Anne Roiphe, noted novelist, journalist and mother addressed the issue of maternal conflict when she wrote, “If there is too much anger there can be too much guilt. If there is too much guilt we can have trouble letting our children go off to explore the room, the school, the world. If we are too guilty we become frantic with the need to prove to ourselves and others what good mothers we really are. Most of us, feminist or traditional woman, at home or at work, manage to contain the small showers of maternal anger and guilt that are simply a part of normal weather conditions”

from her book Fruitful: Living the Contradictions: A Memoir of Modern Motherhood (1996).