Anna Quindlen: over 50, and having 'Plenty Of Cake'

As a little girl, Anna Quindlen wasn't afraid of a whole lot. She frequently got into trouble and occasionally shot off her mouth. But as she grew older, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer became what she calls a "girl imitation." "[I became] nicer, sweeter, less outspoken [and] less combative," she tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "All of the qualities that you need to be a good opinion columnist tend to be qualities that aren't valued in women. And I think that was a bit of a challenge for me when I became an op-ed columnist [for The New York Times] and has been a challenge for many of us who do that as a living." It wasn't until she turned 50, Quindlen says, that she realized she didn't care any longer about what people thought about her. "After all those years as a woman hearing 'not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not this enough, not that enough,' almost overnight I woke up one morning and thought, 'I'm enough,' " she says. Quindlen's new memoir, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, explores her past, present and future — her relationships with her parents and children, her faith, her career and her feelings about herself over the past five decades. Many of Quindlen's essays over the years have documented the time she's spent raising her children. But having children wasn't something she initially wanted to do. While in college, Quindlen's mother died of ovarian cancer. Almost overnight, she became a surrogate mother for her four younger siblings. She tells Terry Gross that the experience initially turned her off from wanting to be a mother herself. "I just thought, 'I never want to do this. This is too hard,' " she says. "And I went into my 20s thinking that this was something I never wanted to do.'" A decade later, Quindlen changed her mind. She says she's not sure what changed. "My husband is still asking that question because he spent all those years with a woman who said she never wanted to have kids and who literally woke up one morning when she was 30 and said, 'Let's have a baby,' " she says. "And I honestly can't explain to you how that happened. It was as if the on-off switch got thrown. I'm still a little puzzled by the progression, but so happy about it." After she had her three children, Quindlen says she continually compared her own child-rearing skills with her mother's parenting style. "She just had that gift for making you feel as if you'd hung the moon. Each of us felt like we were her favorite," she says. "And certainly, it's true that when I had my own kids, I would feel like if I got anywhere close to being Prudence Quindlen on any day, I was doing a good job." A Sign Of The Times But Quindlen says she knew being a stay-at-home like her mother was never an option for her. After taking care of her siblings, she returned to Barnard, where her professors repeatedly emphasized to her and her classmates that they were going to go on to do great things. "And that was when second-wave feminism was just crashing on the shores of the country," she says. "Many of my professors were feminists, there was so much going on in the world of journalism — there was a sit-in at Newsweek, there was a class-action suit against The New York Times. I just threw my lot in." Quindlen was hired by The Times, she says, in part because of the class-action lawsuit filed by seven women against The Times in 1974. "I am an affirmative action hire," she says. "And that is only a problem if you don't cut the mustard. These [seven] women brought the suit. The Times settled it and said they would be hiring more women, promoting more women, and hiring women in parity with men. And there were a whole group of us who were hired in very short order, many of us quite young, and it was entirely because those [seven] women went out on that limb." Quindlen stayed at The Times for more than two decades. In 1992, she won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Three years later, she left to become a full-time novelist and then joined Newsweek in 1999, where she wrote a biweekly column until 2009. She continues to write stories and personal essays. Leaving The Catholic Church In Lots of Cake, she frankly describes her decision to give up alcohol as well as her reasoning for recently leaving the Catholic Church. "The pedophilia scandals, the church's reaction to them, and their constant obsession with gynecology — taken together at a certain point, it was probably two or three years ago, I said, 'Enough,' " she says. "Every time I sit in the pew I ratify this behavior, and I'm not going to ratify it anymore." Quindlen says she realizes that she doesn't need a service or Mass to get what she needs out of her faith. "I think not going anymore made me realize how much of the good had been imprinted deep inside me, and how much of the rest I didn't need," she says. "I don't have to listen to the Gospel on Sunday to know the stories of the New Testament. They inform so much of what I write that they're practically like a news scrim that goes through my brain 24/7. And I don't have to listen to a sermon to know what to think or feel about them. It's almost as if I absorbed completely what mattered most to me, and the rest could go." But Quindlen says she still relies on her faith. "I still walk around some mornings and look at the world and think, 'Oh my God. This is so fantastic, and there's so many opportunities to do good and to be happy,' " she says. "And I think that comes from some deep-faith place that started in religion and now transcends it." Interview Highlights On religion and faith "I haven't lost my faith, but I've lost my religion. I still believe in something so deeply. ... I've never really gotten past that quote from Anne Frank in her diary, where she says that people are really good at heart. But I feel like the Catholic Church — no — the Catholic hierarchy has been disinviting people like me, and especially women like me, for so many years that I finally took the hint." On 'uber-momism' "The problem with the 'uber-momism' is that you convince yourself that you can never make mistakes. Second, if you do, it will be tragic and traumatic. And third, that you have control over the entire situation, which is what's led to this 'helicopter parenting' we talk about all the time. I was the best mother when I stood back, provided appropriate oversight, but basically got out of their way so they could be themselves. And that's kind of the opposite of 'uber-momism.' " On relating to her classmates at Barnard after caring for her mother and siblings "Having looked after someone who's dying, having given [my mother] morphine, having made school lunches for your siblings — and then going back to a place where the biggest concern is, 'Am I going to ace this gut course?' It makes you feel like you've been taken out of one world and thrown back into it again. And I think, when I was in my 20s, I had a hard time adjusting to the prevailing concerns and speed of life for my peers." On caring for her siblings after her mother's death "In retrospect, it's probably the single biggest thing that made me what I am today. There's no question that you're either going to fold in a situation like that, or you're going to develop reservoirs of strength you didn't even know you had." On raising feminist boys "Society is opposing you at every turn. One of our sons said to me later, 'It was a little bit like having your skin stripped off.' When you have a daughter and you say to her, 'Look, things are not going to be fair for you. People might treat you in a certain way because you're female — might say this thing or that thing' — that's kind of easy. When you're saying to your boys, 'OK, there's a certain kind of privilege that comes along with being a white man and you should not take that' — that's a kind of craziness. That's asking them to be different from people — certainly different from the macho men who they might see on TV or hear around them. I just felt like the payoff ultimately was going to be so great. And as my one son says, about being a feminist boy, 'Chicks dig it.' And that's been his guiding principle." On contraception "Hello! What is this, 1962? It's being debated — it has no traction in the world. None of us are out there saying, 'Gee, should you be able to buy the pill or should you not be able to buy the pill?' All of this is an attempt in a rapidly changing age to put the genie of freedom back in the bottle, and guess what? It does not work. We are accustomed to living a certain way. Our daughters take certain things as bedrock. And a couple of guys in Washington arguing about this? Or presidential debates? They're not going to change that."