Free For You Mom, Finally by Ruth Reichl

their daughters how much they had enjoyed working during the war” (p. 52). Why was the male establishment so keen to have women return to the kitchen? It is widely known that even now, equal pay for equal work is not much more than a catchphrase. What can women do to encourage more equality between the sexes?
    6. Ruth and her mother Miriam often have a strained relationship—much like the one Miriam has with her own mother. Do you recognize your own relationship with your mother in these experiences? If you have a daughter, what is the relationship between you and your daughter like? Why do women tend to resent their mothers (on varying scales, of course)?
    7. Miriam wrote a letter to the newly married Ruth, yet it was never opened. In it, she posed a question to herself: “Why did I always do what my parents felt that I should do and not listen to my own feelings” (p. 90)? Having finished Ruth’s portrait of her mother, can you answer that question for Miriam? What can you see in her upbringing and personality that may have caused this disappointment with her own life?
    8. “Believing that work, beauty, marriage, and motherhood were the forces that shaped her destiny, she tried to teach me how to do better at each of them than she had” (p. 108). What are the forces that shaped your destiny?
    9. Miriam was determined to give Ruth a different kind of life than the one she had. Did she succeed? In what ways?
    10. With this in mind, do you believe that Miriam’s unhappiness with her own life is unfounded? Do you think she expected too much?

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