Striking 1970’s

What is striking, almost painful, to read now in the 1970’s writing about motherhood is how optimistic it all was. Common sense and a kind of can-do approach to solving the conflicts of motherhood set the tone.
There was faith. The new generation of fathers would help. Good babysitting could be found. Work and motherhood could be balanced. It was all a question of intelligent juggling. And to not falling prey to the trap of self-sacrifice and perfectionism that had tripped up the generation that came before.

p. 87, Perfect Madness, Motherhood in the age of anxiety, Judith Warner.

Purgatory

Because there is a god, this war is not hell. God permits it to happen only for a greater good presently unseen. The war is more like purgatory than hell, for through it’s refining flames we were meant to have the dross of our materialism burned away.

P. 293, daily meditation, Benedictus, July 2024, vol. 4, no. 7.