Clearly, Bev views her mother and father very differently. She does not criticize her father and she does not embrace her mother. She sees her mother's social skills as inadequate in comparison to her father's. He is able to "compensate" for her mother. Bev models her own behaviours after her father to avoid her mother's "inadequacy".

Failing to recognize the skills, talents and accomplishments of our mothers must have a direct impact on our own development as .women. Jess describes her work experience, which spanned twenty-five years and numerous types of labour, as providing very little definition of who she is,

..I would houseclean, I would do things for people in the neighbourhood, I just wanted to keep busy. I think, too, at the time when I decided to take the real estate course, I think it was beginning to get to me that I never-I did all this work, but I never did have an identity ...if we went to parties or functions or anything and with the job that my husband had, not that I discredit or, you know, hate it; but everything, I was always known as Jim's wife, I was never known as ! Jess Dean; you always had to be in the shadow of someone else and I think sometimes that did bother me. (p. 71.30) .

Despite raising three children and working hard all her life, Jess felt that she had no identity of her own. She explains that she is like her father who "always wanted more I was never content to sit back and just be happy with the every day, ordinary things. I always wanted to be something...". Jess's mother is not acknowledged as influential in Jess's development.

...she (her mother) always worked in the home and as my father in those days-he was - always the ruler of the home. And it seemed like they (women) really never had a lot to say-you just went along with everything, and she was so proud when I did...accomplish things.

Jess's mother circulated her picture around her home town and told everyone about Jess's success. But any ingredients of Jess's success that were handed down from her mother seem to be lost.

Jess's father stands for a refusal to accept the "ordinary". Her mother raised ten children and kept the peace by never really having a lot to say. Her father was the "ruler" of the home. By extension, her mother was a servant. And it is sometimes hard to recognize the servant's contribution.

More direct is Alice's comparison between intelligence and mothering. She begins:

...I was a very intelligent person and there was a whole source of intelligence that was being untapped...I think that (motherhood) is a whole different side. That is a whole other nature. The motherhood side had nothing to do with intelligence; although, I mean to be a good parent you have to be intelligent too; but, I think that was satisfying a strong motherly feeling that I had.

Alice was brought up to believe that "a woman grew up and the highest aspiration could be to get married and have babies. So that was what I was geared to-that is where my goal was". Combining these ideas suggests that Alice regards women's intelligence as almost unnecessary since mothering is a "whole other nature" removed from intelligence and one that women are "geared to".

If women perceive woman's work, (mother's work), as natural and requiring neither skill above the "ordinary" nor intelligence, then it is understandable to describe skills and learning in terms of our fathers rather than our mothers. Terri's father described her as a hired man- because of her work on the farm. Terri dug potatoes, did the haying, loading truck driving, tractor driving, plowing and harrowing. She enjoyed the
accomplishment; I was with my father too. He always paid me-see I was a hired man...that felt like a great achievement...".