In 'Off to War, Voices of Soldier's Children,' kids from Canada and the United States talk about what it is like when their mother or father goes off to war - and comes home again.
Whatever feminists may say about their only advocating choices, everyone knows the truth: Feminism regards work outside the home as more elevating, honorable, and personally productive than full-time mothering and making a home.
Whatever feminists may say about their only advocating choices, everyone knows the truth: Feminism regards work outside the home as more elevating, honorable, and personally productive than full-time mothering and homemaking.
My sisters both are working mothers. I understand that my being an actress as well as being at home isn't some heroic thing. That doesn't mean it isn't confusing or difficult - especially that question of how you find a balance.
We spoke French at home and I didn't know any English until I went to school. My mother was French and met my father when he visited France as a student on a teaching placement.
As an actress, our hours can be grueling, and like any mother that has a career or job, it is difficult. Balancing spending time with your child in the morning and after they come home from daycare/school before is the key.
But even though all this was going on at home, if someone had tried to take me away and put me in a children's home, I couldn't have handled it. Even though my mother was very brutal, it was my home.
If a mother is sitting in a chair at the office, someone needs to be at home with her child. In some cases, that is a father. Much of the time, the material manifestation of the conflict is a nanny.
My mother is a special story. She went through so much to bring us up, four men at home, especially when our country was going through really difficult times.
I am not quite sure where home is right now. I do have places in London and Milan, and a house in Spain. I guess I would say home is where my mother is, and she lives in Spain.
When I was a kid, my father didn't really have much hope for me. He thought I was a dreamer; he didn't think I would amount to anything. My mother also.
An alcoholic father, poverty, my own juvenile diabetes, the limited English my parents spoke - although my mother has become completely bilingual since. All these things intrude on what most people think of as happiness.
People come up to me as I leave the stage after a performance and tell me tey saw my mother onstage with me every time I sing. I keep a sense of humor about it.
I have a history of eating disorders but, as a mother, you think of being an example to your child. I'm so much more balanced than I was.
It's in the history books, the Holocaust. It's just a phrase. And the truth is it happened yesterday. It happened to my mother. I never met my grandmothers or my grandfathers. They were all wiped up in the gas chambers of Nazi Germany.
When I was growing up, my house was filled with books. My mother was an educator, and my father was a history buff, so our home was a virtual library, covering every author from Beverly Cleary to James Michener.
My mother was making $135 a week, but she had resilience and imagination. She might take frozen vegetables, cook them with garlic, onion and Spam, and it would taste like a four-star dinner.
I have three brothers and they're all into computers. They're all intellects. My mother would pay me a quarter a page to read a book and I couldn't make 50 cents. I just couldn't do it.
We all grew up, our grandmothers and mothers had about three channels to watch, so we watched those soaps and now, a generation has grown up with the Internet and computers and video games.
I remember always looking forward to listening to country music in the car with my mother, and it wasn't even something I enjoyed in the sense of music, but just being around music itself was enough.
Stone Mountain, Georgia, still had Ku Klux Klan marches, and I had a wild and courageous mother who'd put us in the car to watch them. She wanted us to know those things existed.
