Nina Tassler Quotes

I gradually understood why European mothers aren't in perpetual panic about their work-life balance and don't write books about how executive moms should just try harder: Their governments are helping them - and doing it competently.

If you factor in not just who's doing what at home, but how much more time working fathers are spending on work outside the home, on average they spend two hours more per day outside the home.

Well, I don't think of myself as a feminist at all. As soon as we start labeling and categorizing ourselves and others, that's going to shut down the world.

I have never met a woman who works who doesn't feel guilty. I mean we all deny it like crazy but deep down there is always that voice saying you should be at home.

Never categorize yourself, society does that to you, don't do it to yourself.

Most of us in the baby-boom generation were raised by full-time mothers. Even as recently as 14 years ago, 6 out of 10 mothers with babies were staying at home. Today that is totally reversed. Does that mean we love our children less than our mothers loved us? No, but it certainly causes a lot of guilt trips.

I think people have a strong desire to push me and others into some sort of political box that they can wrap their minds around.

In the male homosexual community, we love to label and categorize and organize each other as if we are in a never-ending high school biology class.

People have so many hang-ups about how other people live their lives. People always want to keep you in a little box, or they need to label you and fix you in time and location.

I was quite surprised how easily people wanted to pigeonhole things I've done.

I've tried to avoid labels, but they always find you.

I'm proud to be Secretary of Labor. But I'm even prouder of two more important titles: dad and husband. I've been able to be all three. I want all working people, no matter what their jobs are, to be able to meet their obligations both at work and at home.

People always try to put a title or a symbol on you. If you work in a bank, you are a banker. For me, they see a co-founder of Facebook.

There have definitely been ebbs and flows in my career, but, you know, part of the reason is that I'm a mom. I have a five-year-old daughter. She really factors into my choices, and I never want to go too long without seeing her.

Working moms commonly testify that they feel guilty when they are away from their children and guilty when they are not at their jobs. Devoted fathers certainly miss their children deeply, but it does not seem to be with the same gnawing, primal anxiety that often afflicts women.

I don't think any of us like to be reduced to just one label.

Why is it our business whether Sarah Palin returned to her job as governor three days after her son was born, or three months? Is there a right answer?

The fact that a woman is attached to her professional life should not prevent her from being a mother.

Motherhood gives you access to a range of different intellectual experiences and ways of seeing the world, which, in a way, makes you more flexible in the workplace. But our employers, our colleagues, don't necessarily understand.

Crazy people are my people? Really? I think that's silly. That's another one of those pigeonhole things. Lay somebody on an ironing board and put a scalding hot iron on them, get that going real good: 'Oh, this is who Holly Hunter is.'

It was never something that I thought put me in a good light, that I was a working mom.

People wanted to put me in one category, I think because it was easier for them.

As women, we're presented this false choice that is either our children or our work. But I don't think I fully understood the paradox until I had a child. I bring my son to work and let other parents do the same. I am very intentional about the workplace that I create, and my son is a big part of that.

I just don't want to give anybody a reason to label me as something I'm not.

There's a repression against mothers where we're expected to be full-time workers and pretend we're not mothers, and then expected to be full-time mothers who pretend we're not working. Simultaneously, within the hours of the week that exist.