Jean Baker Miller Quotes

7 Sourced Quotes

Conflict is inevitable, the source of all growth, and an absolute necessity if one is to be alive.

Jean Baker Miller
In a basic sense, the greater the development of each individual the more able, more effective, and less needy of limiting or restricting others she or he will be.

Jean Baker Miller
Practically everyone now bemoans Western man's sense of alienation, lack of community, and inability to find ways of organizing society for human ends. We have reached the end of the road that is built on the set of traits held out for male identity-advance at any cost, pay any price, drive out all competitors, and kill them if necessary.

Jean Baker Miller
As a society emphasizes and values some aspects of the total range of human potentials more than others, the valued aspects are associated closely with, and limited to, the dominant group's domain.

Jean Baker Miller
Most so-called women's work is not recognized as real activity. One reason for this attitude may be that such work is usually associated with helping others' development, rather than with self-enhancement or self-employment.

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

Jean Baker Miller
Women will not advance except by joining together in cooperative action.... Unlike other groups, women do not need to set affiliation and strength in opposition one against the other. We can readily integrate the two, search for more and better ways to use affiliation to enhance strength--and strength to enhance affiliation.

Jean Baker Miller