a very nice woman who sits down to pee.” Women served certain purposes, and not others. In one of his more infamous missives, Driscoll talked of God creating women to serve as penis “homes” for lonely penises. When a woman posted on the church’s discussion board, his response was swift: “I . . . do not answer to women. So, your questions will be ignored.” 15

As the years go by and I grow older, I feel compelled to record my experiences in wartime Germany. It is important that my children, grandchildren and future generations know about the difficult times we all endured and of the horrors that existed in Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Due to my advanced age and present condition, I am aware of the urgency to document my memories. If I fail in this, I will fail those who follow me, for they will never know!” Adeline Perry This book had its origin many years ago when Adeline Perry tried to recount her experiences and found that she would become overcome by her emotions every time she tried. The horrors and trials that she had experienced, plus the responsibility of raising her two daughters proved to be overwhelming. It was not until the twilight of her life when her daughters gently persuaded her to try again so that future generations might hear and perhaps learn from her experiences. In fact a good portion of these manuscripts were written while she was in the care of Hospice and only now survive because of immense personal strength and devotion to her family and the desire that what had happened to her would never happen again. Her daughter, and my wife, Ursula can take a great deal of pride in the effort it took to make these manuscripts a reality. After Adeline’s passing I had the privilege to develop the book Suppressed I Rise. Staying true to her story I gave her the authorship of the first edition of this book, which adhered to, and did not exceed what she had left in her original manuscripts. This book which was printed in limited numbers became an instant success and deserved more exposure. Readers also felt that there were questions that went unanswered requiring a follow-up. How did Adeline justify going to Germany prior to World War II? What happened to her marriage to Richard and how did she resume her own life, as a single mother, when she returned to South Africa! With additional reflections by her daughters Brigitte Grigsby and Ursula Bracker, and travel to the areas discussed in Suppressed I Rise, I expanded the book to include the prewar years. I also corrected minor contradictions and factual discrepancies that were inadvertently caused by the passage of time. Talking to people in Germany I confirmed some of what had happened including the hanging of the Russian prisoner of war. The book has now become a powerful example of not only personal courage but also of human tragedy. It is a book that I am proud to have written and share in the concept that it was a story that had to be told.

Our young are so dependent that no parent is capable of the task of supporting and caring for that infant—not just the attention and protection, but the teaching and feeding. Hunters and gatherers must meet the energy demands of lactating mothers back in camp. Mothers simply cannot raise infants alone, and this dictates social bonding. The basic social contract has babies as its bottom line. Without this, the human species cannot go on as it is. All evolution hinges on successful reproduction of the next generation. In the case of humans, this is an enormous task. Through all human time, across all human cultures, there emerges a number associated with this task. It takes a ratio of four adults to one child to allow humans to go on. This is the real cost of our big brains. This is why we must cooperate, and why tools like empathy and language evolved to enable that cooperation. All else of human nature is derivative of this single human condition.

In Ray's work, most black fraternity men, compared to white fraternity men and black men who were not in fraternities, were observed treating women respectfully. Researchers also observed them speaking out against other men who talked disrespectfully to women. A Georgia BGLO member said that while campus visibility plays a major role in brothers' treatment of women, so do their backgrounds. "Because a lot of my brothers were raised by single moms, they take respecting women to a very high standard. They don't want anyone disrespecting their mothers or sisters, so they do the same to other women," he said.

About 41 percent of mothers are primary breadwinners and earn the majority of their family’s income. Another 23 percent of mothers are co-breadwinners, contributing at least a quarter of the family’s earnings.30 The number of women supporting families on their own is increasing quickly; between 1973 and 2006, the proportion of families headed by a single mother grew from one in ten to one in five.31 These numbers are dramatically higher in Hispanic and African-American families. Twenty-seven percent of Latino children and 51 percent of African-American children are being raised by a single mother.32 Our country lags considerably behind others in efforts to help parents take care of their children and stay in the workforce. Of all the industrialized nations in the world, the United States is the only one without a paid maternity leave policy.33 As Ellen Bravo, director of the Family Values @ Work consortium, observed, most “women are not thinking about ‘having it all,’ they’re worried about losing it all—their jobs, their children’s health, their families’ financial stability—because of the regular conflicts that arise between being a good employee and a responsible parent.”34 For many men, the fundamental assumption is that they can have both a successful professional life and a fulfilling personal life. For many women, the assumption is that trying to do both is difficult at best and impossible at worst. Women are surrounded by headlines and stories warning them that they cannot be committed to both their families and careers. They are told over and over again that they have to choose, because if they try to do too much, they’ll be harried and unhappy. Framing the issue as “work-life balance”—as if the two were diametrically opposed—practically ensures work will lose out. Who would ever choose work over life? The good news is that not only can women have both families and careers, they can thrive while doing so. In 2009, Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober published Getting to 50/50, a comprehensive review of governmental, social science, and original research that led them to conclude that children, parents, and marriages can all flourish when both parents have full careers. The data plainly reveal that sharing financial and child-care responsibilities leads to less guilty moms, more involved dads, and thriving children.35 Professor Rosalind Chait Barnett of Brandeis University did a comprehensive review of studies on work-life balance and found that women who participate in multiple roles actually have lower levels of anxiety and higher levels of mental well-being.36 Employed women reap rewards including greater financial security, more stable marriages, better health, and, in general, increased life satisfaction.37 It may not be as dramatic or funny to make a movie about a woman who loves both her job and her family, but that would be a better reflection of reality. We need more portrayals of women as competent professionals and happy mothers—or even happy professionals and competent mothers. The current negative images may make us laugh, but they also make women unnecessarily fearful by presenting life’s challenges as insurmountable. Our culture remains baffled: I don’t know how she does it. Fear is at the root of so many of the barriers that women face. Fear of not being liked. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear of drawing negative attention. Fear of overreaching. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter.

Ma’am, my mother was a single parent after my father passed away, and Black to boot. And she raised her three Black kids on a teacher’s salary, and somehow managed to never hit us. Not once.” Drew is breathing hard. “Added bonus? We’re all still alive.” “Eat shit.” “You first.

Do you wish I’d given you to some rich people to raise like that Falcon girl?” Margie thought about the fancy house and swimming pool and gardens and horses. Then she thought about the single-wide at the Arroyo where she and her mom lived, and the kitchen where Mama went to make sandwiches every morning. She thought about giggles and snuggles at bedtime, dancing to “Waltz Across Texas” and jumping into the chilly clear water at Barton Springs on a hot day, and how she loved the sound of her mother’s laughter, and she couldn’t imagine any other life. “Nah,” she said, thinking of the girls in the mansion. “I reckon those two sisters didn’t seem any happier or sadder than any other kid. And their mom was scary.” “You’re an old soul, Seesaw Marjorie Daw. I’m glad you’re mine.

Mothering Sunday At last, in spite of all, a recognition For those who loved and laboured for so long, Who brought us, through that labour, to fruition, To flourish in the place where we belong; A thanks to those who stayed and did the raising, Who buckled down and did the work of two, Whom governments have mocked instead of praising, Who hid their heart-break and still struggled through; The single mothers forced on to the edge, Whose work the world has overlooked, neglected, Invisible to wealth and privilege, But in whose lives the Kingdom is reflected. Now into Christ our mother Church we bring them, Who shares with them the birth-pangs of his Kingdom.

Besides bonding, sex is also designed by God as the way we procreate and have children. Again, this is a very good part of God’s design; without it our species would cease to exist. However, kids are healthiest, happiest, safest, and most secure when they are raised by both a mother and a father within a committed, stable, God-honoring marriage. Children raised in any type of family other than with their married parents—in other words, single parents, divorced parents, stepparents, or cohabitating couples—are more likely to be poor, more likely to have behavioral or psychological problems, more likely to be abused, and less likely to graduate from high school.11 Children are a natural outcome of sex, at least part of the time. That’s true even if you try to prevent it using birth control, since no form of contraception is 100 percent effective.12 If you have sex outside of marriage, you are running the risk of having a child outside of marriage, which can be hard for you and for the innocent child. It’s important to note that all of these statistically negative outcomes for children are still far preferable to their death, which is why abortion is not the answer to pregnancy outside of marriage (or inside marriage). But many people decide that abortion is the answer when faced with those circumstances, and the tragedy of having tens of millions of children killed before birth is directly related to the modern prevalence of sex outside of marriage. It’s sick that we’ve twisted something as beautiful and wonderful as pregnancy, where new life is created, and turned it into a negative consequence to be avoided (or “terminated” if we can’t avoid it). But that’s what happens when we go against God’s design. There are consequences, for ourselves and for the people we love. “No strings attached”? There are always strings. So many strings. But let me clearly say this: I’ve been very honest about my own poor choices, and I can say from my own experience that God loves you no matter what choices you’ve made. He is not mad at you. He desires a relationship with you. You do not need to be overwhelmed with shame. You need to receive his grace and forgiveness.

Sierra was the daughter of my mother's baby boy and the great hope for the second generation of Spruces to evolve out of the efforts of my mother's earlier struggles in Toledo, Ohio where she herself had endeavored to raise her four children as a single-parent mother.

My father would take me into the voting booth with him when I was little. He also took me house to house raising Dollars for Democrats. He was gone by the time I turned 30, but I feel him with me every time I vote, even if there's no booth anymore and no lever to pull to ensure privacy. I took my mother to vote every single election after she stopped driving, even when she was in an assisted living residence. Never would we pass up the opportunity to vote.

Shifting role patterns over the last twenty-five years are central to theories on why BPD is identified more commonly in women. In the past, a woman had essentially one life course—getting married (usually in her late teens or early twenties), having children, staying in the home to raise those children, and repressing any career ambitions. Today, in contrast, a young woman is faced with a bewildering array of role models and expectations—from the single career woman, to the married career woman, to the traditional nurturing mother, to the “supermom,” who strives to combine marriage, career, and children successfully.

We are having an ongoing and critical conversation about race in America. The question on many minds, the question that is certainly on my mind, is how do we prevent racial injustices from happening? How do we protect young black children? How do we overcome so many of the institutional barriers that exacerbate racism and poverty? It’s a nice idea that we could simply follow a prescribed set of rules and make the world a better place for all. It’s a nice idea that racism is a finite problem for which there is a finite solution, and that respectability, perhaps, could have saved all the people who have lost their lives to the effects of racism. But we don’t live in that world and it’s dangerous to suggest that the targets of oppression are wholly responsible for ending that oppression. Respectability politics suggest that there’s a way for us to all be model (read: like white) citizens. We can always be better, but will we ever be ideal? Do we even want to be ideal, or is there a way for us to become more comfortably human? Take, for example, someone like Don Lemon. He is a black man, raised by a single mother, and now he is a successful news anchor for a major news network. His outlook seems driven by the notion that if he can make it, anyone can. This is the ethos espoused by people who believe in respectability politics. Because they have achieved success, because they have transcended, in some way, the effects of racism or other forms of discrimination, all people should be able to do the same. In truth, they have climbed a ladder and shattered a glass ceiling but are seemingly uninterested in extending that ladder as far as it needs to reach so that others may climb. They are uninterested in providing a detailed blueprint for how they achieved their success. They are unwilling to consider that until the institutional problems are solved, no blueprint for success can possibly exist. For real progress to be made, leaders like Lemon and Cosby need to at least acknowledge reality. Respectability politics are not the answer to ending racism. Racism doesn’t care about respectability, wealth, education, or status. Oprah Winfrey, one of the wealthiest people in the world and certainly the wealthiest black woman in the world, openly discusses the racism she continues to encounter in her daily life. In July 2013, while in Zurich to attend Tina Turner’s wedding, Winfrey was informed by a store clerk at the Trois Pommes boutique that the purse she was interested in was too expensive for her. We don’t need to cry for Oprah, prevented from buying an obscenely overpriced purse, but we can recognize the incident as one more reminder that racism is so pervasive and pernicious that we will never be respectable enough to outrun racism, not here in the United States, not anywhere in the world.

Katwe’s youth endure an overwhelming stigma, a sense of defeat, and a resignation that they’ll never do any better than anybody else in the slum. Achievement is secondary to survival. “What we have is children raising children,” Mugerwa says. “It is known as a poverty chain. The single mother cannot sustain the home. Her children go to the street and have more kids and they don’t have the capacity to care for those kids. It is a cycle of misery that is almost impossible to break.” By

Let’s say it straight out: Hillary Clinton lied about the reason for the Benghazi attack. She lied about it to the nation as a whole and she lied right to the faces of the grieving family members of those who died there—and then lied about her lying. And she keeps telling Americans one huge, disgusting lie after another. As I wrap up writing this book, Hillary has claimed that we “didn’t lose a single person” in Libya. Really? Try telling that to the families of the four men we lost on September 11, 2012. Not too long before Mrs. Clinton committed that amazing, bizarre falsehood, the late Sean Smith’s mother, Pat, broke down on national television, exclaiming, “Hillary is a liar! I know what she told me.” Pat went on to say that she wanted to “see Hillary in jail” for her misdeeds at Benghazi. “She’s been lying. She’s turned the whole country into a bunch of liars.” Two decades ago the late New York Times columnist William Safire wrote: “Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our first lady—a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation—is a congenital liar.” The lies change. The liar doesn’t. I don’t know where the future will lead, but I know enough of history and I know my own personal experiences. I trust in the Constitution. I know who I am, what I do, and whom I’m doing it for. My God, my family, and my country are my riches. I’m not looking for a fight, but I don’t run from one, either: I walk softly and carry my standard-issue stick. I’m proud of my legacy, but it’s not over, not yet. No matter what, I never stop hearing Genny in my ear: “Just do the right thing.” That’s why I told you my story. Me, I’m not important. But what I learned about the Clintons firsthand—the hard way—is very important. It’s 2016, but with Hillary Clinton again running for president, it feels uncomfortably like the 1990s again—as if America were trapped in some great, cruel time machine hurtling us back to the land of Monica and Mogadishu and a thousand other Clinton-era nightmares. Fool me once, as the saying goes—your fault. Fool me twice… The bottom line: My job in the 1990s was to lay down my life for the presidency. My obligation today is to raise my voice, to help safeguard the presidency from Bill and Hillary Clinton—to remind readers like you of what happened back then. We all remember—or should remember—what a Clinton White House was like. If we board that time machine for a return trip—it’s our fault.

There were other important reasons for the growth of American individualism at the expense of community in the second half of the twentieth century besides the nature of capitalism. The first arose as an unintended consequence of a number of liberal reforms of the 1960s and 1970s. Slum clearance uprooted and destroyed many of the social networks that existed in poor neighborhoods, replacing them with an anonymous and increasingly dangerous existence in high-rise public housing units. “Good government” drives eliminated the political machines that at one time governed most large American cities. The old, ethnically based machines were often highly corrupt, but they served as a source of local empowerment and community for their clients. In subsequent years, the most important political action would take place not in the local community but at higher and higher levels of state and federal government. A second factor had to do with the expansion of the welfare state from the New Deal on, which tended to make federal, state, and local governments responsible for many social welfare functions that had previously been under the purview of civil society. The original argument for the expansion of state responsibilities to include social security, welfare, unemployment insurance, training, and the like was that the organic communities of preindustrial society that had previously provided these services were no longer capable of doing so as a result of industrialization, urbanization, decline of extended families, and related phenomena. But it proved to be the case that the growth of the welfare state accelerated the decline of those very communal institutions that it was designed to supplement. Welfare dependency in the United States is only the most prominent example: Aid to Familles with Dependent Children, the depression-era legislation that was designed to help widows and single mothers over the transition as they reestablished their lives and families, became the mechanism that permitted entire inner-city populations to raise children without the benefit of fathers. The rise of the welfare state cannot be more than a partial explanation for the decline of community, however. Many European societies have much more extensive welfare states than the United States; while nuclear families have broken down there as well, there is a much lower level of extreme social pathology. A more serious threat to community has come, it would seem, from the vast expansion in the number and scope of rights to which Americans believe they are entitled, and the “rights culture” this produces. Rights-based individualism is deeply embedded in American political theory and constitutional law. One might argue, in fact, that the fundamental tendency of American institutions is to promote an ever-increasing degree of individualism. We have seen repeatedly that communities tend to be intolerant of outsiders in proportion to their internal cohesiveness, because the very strength of the principles that bind members together exclude those that do not share them. Many of the strong communal structures in the United States at midcentury discriminated in a variety of ways: country clubs that served as networking sites for business executives did not allow Jews, blacks, or women to join; church-run schools that taught strong moral values did not permit children of other denominations to enroll; charitable organizations provided services for only certain groups of people and tried to impose intrusive rules of behavior on their clients. The exclusiveness of these communities conflicted with the principle of equal rights, and the state increasingly took the side of those excluded against these communal organizations.

Maybe it was her. She had been raised by her single mother. All Sage ever wanted was to be successful in business and she had worked hard to get her degree and then work her way up to land this director position. She managed 177 people.  She maintained a huge budget for her division. And she was stuck working for a man who didn’t even know she existed apart from the business meetings. 

Gentrification: the displacement of poor women and people of color. The raising of rents and the eradication of single, poor and working-class women from neighborhoods once considered unsavory by people who didn't live there. The demolition of housing projects. A money-driven process in which landowners and developers push people (in this case, many of them single mothers) out of their homes without thinking about where they will go. Gentrification is a premeditated process in which an imaginary bleach is poured on a community and the only remaining color left in that community is white ... only the strongest coloreds survived.

Sudanese dead beat fathers, single or divorced, with children involved from marriages, learn from your shortcomings without blaming ex-wives for all mistakes, unkept promises. Spend on your children without reminder instead of girlfriends, because a real man fears not child support, will never self-harm nor hide himself as a route to quite responsiblities, but rather takes care of his children regardless of the status quo with the mother, and Is aware enough that he is not a father until he raises a complete human being".

Clever Comebacks to Catcalls Situation: You are walking down the hall, and someone tells you he’s so ready for that jelly. Or you are strolling down the street and some construction worker on his lunch break says, “Come on, baby, lemme see you smile.” What can you answer? 1. Join the twenty-first century. 2. Try to imagine how little I care. 3. Have you had your brain checked? I think the warranty has run out. 4. I can’t get angry at you today. It’s Be Kind to Animals Week. 5. Didn’t I dissect you in Biology class? 6. Did you take your medication today? 7. I’ll try smiling—if you try being smarter. 8. I’m curious, did your mother raise all of her children to be sexists, or did she single you out? And some extras, for specific situations: If he says, “If I could see you naked, I’d die happy,” then you say, “If I could see you naked, I’d die laughing.” And if he says, “Hey, baby, what’s your sign?” answer, “Do not enter.” And if he calls down the street as you ignore him, “Hey, baby, don’t be rude!” reply, “I’m not being rude. You’re just insignificant.” And if he says, “Can I see you sometime?” say, “How about never? Is never good for you?” —written by me and Nora, after some serious Internet research.1 Approximate date: October of junior year.

She placed the soapy cloth on his shoulder, briskly stroking over smooth skin, trying not to notice how firm the muscles beneath her fingers were. She kept her gaze strictly on her hand. Still, it was impossible to ignore the elegant sweep of his collarbone, the bulge of his upper arm, the way a single vein ran along the inside of his forearm... She realized that her hand had slowed along his arm. The room was very quiet. Nicoletta had left with the dirty water and Ubertino was somewhere, perhaps fetching more clean water. She and the duke were alone in the bedroom with her hands on his body. She daren't raise her eyes to his. She took his hand in hers and ran the cloth over the veins that roped the back. His fingers were long and strong, and they dwarfed hers, the nails square and pale. She carefully washed each one and then cupped his hand in hers to wash his palm. It was an intimate act. A... caring act. One a mother might perform for a child. Or a woman might perform for her lover. Iris caught her breath and straightened to rinse the cloth. When she turned back her gaze caught his. He was watching her, his crystal eyes half-lidded, his twisted lips parted.

You never saw such a wild thing as my mother, her hat seized by the winds and blown out to sea so that her hair was her white mane, her black lisle legs exposed to the thigh, her skirts tucked round her waist, one hand on the reins of the rearing horse while the other clasped my father's service revolver and, behind her, the breakers of the savage, indifferent sea, like the witnesses of a furious justice. And my husband stood stock-still, as if she had been Medusa, the sword still raised over his head as in those clockwork tableaux of Bluebeard that you see in glass cases at fairs. And then it was as though a curious child pushed his centime into the slot and set all in motion. The heavy, bearded figure roared out aloud, braying with fury, and, wielding the honourable sword as if it were a matter of death or glory, charged us, all three. On her eighteenth birthday, my mother had disposed of a man-eating tiger that had ravaged the villages in the hills north of Hanoi. Now, without a moment's hesitation, she raised my father's gun, took aim and put a single, irreproachable bullet through my husband's head.

You are responsible for your life,” he roared, lecturing a group of us one night. “The sooner you see how you have determined your fate, the sooner and more completely you will have the life you want.” I understood his point, but the more I thought about it, the more I found myself questioning it. My mind wandered to many of the difficulties that I had had to contend with through no fault of my own: my parents’ separation and subsequent divorce when I was a child; being raised by a single mother who had less money than most of the parents whose children I grew up with; having a father who was someone I was in awe of from afar more than a real or loving presence in my life. The more I considered it, the more convinced I became that I had had little to do with the circumstances determining my fate, and the more Mani’s statement bothered me. It certainly wasn’t a particularly enlightened or compassionate view of the world, I thought, reflecting on the lives of other people I knew whose circumstances were far less fortunate than mine, also through no fault of their own. My attention drifted back to Mani’s words just in time to hear him acknowledge that no one controls all the circumstances in which they find themselves. Hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, misfortune, blighted childhoods, abuse, war, and disease are not things that anyone consciously chooses. “However,” he continued, holding to his point, “because you choose how you will respond to these circumstances, it is you and only you who, in the end, has and will determine your destiny.” I left the lecture that night with the words “You are responsible for your life” bouncing in my head. It would be a while before I would come to accept them completely.

What if you got a divorce and lived alone with your daughter?” I asked. Rie eyed me momentarily before returning to her fingers. “No way. How could I afford to pay rent? Go back to working part-time at a bookstore?” “It would be tough, but you should really think about it.” “It’s literally impossible.” Rie looked at me. “Things were hard enough when both of us were working. There’s no way I could do it on my own, no way.” “It’d be really hard, but you could get help. Child support and all that. Plenty of people—” “Those people have jobs,” she interrupted. “Real jobs. If you have a career, you have some degree of security. But you need to have a jobs, or family money, or someplace you can always run back home to. I’ve got none of that. I don’t have any qualifications or skills . . . I quit my job. And good riddance. Working that hard for 1000 yen an hour. They’d rather give those shifts to some eighteen-year-old kid anyway. There’s nothing out there for a good-for-nothing single mother, going on forty, with no real work experience. You can’t raise a child like that. It isn’t possible.

Raised poor by a single mother, she knew the things she wanted, made sure to only want attainable things.

Jen ended up as a single parent with three children fathered by three different men who were in the entertainment industry, too. Eve spent her teenage years trying to bring order to the chaos at home, raising her two younger siblings while her mom was off chasing roles and men. Eve resented her mother, her absentee father, and Hollywood for stealing her childhood.

With moist eyes, Rikshavi raised her bow and released an arrow towards the bird. But the arrow missed the bird. The bird simply flew away, shocked by the arrow which zipped past it. Rikshavi desperately shot another arrow in the direction of the flying bird, but in vain. “Hadn’t I told you to ensure that you do not miss the target, Rikshavi?” the Acharya sternly asked, “You purposely missed the target, didn’t you?” “No Acharya, I tried my best. Believe me; I did not do it purposely. Forgive me, Acharya,” Rikshavi tearily said and looked at her mother for validation. “She is not lying, Acharya. I know my daughter,” Bhairavi added. The Acharya suddenly broke into a smile. “I know that, Bhairavi. Rikshavi is not lying. But tell me child, if you had earnestly tried to target the bird, why did you miss it? I have not seen you missing a single target until now.” Rikshavi was confused. She had made up her mind to shoot the bird. Why couldn’t she still hit the target? The Acharya continued, “You are an intuitive archer, my child. Unless your subconscious mind accepts a target, your body will not align itself towards it. Though you had consciously decided to shoot the bird as per my order, your heart felt compassion for it. Hence your subconscious mind did not allow you to shoot it. Even if you try this again, you will not be successful.

Gabe was raised by a single mother who believed that fresh air and exercise were the answer to all the world’s problems. And maybe they are, in a lot of cases.

relationship with him because she took the necessary steps to break the pattern before it broke us. And it wasn’t easy. She left him right before I turned three and my older sister turned five. We lived off beans and macaroni and cheese for two solid years. She was a single mother without a college education, raising two daughters on her own with virtually no help. But her love for us gave her the strength she needed to take that terrifying step.

was angry because young men in politics were treated like rising stars, but young women were treated like— well, young women. I was angry about all the women candidates who put their political skills on hold to raise children—and all the male candidates who didn’t. I was angry about the human talent that was lost just because it was born into a female body, and the mediocrity that was rewarded because it was born into a male one. And I was angry because the media took racism seriously—or pretended to—but with sexism, they rarely bothered even to pretend. Resentment of women still seemed safe, whether it took the form of demonizing black single mothers or making routine jokes about powerful women being ball-busters. In other cases of unadmitted bias, I had used the time-honored movement tactic of reversing the race or sex or ethnicity or sexuality involved, then seeing if the response would be the same. Fueled by months of repressed anger, I asked: What might have happened if even an empathetic man like Obama had been exactly the same person—but born female?

Another example is given us by Louise, who had not been able to find her life partner but decided to have a child. She chose a biological father and then raised the child by herself. Several years later, when drawing up her family tree, she was surprised to learn she had a great aunt, also named Louise, who had been a single mother. She then came across the same phenomenon again in an older generation, and another ancestor who also was a single mother. It turns out that three women

Children need your attention above all else. The quality of your attention is the single most important gift you can give a child.

Yule watched from the cabin and drifted into dreams of his daughter as a grown woman: how she would speak six languages and outsail her father, how she would have her mother’s brave and feral heart, how she would never be root-bound to a single home but would instead dance between the worlds on a path of her own making. She would be strong and shining and powerfully, beautifully strange, raised in the light of ten thousand suns.

My story with education is that I was mistaken. I used to say and believe for a long period that a single mother could take over the role of both the father and the mother when raising her children but the father. Today, I believe it does not matter which parent is taking over when raising the children. What matters is who is qualified for such a long-loving life commitment. Who can understand the needs of a young girl or an infant boy? Who is willing to continue to learn along the way about those needs of social, psychological, physiological, emotional, behavioral, survival, and materialistic thing? In other words, who is capable of understanding the children's language at each specific age group because they have their language which is different than ours and only those who speak it will succeed to raise them.

Motherhood is the last area in which the qualities we usually value - rationality, independent thinking, consulting our own best interests, planning for a better, more prosperous future, and dare I say it, pursuing happiness and dreams - are condemned as frivolity and selfishness. We certainly don't expect a man who impregnates a woman to drop everything and accept a life of difficulties and dimmed hopes in order to co-parent a baby. No college for you, young man - maybe you can pick up some courses later, when your child is in school. If a woman wants to put a baby up for adoption, we don't badger and humiliate the biological father into taking the child to keep it connected to its family of origin. We don't even legally require a man who impregnates a woman to support her financially through pregnancy and delivery, although lack of money is one reason women give for choosing abortion, and stress during pregnancy is a significant cause of miscarriage and premature delivery. As for child support, few single mothers can expect the father of their child to pay anything remotely like half the true costs of raising it to adulthood, even if he is financially able to do so. We don't like the idea that a man might be severely constrained for life by a single ejaculation. He has places to go and things to do. That a woman's life may be stunted by unwanted childbearing is not so troubling. Childbearing, after all, is what women are for.

I know this remarkable Nigerian woman, Angela, a single mother who was raising her child in the United States; her child did not take to reading so she decided to pay her five cents per page. An expensive endeavor, she later joked, but a worthy investment.

When politicians talk about raising the minimum wage, they talk about the single working mother who is holding down two jobs to support her family. The reality is that the average minimum wage worker is part time and lives in a household with a family income of more than $53,000, which is about the United States median household income.

How many fathers pay no mind to their daughter's clothes? How many care not when the police drop her off after finding her somewhere? How many have no sense of the shame or potential shame brought on their homes? They do not care, but for the moment, a permanent reminder of their failure, a new baby, enters the home. Then the household swarms to protect. This is a maternal move. Often, the father is enraged, but his wife tells him they will provide for this new child. This only encourages more dishonorable behavior.Who is watching the babies of young single moms? The grandparents will care for it and raise the bastard child because it is the right thing, the honorable thing to do. A good father helps in this moment. Honor matters then, but it is a fraud. It is a crystal statue that shatters when the smallest of observers knock on it. “Where were you for the days,week,months and years leading up to that moment," we might ask. "Where was your honor then?" No one asks this because it would be rude. Such a comment implies a functioning community with corrective mechanisms, but it would be shouted down in this matriarchal culture that celebrates single mothers.

Though many publications continued to publish exposés based on in-depth investigation and on-the-record evidence, others were running stories that relied on a single source or unnamed accusers, much lower standards. Once published, some of those stories flushed out additional allegations and more evidence of wrongdoing. But other stories appeared thin and one-sided, raising questions of fairness to those facing accusations. So did allegations leveled on social media without any backup or response from the accused. “Believe Women” grew into one of the catchphrases of the day. Jodi and Megan were sympathetic to the spirit behind that imperative: They had spent their careers getting women’s stories into print. But the obligation of journalists was to scrutinize, verify, check, and question information. (A former editor of Megan’s displayed a sign on his desk that read: IF YOUR MOTHER TELLS YOU SHE LOVES YOU, CHECK IT OUT.) The Weinstein story had impact in part because it had achieved something that, in 2018, seemed rare and precious: broad consensus on the facts.” Excerpt From: Jodi Kantor. “She Said.

He at once loved and loathed his single parent who put the “mother” in “smother.” He knew she did him no favors, raising him the way she did, but he wouldn’t change a thing.

Eleanor plucked his sleeve. “But you know society just as I do. Blanche Harrington is one of the few genuinely nice women in town. There are so many vultures out there! I hated society when I was forced to come out. I can’t begin to tell you how many English ladies looked down on me because I am Irish. Worse, even though I am an earl’s daughter, the rakes in the ton were conscienceless.” She made sure not to grin, although she thought her eyes probably danced. He scowled. “I will protect Amanda from any rogue who dares give her a single glance,” he said tersely. “No one will dare pursue her with any intention other than an honorable one.” Eleanor tried not to laugh. “You do take this guardianship very seriously,” she said, maintaining an innocent expression. “Of course I do,” he snapped, appearing vastly annoyed. Then he nodded at the document in her hand. “Is that for me?” Eleanor simply could not prevent a grin. “It is the list of suitors.” Cliff looked at her as if she had spoken Chinese. “Don’t you want to see who is on it?” He snatched the sheet from her hand and she tried not to chuckle as his brows lifted. “There are only four names here!” “It is only the first four names I have thought of,” she said. “Besides, although you are providing her with a dowry, you are not making her a great heiress. We can claim an ancient Saxon family tree, but we have no proof. I am trying to find Amanda the perfect husband. You do want her to be very happy and to live in marital bliss, don’t you?” He gave her a dark look. “John Cunningham? Who is this?” She became eager, smiling. “He is a widower with a title, a baronet. He has a small estate in Dorset, of little value, but he is young and handsome and apparently virile, as his first wife had two sons. He—” “No.” She feigned surprise, raising both brows. “I beg your pardon?” “Who is next?” “What is wrong with Cunningham? Truthfully, he is openly looking for a wife!” “He is impoverished,” Cliff spat. “And he only wants a mother for his sons. Next?” “Fine,” she said, huffing. “William de Brett. Ah, you will like him! De Brett has a modest income of twelve hundred a year. He comes from a very fine family—they are of Norman descent, as well, but he has no title. However—” “No. Absolutely not.” Eleanor stared, forcing herself to maintain a straight face. “Amanda can live modestly but well on twelve hundred a year and I know de Brett. The women swoon when he walks into a salon.” His gaze hardened. “The income is barely acceptable, and he has no title. She will marry blue blood.” “Really?” His smile was dangerous. “Really. Who is Lionel Camden?

At Gayhead point, I wondered what it would feel like to fall. If you raised your arms above your head like you were diving and you aimed true for the waves, wouldn’t you experience perfect freedom? That the body would land broken on the rocks below didn’t matter, because you wouldn’t be there for the landing. So you would experience only that single moment of clean, pure freedom and grace. But then, that would be it. There would be no chance to remember that feeling and strive, for the rest of your life, to feel it again. Or to surpass it. Or to pull somebody aside and tell them what it had felt like. There would be nothing. It reminded me of when I wanted to find out about the universe and I’d asked my father, “What was there before there was everything?” He said, “There was nothing.” “But what is nothing?” “Nothing is nothing,” he said. It was so difficult to picture. Because wasn’t nothing something too? Wasn’t the thick silence and blackness of nothing actually a place you could be? Son, I’m tired. Please just go outside and play. Is that what death was like? But no, it wouldn’t be “like” anything. I was desperate to discover what nothing felt like. It was the absence of something that attracted me. It was the start. Everything important originated with nothingness. At Christmas, the floor could be spread with gifts, but I would be concerned only with what I didn’t get. Not pouting because I didn’t get a sweater vest, but wondering, What would have been in the box that isn’t here? My brother inspired awe in me because he wasn’t there anymore. I loved my mother most when she was locked behind her door, writing. Because I couldn’t have her. And because I never hugged my father, it was his embrace I sought most of all. Where there is nothing, absolutely anything is possible. And this thrilled me. It gave me hope. In a way, if I wasn’t having a happy childhood right now, I could have one later.

Moscone had grown up poor in San Francisco, raised by a single mother. He had street smarts and true-blue populist appeal, a mayor for the people—and he was rumored to smoke the occasional joint. He had been the California state senate majority leader before moving back to what he called the “greatest city in the world” to run for mayor, a post he said he’d wanted since childhood. During his senate years, Moscone had coauthored a bill decriminalizing sodomy and oral sex between consenting adults in California—a felony before then—earning the undying appreciation of the gay community. He’d also ushered in the Moscone Act, which knocked possession of less than one ounce of marijuana down from a felony to a misdemeanor, earning the undying appreciation of stoners like Meridy.

Why the Leaves Change Colour The first girl who was ever born with amber skin was Mother Nature’s own child. Her birth was from a seed Mother Nature planted in the darkest, purest, most fertile soil, and soon there was a flower, and the flower opened up to show the most beautiful little girl imaginable. One day when the little girl was playing, the Sky, who was her brother, jealous of how lovely she was and how happy and distracted their mother had been since she was born, stole her and placed her upon a star so far away from the earth, Mother Nature could not get to her. In her grief, Mother Nature took every leaf that existed on Earth and turned them amber. The baby girl raised herself on this star—after all, she was her mother’s child, fortitude became her. She became majestic, and independent, and knew how to cope with anything alone because she had always only known alone. When the girl was finally old enough to explore the universe by itself, she travelled across the stars, finding beauty in thousands of planets, but none where she really felt at home. Until, that is, she came upon a beautiful blue planet with amber leaves. Walking through golden leaves, she remembered who she was, and who her mother was, for this is the magic of the bond children have with their mothers. They will remember them even if they are millions of miles away; why do you think good mothers can say things like ‘I love you all the way around the universe’ and you just know they mean it and know not to question it? When Mother Nature felt in her bones that her child had returned, she took her into her arms and turned all the leaves to green again. But because the leaves of amber gold were how her girl found her again, it happens every single year in commemoration. We call it a season. We named it after Mother Nature’s only daughter. We called it Autumn.