- The following is an educational Telephone Network presentation. A service made available by the University of Wisconsin-Extension.

- Good morning, Connie Trine in here in Madison opening the second session of feminism in the family. Let's make sure we're being heard around the state before we actually get into the content of our program. Will someone up in the North let us know if you can hear us.

- I don't know how far North we are, but this is .

- Okay, that's pretty far North for us southerners. We've got man . We got someone...

- Annie Go here.

- Annie Go, okay. We got Racine, Milwaukee, Janesville.

- Janesville here.

- Good. I had the pleasure of meeting some people from Janesville one night last week after our class. I guess we have, but for women, so we won't waste anymore time. This morning our subject is going to be the care of children, the feminist viewpoints compared to professional child rearing people and our moderator this morning is Jane Heibrig who's the extension specialist in family living.

- Thank you, Connie. Good morning. We have a larger panel today, four of us, in addition to me who will be speaking to this subject, "Feminism in the Family as it Relates to the Care of Children". I'd like to introduce our panel first and let them tell you a little bit about themselves and perhaps what they consider to be their qualifications to share with you today. First of all is Louise Classic.

- I'm Louise Classic and I have been trained in early childhood education. I have taught in traditional nursery school and in daycare centers. At present, I'm working for university extension as a specialist in child development and early childhood education. Working with different types of programs for young children across the state, trying to find out where the needs exist, how we can meet the needs for alternative care for children outside of their home.

- Thank you, Louise and now Helen.

- I'm Helen and I can talk professionally from the fact of being a counselor. I'm presently, a part-time counselor, Edgewood College and doing a higher degree work at the university and it . But I think the qualifications come also from the fact that it's very important to me what happens to the relationship between myself and my two young sons, now six and seven and with my husband who does not want to be trapped into what he considered a male role. He doesn't want a full-time job. He wants time to read and think. He's more maternal, if you will because of being more paternal than I ever could be. He really likes very much to do his thing at home. And because of that, it forced me into where I am looking from now regarding children and myself. And also the fact that they were born and I lived for four years with them outside of this country in Austria. And I have a feeling that that also has something to do with the different vision that I have now.

- Thank you, Helen, then Norma.

- I'm Norma Breaks and my background is social work. I did a fair amount of teaching. When we lived in Africa, I ran a nursery school. I now have four children of my own who are in school. And I guess I'm one of those working mothers. I wasn't really a feminist, but several years ago, I began working in connection with employment presence of women and reading and learning and seeing and fully understanding the influence of the Bureau of Labor Statistics on how many women work, why they work, where they work and having some idea of what this does and does not do to the family unit and to the children, has led me to a viewpoint, which I guess other people would identify as being feminist. I have some pretty strong opinions at this time as a result of the last two or three years of what I've seen and done.

- Thank you Norma. I'm sure by now that all of our audience realizes that our views encompass a broad range of feminism and feminist views. My next panel member to be introduced is Jean Davis.

- My name is Jean Davis and I am the area continuing education agent for University Extension in Calumet out of Winnebago County. My formal training includes a BA and MA plus numerous additional credit hours in a Spanish language teaching and Spanish historical philology. So, I'm obviously here very much in the capacity of a non-professional. Gives me a delightful freedom to say what I will. A layman in the area of child rearing. I would say that my only credentials to talk on this topic are that I'm an enthusiastic father of two children. A little girl nearly four years old and a question mark, which is due to see the light of day in about three months. I suppose I wouldn't characterize myself as a feminist too, especially since I've begun to hear more and more about the legal visibility on women that are laid on women. that are really terrible to cope with. So, that's me.

- Thank you all of you. I guess maybe part of my feelings that probably will come out are due to not only to my work, but also in my role as mother of four. I just had to tell you that. I'm also one of those working mothers. The word as we said last time ought to be stricken. There is no such thing as a mother who does work. All right, we want you all to be talking with us this morning. Before you speak with us, perhaps you would enjoy as I know I will, hearing the viewpoints on feminism and the care of children from each of these panel members. I was amused and a little dismayed the other evening to hear on the tonight show, a 92 year old woman, a lovely woman and artists was drawing pictures on grandma Moses' at her age, reply when the emcee asked her what she thought a women liberationist and she said, "Oh, I think they're awful. They want everything and they want to give nothing." Well, this is a far cry from the feminist humanist approach, which Catherine Claren book defined for us last time. Which she said was a concern for the development of the individual within the family. But we'll be speaking more about this as we go along. As you remember, Professor Burt Adams was once with us and he concluded, I think by saying that, "We still need a viable alternative for a better quality of life. And to then the presence offers us." He spoke or both of them spoke of the inadequacies of our present childbearing system. And we're beginning when we ran out of time to examine some of these alternatives. To put the problem in focus for you a little, let me say these words. It seems to me that the goals of equal opportunity for men and for women, for growth and individual development will not be reached until the question of who in our society assumes the extremely important childbearing function. One version of who should do this seems to have been ascribed to our friend, Dr. Spock, who speaks out loudly on the notion of individuality and on individual differences on the unique unfolding potential of each human being. He emphasized that a parent shouldn't coerce a child into a set uniform pattern of behavior because it's important given our enticement ethics that your child realize his own maximum potential. This puts the parents in a particular kind of spot, doesn't it? The parents are placed in the role of manufacturers of who must make the right product out of the right material. Spock's book has a tendency to stress the complexity of the task of creating a person out of an infant. Spock oriented mother's beliefs deep in their hearts, that if they do their job well enough, all of their children will be creative and intelligent and kind and generous and warm and sympathetic and happy and brave and spontaneous and friendly and good. It puts us in a spot, doesn't it? If we believe this. The American wife seems to have accepted this challenge. She has been told, "You have the capacity to rear a genius, a masterpiece. That's an activity is the most important thing you can do and should therefore rightfully absorb all of your time and strength." Motherhood then is magnified into at least a full-time job. The temptation to make it so is enormous given the fact that there isn't very much else to do in a home that has been liberated, so to speak by appliances. In all the tedium and meaninglessness of domestic chores, this childbearing function seems to be the only thing that's important enough to be worthy of a woman's attention. It can be made to fill this time gap created by technology. Well, if I were to stretch to the other end of ways to look after children, I suppose I could go to the other extreme, which might be an all day community childcare center to which parents can drop off the child on their way to work and picking him up again 8 to 12 hours later on their way home. Well, today, with our panel members, we will be exploring the views of several people on what it is the parents and the society desire and need for their children and for themselves in the process. After all, the socialization or their rearing of its young is one of, if not the most important thing that the society does or that a family does. One assumption we make is that this nurturance, bringing up all, this nurturance socialization cannot be adequately carried out in an impersonal setting. And thus it requires a primary kind of relationship, maybe a keen relationship, but at least a warm personal one if it isn't the family or some other social device other than the family if the family can't do it. We haven't specified how long over how many years that is or how many hours a day this nurturance in a primary group is required. Again, our problem, can the goals of feminism be realized without damaging the personality development of our most precious asset, our children. This appears to be a predicament. I've outlined what I see as the problem here. Let's turn to Louise Classic here first of all. Louise, with the studies of the effects on children of maternal separation be irrelevant here?

- I guess I'd like to preface my remarks with a little bit more personal information. If you did not pick it up in my own introduction, I am very much concerned about the welfare of the child. That's my professional emphasis. So, I'm coming at this issue from that viewpoint. I am not coming at it from the viewpoint of the woman's potential per se. I'm coming at it from the needs and concerns that I personally have with the welfare of children in our society. But to answer your question, Jane, about the research, I think many myths have been maintained by misuse of some research or uses some poor research. One of these that comes to mind instantly is the deprivation studies where infants were raised in very sterile surroundings. And because of that, they were... Once say like in a foundling home situation where there was no stimulation, they were just adequately cared for on a physical level. These children had severe problems. No one can deny that. However, to say that this means a child needs a mother in a home to develop to his optimum or to develop as well as he can, I think is a misuse of that research because we're not being fair when we look at that environment. It's a very, very cold, sterile type environment. Physically adequate, emotionally, very inadequate. And I think that's something we have to deal with. We cannot use that kind of research in the way it has been used in the past to say that mothering can only be done or parenting can only be done by the biological parent of the child or someone who assumes total responsibility for that child. There's just in much research very recently and not recently done on very, very young children, done on infants, looking at their social, emotional growth within the first few weeks of life. And the kind of contact that these children undergo with their own mothers. If it is a... Change is turned out in your tape recorder. The thing is very nervous. The kind of interaction that mothers had with their children the first few weeks of life is very significant as far as their emotional wellbeing. Children who experienced a very close, warm, wanting relationship. In other words, the mother who was very pleased with having that child, enjoyed being with that child, reflected this in the way she handled her child. And these children appeared to develop much better socially as they matured. Now, as part of this study, they looked at young children who were not raised by their own parents. They were in a group type care. They were in something akin to a foundling home situation. Whereas the caretakers were just as warm and just as concerned and enjoyed children just as much as those quote unquote, good or quality mothers did. And those children developed just as well as the ones who had their own mother in a one-to-one home situation. The children who were cared for in a group were not assigned one particular person who was with him 24 hours a day. They had rotation of care, but they did have one person who in the process of the day was consistently with them. In other words, someone on an eight hour shift, let's say, who cared for three or four infants, but cared for those three or four infants consistently. And so, perhaps that's a clue to the kind of care that these children need. Not one person, 24 hours a day, but some consistency in the care that they're receiving that they can develop some type of emotional, social relationship with another human being. I think this is where we've gone in lock in the past thinking that many people can run in and out of the child's life. And as long as they're all equally concerned, then it doesn't matter. But there is something to be said for this ongoing consistency of a sort for the child to experience. By the time a child is one year old, it's the quality of his environment and the quality of the interaction that he has with his mother or with his caretaker, with his parents that is most important. It's not the quantity of time that the mother spends. As matter of fact, some of the research now coming out indicates that very, very little time is actually needed between mother and child. If the interaction that they do have is of a high quality, where the mother is genuinely interested in their child for that short period. If focusing in on him, is trying to provide, a loving contact at that point. So perhaps, we could say, the very frustrated mother who feels that she is boxed in by this infant, might not be able to provide that kind of contact, that kind of quality contact that children seem to be needing. These studies that I'm referring to here compared children in homes being raised by their their own mothers to children who were being put in group care situations, infants through toddlers. And there was no difference in the development in any aspect between those children who were receiving quality mothering or quality parenting at home versus those who were receiving quality care outside the home, where the environment was good, it was stimulating, it was adequate. There are enough things for the child to see, to feel, to do. And the contact between adult and child was one that I would consider quality. In other words, the parent was genuinely interested or the adult was genuinely interested in that child and in the relationship that she was building or he was building with the child. And certainly, none of us can look at research without coming out with a feeling that by the time a child is three, he's generally well on his way to needing a group experience. The home itself is no longer adequate, is it is a small family, a very isolated, small family. If he does not have contact with other children, socially, he's not going to mature quite as easily and quite to the same degree as the child who does receive this outside group contact. So, these are the kinds of researchy type things I'm bringing to it. I'll check with you, Jane, do I have time?

- Go ahead.

- To go on a little bit more? Another myth that I'd like to deal with is the idea that group care actually destroys the family. And I feel very strongly that group care for children can in fact strengthen the family. One thing that I have experienced personally with parents that I've worked with is that if they come with their child to a center. They learn about normal behavior. They learn how to gauge their own expectations realistically and this cannot do anything, but improves the relationship between parent and child As much of the pressures being taken off the parents and their parenting role and the child in their parent, child type relationship. Parents also learn different ways to interact with children. I think all of you, as you get together with your neighbors or with relatives and see how people handle their children differently. There are some things you'd like to try. There's some things after you see someone else doing them, you're sure you're going to start doing them. So, these are the kinds of things that I have seen happen to parents as their children come into centers. These are sorts of the indirect, let's say, ways that parents are touched by the group care experience of their child. Another way is if the child is exhibiting some problem behavior, can be identified as being either genuine problem behavior or just normal everyday type problem behavior three, four, two-year-old would show. Quite often, parents will come in with a child who is very, very active and say, "There must be something wrong with him." When in fact he's just normal activity level. He's not anywhere near being hyperactive or hyperkinetic. Otherwise, there's nothing really wrong with him. He's just a normal, healthy pre-schooler. So, if there is a problem, once the child comes into a group situation and the parent is there seeing other children, the problem can be identified as being genuine or not genuine. And it can then be dealt with professionally. I think two, there's a great push across the country as we look at if we could all dream and say what we would want for young children and their families. There is a push for something called a total family center. And it would centered around the childcare as a central focus. However, it would expand out into the total family. The reason for this is that the child's development is influenced not just by what he experiences in the center or in the community, but by what happens to him in the family. So, we have to begin to develop some consistency between the two. And this is a two way street. In no way am I saying that it is all the professional thing to the family. This is what must be done to your child, with your child. In no way will that work because the child is a product of his home, of his family, of his culture, of his community. And there has to be a two-way give and take. And this is what we're seeing in a true quality center, the kind of center that I would be advocating for young children. So, the family comes in very close contact with the staff running the center. The family and center begin to mesh in a sense. They begin to develop mutual goals with the child. The family is touched by what is happening at the center. In some places where this is happening, other kinds of services are being extended to the family so that they're receiving assistance with other parts of their life that are affecting the child, because if the family is in dire financial crisis, let's say, that's affecting the child. And then I come to you and I say, "I'm concerned about that child." Well, I'm going to have to find a way to help the families begin to deal with other problems that are affecting the child. It's not an isolated type thing. It's a tremendous interaction. So, the question is, well, what can happen? One thing that I'm saying could happen is designing centers for our families. A beginning step to do this would be scheduling programs for children that gel with family needs, locating programs to gel with family needs, developing curriculum that's based on the family and the community from which the child comes from. I think some of you may be familiar with some industrial... I don't know what words you use at this point, but some companies across the country who are providing group care for their employee's children and they're beginning to house this care very near the working place of the parent so that the parents can in fact come and go out at break times, at lunchtime, et cetera, throughout the time that the child in the center and interact with their own child and with the group of children. So, this is the kind of flexibility that I'm saying has to be built into our planning for childcare centers if they're going to become family centers. And the schedules, they have to reflect the total needs if parents are working around the clock and different shifts. Well, the childcare provisions have to be round the clock type provisions. And the curriculum again, has to be developed in such a way that it reflects the background that the child comes from, reflects his family's needs and desires for him as an individual. It's tempered by that. Parent involvement in such centers would be very, very high. And many professionals will say to me, "My parents don't get involved." And I think it's been our own fault as professional educators that we haven't allowed, we haven't encouraged parents to get involved. I have met some very involved parents, especially, in the daycare movement. This is one of our most boisterous, if I can use that word, groups across the country. The parents were saying, "These are our children and we want to say in what's happening to them." And I give them all the credit in the world and we have to begin listening to them. So, this is a direct kind of involvement that we're feeling on the part of parents. Involving parents in some of the teaching that goes on in centers, involving them in the advisory councils and the decision-making process as far as what happens to their child in a total daycare program. Another thing we have to commit ourselves to, would be high quality staffing for these centers. And this is where we begin talking money. And I don't think we can get away from it. This is going to be a very costly venture, but I think in the long run, people will say much less costly than trying to pull together broken shreds of people who are going through a system that's not meeting their needs. So, we need high quality teachers who are truly trained to work with young children, yes, but families too. And know how to bring these two together. We would have to be providing medical and the entire scope of medical facilities to families through the center. And the social work kind of aspects, certainly can not be denied. There are programs that are now doing this and there are ways that it can be done realistically. I don't think this is all tie in the sky, but I think if something we genuinely would have to commit ourselves to. They're other countries that are doing this quite well, that have committed themselves to this kind of effort and it's working out very well. So, we would have centers that are carefully designed for children and for their families. Programs designed for the special needs of infants and toddlers. Programs designed for the preschooler. Programs designed for school-aged children. And this would be the total type of programming impact for young children in our society. And I think I've gone too far.

- Jane is looking at her watch, but I'm just thrilled with what I've heard. It says sometime on the sky . If we have time, unless for the rest of us, you out there gonna wanna ask where, how, more of the details of this lovely dream. Helen, maybe you can share with us the kinds of perspective your counseling job has given you on the quality of mothering, perhaps. Don't let me tell you what to say.

- No, I'd be glad to talk from the conflict you pointed. It occurs to me though that I didn't mention something about my personal background that it is very important that will maybe enlighten you as to why I seem to go off probably on a tangent. And it's because in my former life, my major and my interest was history and I think that gives one a certain way of seeing. And so, sometimes I'll start some of the same points possibly that Louise did and work in a very different directions. One of them being, for example, that although I could be very excited about such things as a family center, one of the problems that I see is simply that I'm not sure we should be quite so family-minded. There are an awful lot of people in our population who are not quote unquote, families. And I'm thinking of all the young people I deal with who do not consider themselves a part of a family life. This could be anywhere from 18 to 30 in a sense. And then those who maybe the one parent family, then I feel very sorry when I see a thing happened where a woman's husband dies or vice versa and they stand at the grave site and someone will say, "Oh, I certainly hope they marry again soon." And not even letting them... You have to be married all the time. Everybody has to be married all the time. And I'm very upset about this and about the takeover of the nuclear family. And I think in a sense, which we're talking in parallel lines about similar things, I just would like to take it from a different viewpoint. All right, from the historical angle then, let me just say that first of all, my prime interest is in the quality of community life. In bed, I would see a center that Louise described as very viable. I did not obviously however, want to see it as the only thing I would work on. I'm glad that people like Louise working on them, but I guess back yet further away and ask about broader needs. And one of them is to kind of reverse that also. And I know that there are people who have set up free schools or independent schools for their children. And after a couple of years, discover that what they're really concerned with is their own lives. And they're saying, "Why couldn't we have a community school for us?" In a sense it's kind of reversing it. And if the community might be more adult-centered, but the children certainly would be a primary concern within it, but possibly the emphasis would be different. These are the things I hear. The other thing is that I'm certainly not as far as knowing what one answer or solution might be to work on. So, I'm the dreamer of the group, probably talk about a dream, but I think I have to back away. So, my particular role, I think here, is a questioning role not an answering role. In any case, counseling for example offers another way of seeing reality. So, I combined two rather different ways of looking at this problem. One of the things I've seen in counseling... By the way, the people I counsel then are generally from about 18. And then I would say on up, because a quarter of Edgewood student population now is returning adults. And this is a very beautiful and new onset in college education. But what I see among the younger ones with whom I deal is a tremendous sense of meaninglessness, particularly the young girls, but also among the solos. And it's funny, but after you get aware of the women's movement, you see everything as kind of a dovetailing back into this problem and to the rigidity of role definitions. One thing I would... I could name a few things, but I was going over my list and trying to think, "How will I convince them that everything I see here is connected with the women's movement?" One thing is very hard for some of them to choose a major. And you would think, "What has that got to do with it?" And I don't mean just because, traditionally girls were thought of being teachers, nurses and secretaries. I mean also because from their home pressure, the parents are literally directing a lot of the money towards the brother's education and feel that the girl is in college only, in other words, to broaden herself or to quote unquote, have something to fall back on, but her interests are not there for real. You see, they're not something to be taken seriously. I see this as one thing. Another is a very difficult home life in the sense often of a very nice appearing family, the solid family of the West side neighborhood kind of thing. And actually the home life is very difficult for that girl because she doesn't really believe that her parents' relationship is all that good. It's been held up as all right. They certainly wouldn't fight in front of her and that kind of thing, but I think she feels something's wrong. And the impression I get is after some many years of this, the girl thinks something is wrong with herself. Not that something is wrong out there. And she comes in and by the time she comes to see me, she very definitely, feel she's inadequate, something must be wrong with her. Well, to trace this with such a person is I find only possible in light of talking about role definitions. And is your mother... How do you feel about your mother? So, in other words, a long way away from the old days of blaming the parents, it's the opposite. It's, let's try to understand what position your mother has been in or your father has been in as a provider and a breadwinner and the hero and a spear carrier kind of thing. In other words, this is asking them to consider what the effect on their own life has been. All of the role relationship definition in their own families. Another part of this would be the dating game. I hear other faculty members constantly... Well, I'll try to use cautious language. Sort of upset because the girls are so passive in the classroom. You get an occasional rare one who's taken her ego in hand and does something about it. But then in general, particularly since Edgewood has gone coed, was much better before they were coed 'cause there weren't any guys around to not show your intelligence in front of. But I'm not just being sarcastic here. It is a fact, it is there and it's happening if the girls are more passive. They don't want to show their intelligence. I had a woman's place forum in which several girls were very interested in it and helped me plan it. And all the people who came were women in the community, the girls stayed away and I asked the ones who helped me plan it, why? And they said, "Well, if I do, I probably won't get a date on the weekend." The word would be out. He sees that she's one of these women's livers. And so, that would mean that she would not be very dateable. So, what I hear mainly when they come in is the emphasis on looks, social skills, attractiveness and then not not showing at least too much intelligence. And then not really not knowing what to do with what they've got. If they even begin to think they've got something, a girl, inevitably, if she thinks of being a librarian, she would not think of becoming, say they head librarian in the library of Congress or something that's just on the whole, it's very frightening. You wouldn't do that. If a girl drops out of school, she doesn't get the same kind of counseling a fellow gets. He might be counseled to go take some skills so he could go into the administrative or business firm or an executive position. She is counseled to take typing. And this, I see very often, she should, in other words, become as they call it a satellite role to the real world of work. I won't go on too much with that because frankly, that's not as important to me as to get to a larger issue that I see. Just let me end that part of it by saying much of what I'm... This is a great leap for you and I'm very sorry because of lack of time to make it. But I do see a great vantage in this . I followed Spock. I feel that you can reach back and get great benefit out of and then fill it like many other things out the window, but it's not anti this man. It is anti an attitude which has made us as mothers and as parents take too good of care of our children. That may sound very strange, but we've invested so much of our life and sacrificed. I really underline that word, sacrificed our time, our effort our very lives in our children. And when they get to college, the sadness of my life is to have parents weekend, which is coming up this weekend. When I must face people who ask me, "What about the dorm hours? And is she getting a lot of tests? Are you making sure that she works very hard?" They are in almost total control of the girl's resources about her own life. And she, by this time feels apathetic, that life is meaningless and they come to me and wants to know what's wrong. And the point is that the girl has very seldom had any control over her own life. This is two fellows who were just... I shouldn't be using the girl at this point. This is true both at this point that the mother has so much over-mothered. She has really invested so much in a sense where the feeling I get is that they want a return on their investment. That may sound rather harsh, but it's the feeling I get. I call it like I see it. I feel therefore that the children, the young people that I see... Now I'm looking from the upper end down. This gives me great consequences for how I raised very young children of my own. In other words, what I see of a young person or the adolescent and those in the 20s, is a great question about what I should do to produce them the kind of responsibility for one's own life that I see as very, very important. So, I feel that the people I'm seeing have very few resources left to control their own lives. In other words, to be responsible for themselves. And then we accuse them of being irresponsible because they had very little practice. On one hand, you get complete neglect, on another hand, you get the ballet from swimming, art lesson syndrome. Let's really have them do all these things to broaden them. And my reaction to this and this is definitely a reactive reaction is, "My God, we better start taking care of ourselves first." As my husband has tried to convince me, being overly concerned with my children, he said, "Hey, the best thing you can do for your children is to take care of yourself first." And this is assuming, of course, that one is very, very concerned with one's children's lives. But the point I think he's making is that as Louise said, if we know that a child needs a very strong relationship, my feeling is that we ought to be a strong person for that child to have a strong relationship with. We better have something going for ourselves. The end result of this that I'm trying to get to is first of all, I don't think we are very child-oriented in this country. I think this is a kind of misnomer of ourselves and that the classrooms indeed are teacher-oriented. They have lesson plans and then we have a curriculum we set for those children. We've had things we know we think they ought to learn and concepts and skills they ought to master. All I'm asking is that we back away and see that whatever we do or whatever we do not do does have an effect. Some people will define this as manipulation and we call this a bad word. The point is we do do it by what we choose to do or not do. And we better jolly well figure out what it is we want as our product. And if we are saying we want creative, responsible people, it has then a great bearing on how we handle our children. And the basic question I think I'm asking is... Let's put it this way. Whenever we talk about what we want for our children or what kind of day cares or schools we want, we best also ask ourselves then what kind of a society we want. And in reverse, then if we talk about what kind of a society want we want, then that has a great deal to do with how we handle our children. And I think all I'm saying here is that it depends. If we are dissatisfied now with what we see of our own lives and our children's lives, it might have something to do with how we value the present values in our society. In fact, I think it does, I won't say might, be stronger but. And whether we're satisfied or not with what we see, whether we want to jump in and intervene and do something about it or not. Therefore, the only conclusion from this is that if we notice that in the last 80, perhaps years of mankind's history, women and children have pretty much been cut off from community life. In a sense, this is an isolation that is very new historically. Women and children were traditionally not cut off from productive work and community life. I'm seeing women, mostly their children learned from the marketplace. We were not isolated before, we are isolated now in a suburban housewife, each one in his own home, the children in daycare centers and in school. So, the only point I guess I'd like to make is that if you choose to produce responsibility, you have to start young. You have to start with early childhood and you have to start with your own life. I have lots more to say, obviously.

- Good people out there, all of you must be bursting with questions. Thank you so much, Helen.

- Now, Norma.

- There are so many things that have been said that I would like to comment on or to engage you in a kind of discussion. I'll try to be very short and give you your chance. I understood that this was to be a discussion of the effects of feminism on child development. Now, I would say... Let me just recap for a moment that I think that what the feminist humanist movement is trying to say is let us look at what we have taken as being the ideal family life or the ideal role for a woman or a man or a child at different stages in their life. And question this and see if we can't get out of the mold and increase the options for all the people involved. We're one culture. Without inward-looking, we don't know too much about what goes on with tribes in the Philippines or groups of people in Africa or India. And we kind of think that what we do in this society is the norm for human beings throughout the world and throughout unknown period of history. And of course it absolutely is not. So, it is very modern invention, this myth, that the way life should go is that, the child from zero to six belongs with one person, female parent, the mother. That the child then belongs in a formalized school setting where it sits in a room and learn about the world out there, rather like Plato looking at shows on the walls. You never go out and find out what the real world is all about, but you look at it through the videotape and you read about it and all that. And then it is meant to go to college. And then if it is female, it settles down and marries and producers more children. And if it is male, it has a career and becomes the... Those on the walls, she never go out and find out what the real world is all about. But you look at it through videotape and you read about it and all that. And then it is meant to go to college. And then if it is female, it settles down and marries and producers more children. And if it is male, it has a career and becomes the father, the absent father. This is kind of tough on human beings. I think it's tough on everybody involved. First, I'll put myself on the line and confess. I was a mother of three pre-school children when we first moved to the Midwest. And I enjoy children and I enjoy life, but wow, three pre-school children all day when my husband had the car simply wasn't enough. 24 hours a day, seven days a week of pre-school company drove them up the wall and me up the wall. At least it did by springtime when the snow melted. They needed more than just me and I needed more than just them. We needed variety, we needed change, we needed other people of our own kind or different kinds to interact with. It's too much of a burden, I think for the parent to be in the role of a parent all day. It's too much of a burden for the children to be with just that one adult all the day. Now, I'm describing the middle-class thing. The mothers at home with the children. So, we started off by trying to explode some myths. Let me go back for a minute and review a few of the statistics to give you an idea of how this middle-class norm really is not so for the majority of people in the United States today. And by that, I mean that the mother is at home full-time with the children and all the rest. So, hang on a minute and let me say that, of course, you know that 38% of the workforce are women. I'm trying to show you now that the average... I should say the average woman, but a very large number of women are not in the home looking after children. Let me preface this by saying that about 4 out of 10 mothers were in the labor force as of March, 1969 compared with less than 1 out of 10 in 1940. The number is going up all the time. 4 out of 10, it's nearly half. Let's talk about the large numbers of people who... We have this idea of the nuclear family, the mother, the father and the children as being the family unit. We all know that the statistics are that something like one marriage in three, I think it was one in four and it's moving up to one in three, now ends in divorce. So, of the 51.2 million families in March, 1970, 5.6 million we're headed by a woman. It's slightly more than 1 family in 10 has no father there. And when you have a family that is dependent children and a mother there, obviously, she either has plenty of money and alimony or has been in debt in some way. And that is a small minority, I guess. She's on welfare living at subsistence level with her children or she is out working and just managing to get by. 53% of the women's family heads were in the labor force. Slightly more than half. And more than 3/5ths of these women workers were the sole support of their families. Almost a third of all families headed by a woman had incomes of less than $3,000 in 1969. I paused there because I'm appalled. Can you imagine, I don't know, do any of you manage to live on less than $3,000 a year? About a fourth of all women family heads were black. The median family income of such families in 1969 was $3,341 as compared with a 5,500 for families headed by a white woman. Now, let's talk about families where the husband's present. Of the 18.4 million married women who had husband present who were in the labor force. That's 18.4 million who had husbands there, but who were in the labor force in March, 1970, 10.2 million had children under 18 years of age. About 2.1 million of these mothers, 648,000 whose husbands had incomes in 1969 of less than 3,000 and 1.1 million whose husbands had incomes between 3 and 5,000 were helping to support their children. In other words, a very large proportion of those who had their husbands present, were out working full-time in paid employment because their husbands didn't earn enough to support the families. In fact, 43% of the 3.9 million working wives with children under six years of age and 31% of the 6.3 million working wives with children 6 to 17 years of age, had husbands whose incomes were less than 7,000. Now, I'm not talking about the middle-class woman here. I'm talking about running across the spectrum of all women, all men, families and children. In fact, you see very large numbers often work because they have to. So, what do we do in society? We say, "Aah," but the television ideal is that the mother would sit home with her children. School, public school, is an educational and not a custodial facility. Good mothers arrange this, that and the other and stand at the door with cookies in their hand when child appears from school, don't they? In fact, even parents or mothers who wish to be good mothers, they frequently are not able to do this. Either don't have the money to bake the cookies or they are out earning the money to buy the bread and not cooking. So, I think society fails. I think we have failed to face up to the fact that there are very large numbers of people who are out working and come home tired and the children come back from school, they're latchkey children or whose children are in daycare. And you know that they trail them off. Maybe they don't have regular transport and then they pick them up and they come back at the end of the day. Our communities as a whole have said, "Good families, successful families take care of the children." It is not a wider community responsibility. In fact, it has to be a wider community responsibility because many of those parents are single heads of households or don't have enough money to live with. I see there being a correlation as being something as a result, generalize that far. Between our failure to face up to the facts and the high number of divorces from overworked parents, both of whom may have jobs and many other things, of the extent of child abuse, of the numbers of children who feel sufficiently alienated that they become delinquent. I too am concerned about the compartmentalization of people and of life that I see in present day America. The man is meant to be at his work. Work is a place where no children are. Offices, banks, institutions, you don't see children there. If a child is there, somebody wonders why. Children don't belong in the marketplace in modern day America. Good women who have young children, also don't belong in a marketplace in America. They are meant to be at home in their little box, looking after the children. And children of course belong in their little box in school. What are we doing to ourselves, I ask? Why should the children be in one box and the fathers be in one other box and the mothers be in another box still? Why can't we relax a little bit and have more of the children come out from the schools, liking these schools without walls and mix in with the real work? They want something that's relevant. They tell us they want something that's real. Why can't more women come out without feeling guilty about it? And why can't our communities and our society as a whole say, "People need to belong. We are human beings. We are social beings. We have to arrange that we can flex up working hours, school hours, arrange for things so that we can mix and we can meet and increase on options for old people."

- Thank you, Norma. Now, it's getting on towards 10:15 and the time when we wanna talk, we have another panel member we very much wanna hear from is the man in our lives this morning, Jean Davis.

- I understood my charge to be to talk about... To give personal views about raising of children and the roles that I think society must play in support of the child. And as I modeled this over, I simply couldn't separate it out from other considerations about parents and the relationship between adults. So, the little talk that I'm going to give, which is composed of many dreams in which many of you may find to be either ours conservative or radical or naive or you may think I'm a creature of another time or place. We'll try to cover both of these areas. So, I'd like to start out and say that, first of all, in my mind, as always, I'm not thinking of the one fifth or one-third of separated families. I tend to think more of people together. This is the image in front of my mind. And I'd like to maintain, first of all, that some of the needs, most basic to mental and emotional health are precisely the needs that are most difficult to perceive and are most difficult to meet under the systems of incentives and rewards that presently govern most of our behavior. I'm just thinking specifically about the needs for relationships with others that provide acceptance and support that aren't tied directly to the quantity and quality of work you do on a job. I'm thinking about the need for continuity of a relationship, especially a multilevel relationship and the need to give to others rather than receive, the need to thoroughly experience and being experienced by another person to grow and intwine with someone else, to know that at least one face in this compartmentalize world isn't going to go rushing by you in a blur. I think this is a very great need. I think that personally, this is again a non-professional, just personal viewpoint that these needs can best be satisfied when a man or a woman decides they wanna commit themselves by initiating and working to maintain a relationship over a long period of time. And I say, work, I emphasize the word work in there. I don't think these needs can be satisfied by segmental transitory and superficial relationships provided in a job setting. Now, I like our society and that's why I was asked, "What could society do then to help out?" To encourage people, to defer the decision to marry. Although, not necessarily to be chased until perhaps the late 20s if ever. People should feel free to kick around and do many things before they even consider a commitment to another person. Think of travel, working several jobs, developing a lot of competencies, getting it out of their system, male or female, there's constant desire to develop careers. Social experiences, communal living, temporary heterosexual alliances without children. In my opinion, these ways of living was developing a majority of people feeling of emptiness, feeling of dissatisfaction with the wonders of constantly concentrating on your own professional and personal growth. I think that it produce sensation of grief and sadness because of the transitory quality of the relationships you discover in kicking around. To those who don't develop these feelings who find this style of life to be comfortable and satisfying, I think society should give encouragement simply not to marry. Like the monks and nuns of the middle ages or maybe the samurai warriors, they should be encouraged to give themselves fully to their calling into their own personal professional development. They wouldn't have to pledge poverty, chastity and obedience, only abstinence from producing children. To those who would wish to establish a homosexual commitment, I think society should offer a simple non-interference. Now, for those who go on and over the years begin to feel an emptiness and feel a strength weighing up within themselves, they wanna give to somebody else. In other words, for those who would wanna marry in the conventional definition of the word, I think society should establish real, stiff requirements for licensing. After all, you have to work hard to get your auto license, but you just have to walk in and apparently able to stand there to get a marriage license. It should be a rugged rite of passage. Marriage should be. I would think that any competent psychologist could drop a list of a hundred or more questions that a couple could be asked to work their way through to communicate on all these points of conflict, pressure and difficulty that they might meet in their lives so that they could know beforehand just what's coming up and maybe they just... That's right, that's right. And then they forget it. You know what I mean? We wouldn't have the unwanted children, we wouldn't have the divorce nor an inconvenience. So, I would say that there should be a real good introduction to the topic of love. What's love? Is this primary, explosive chemical reaction or is it some kind of combination? This will tell you what I think. I'll fancy and iron resolve to subordinate individual goals to the creation of a mutually rewarding and enduring relationship. I think somebody ought to talk to them about what is that thing called love anyway? Why bother to get married? What is it? What are you doing when it happens? Certainly, the art of communication, it should be worked on. And then release at this stage from marriage without children should be conditioned on unsuccessful completion of a marital counseling program. So, I'm getting up now to the point where we begin to see children appear on the scene. For any couple who wishes to produce the child, society should say and they should exempt that the most important thing you can do in life is to raise that child into a bright, competent adult. If you fail at that, all the other things that you might do professionally or all the wire you might turn out at the Appleton Wire Works or whatever, isn't a big deal. I think the production of that child, the raising to a competent adult is the most important thing that a person who chooses to have a child can do. Society should require a couple, again, to be licensed to have one or two children. I think that it's now getting to be technologically possible to talk about immunizations for the . You can't be immunized until the right period. I would say that the only allowable motive for having children should be that the couple feels well-matched and so full of the type of loving energy that can only find its outlet in giving themselves to a child. If you have not reached that point, why bother? That's the question? What have a kid? If you don't wanna give yourself to it. I noticed that I haven't said he or she here at all. I'm talking about parents. If you don't wanna give yourself to a kid, why have it? In "Zorba the Greek", they talk... He says something about the worst sin, You saw the picture. You might remember what it is. I disagreed with that. I think the worst sin is to bring in a child that you really don't know why it wants, you having it for the wrong reasons. So, potential parents should be required to undergo some sort of training in child development. And would make clear to them the needs of children or different needs they have. Somebody talked to me about hearing a question. What can that kid do for me? Tiny little kid under one year and the answer is nothing you do for him or her and not the other way around. So, parents seem to come into marriage a lot and very naive about what children need at different ages. I'd like society to tell parents once a month too to satisfy those needs. I don't know if Louise is right or wrong, but the needs of children in any given age, seems to me for the sort of nonprofessional reading I've done to be fairly well-known and extrapolate from that what parents would have to do in order to satisfy these needs. And what affects the appearance of children would have on a marital relationship, career aspirations, social aspirations and relationships and their financial situation. Parents before they are allowed to be de-immunized, should be made to re-examine the relationship under professional guidance to be sure as possible that it will survive the appearance of children because I'd recommend that once you bring a child into the world, that you're really crossing a river and that divorce or separation as well not possible once the children are there. I'd ask society to assign one job slot to each household with children. I'd ask society to create a structure of halftime jobs so that both husband and wife would work in and out of the home. And the children, especially, under age three, could have full attention from trained paraprofessional parents who are motivated by love to stimulate and interact with their children. Norma, let me get onto that here. I wanted to bring out a point here about, I like to ask society just where the devil the money is going. Why it is that for on so many levels, the husband and wife both have to work? Two people have to work, really. You have to have two jobs in order to make it. Where is it going? Is it in the rain the bombs or going into millions pockets? Are all this wealth out there, why isn't there enough so that one family could make it on one job? Why isn't it spread around better? So, I'd ask society to be a little apparent, the distribution of wealth. I'd encourage people in general to examine their consuming patterns in the light of ecology and energy crises and refrain from seeking more than one job per family for the rest of their lives. That excess ingenuity and energy of the parents could go into creative interpersonal relationships and excellence in mental, artistic, sporting, sensorial endeavors. In other words, they could concentrate on learning to do and be, instead of producing and consuming goods, which is a dead end now anyway. I liked this idea of Louise, this is talking about creating some sort of structure outside of the economic apparatus to bring people together. Now, I hadn't thought of in particularly in terms of a family center, but perhaps this would be a source of the training and inspiration that would allow parents to really be parents. So, there is .

- We've heard all kinds your knowledge, thanks very much. I'm ready for you all now to talk.

- I wanna comment and question. One is, having had two foster children in my home and later adopting a child. Some of the comments that Bert just made are not really very far out because you go through a very strenuous examination and licensing process, et cetera in order to keep and raise other people's children that you might think about if you're going to keep and raise your own. The question I have is what about... And this is to Jean. What about the single person who doesn't want to marry and yet would like to raise a child?

- Well, I would say we have to go back to exploration of motives. What is the reason? I questioned personally the ability of a person who is really involved highly in a career to have the energy to deal with the child after the end of a long, exhausting day, which is followed by a social commitments of all sorts. Maybe I'm wrong about this. Maybe this reflects a low energy level on my own. However, I think it would be an expiration of motives to talk about the age of the child. And there'd be all kinds of questions. It'll be individual case by individual case. Again, I haven't been, as I said at the beginning, I'm thinking not of the minority of difficult questions to answer like the widow or the single person or whatever, but thinking of the happiest situation where there are two people 'cause I don't pretend to have the answers for all those difficult situations. If that child is languishing in some sort of institutional setting and there's an adult who feel that he has the energy and love and the know-how to raise that child, I certainly wanna see it go with that adult.

- Do we have a question around the state?

- Hello.

- Yes.

- I think it's a problem a lot about me for a child rearing and family living, but not enough about solving these problems. And I think a lot of is can go back to the young children in the lower grade. I think that we've lost in our teaching, the teaching of courtesy, effort, cooperation and dependability. Years ago, these were the most important marks put on a report card. Now I think that Natisha is only concerned with their child reaching the grade level of the math or the reading or so that she could and not with these poor quality that I think are necessary. And I think that we should start these more.

- Does anyone on the panel wanna comment on that?

- Yeah, I'll comment kind of sideways. And I hope this will be satisfactory to you. I agree that what we would like to see in growing children is dependability and for human growth and not just grades on a report card, but it worries me that we in society feel that we're going to encourage the qualities that we want in our children by packing them like sardines 30 in a room with one adult where they have to be in a group situation and kind of do what they told. And they have to really be pretty passive and pretty quiet. Otherwise, the teacher can't manage 25 or 30 of them at a time. And I think if we really want the kind of children we say we want, we have to take a done good look at what we are accepting and willing to pay for in the school system.

- Thank you. Anyone here in Madison want to participate? Let's try around the state again then. Who has a question or comment? Yes, .

- I would like to comment. I think these talks are excellent. I'm on the board of education in superior now, a retired counselor and we are working on a program whereby the counselor stays put, becomes seventh grade counselor. At present the counselor moves with 500 to 600, 750 in one case, students. He never gets to know them, he spends our high school and junior high. And these youngsters are lost. Of this pattern that is being advocated now is a whole room set up where in the students rule themselves, elect their own officers and have discussion periods on good manners and things of that kind. I was also interested in the comments made by this ladies. The best thing for a child is for a parent to be the person he could identify with. And it seems to me, we adults need to check very severely on our own moral and our own good manner. Things of that kind. To comment on that.

- All right, thank you. Is there someone else would like to get in on this? I can ask you questions it's been on the tip of my tongue. Perhaps, I should address it to Norma. I'm wondering, Norma, if you wouldn't talk a little bit about how feminists see the role of the father or the male in child rearing.

- I'm very glad you asked that. Well, I noticed several things today. We talked about the child as he, which I think is a slip of the tongue because I do think that the girl children matter too. So, we really mean he or she. And we tended to talk of the parents, meaning the mother. And one of the things that I really believe in now, is the need for a parent, regardless of whether it's the father or the mother to take a parental role with the child. And I really don't see that the father's role has to be so very different from the mothers. How we've kind of thought of it in the past. The mother says, "Wait, till your father gets home. He's the one who's gonna come down on you because you have done things that you shouldn't do." Or the idea that the mother is the one who provides the food or the idea that the mother is the one who can put her arm around a child's shoulders and really give it physical affection. It would be so much more freeing if fathers could be enabled to be as actively interested not be so tired at the end of the day and have to retire into the newspaper as the mother could be. So, one of the things that such a feminist organization, as a national organization for women are working for is a recognition that a parent is a parent and that they should share both the trials and the joys of being a parent. And maybe this really talking about practical things not the ideal we'd like to see 50 years from now. Maybe one of the things we really have to work on is this old rigid idea that a job consist of 40 hours a week so that whoever has it, either the mother or the father comes back kind of rather worn out. We should really think in terms I think of much more flexibility in outside paid employment so that the parent of either sex can come back home and be full of energy and wish to be in fact a friend as an adult with the children.

- Norma, do you know anything about program in Norway whereby they have gone to the structure of half jobs so that both parents can be housed half the day alternating and actually involved in care of children?

- Yes, I've heard about it. And I'm very intrigued by it. I understand that it depends upon the nature of the job. There were some jobs that do need one person going all the way through. And that, of course there are parents, I believe who each have a halftime job on the outside of the day, different jobs. And we've heard in this country about women who want to go back to work pairing off and taking one job between them so that each of them is out 20 hours rather than 40 hours. And I think this is a growing trend and one that is very encouraging for those of us who care about all human beings, both the growth of a woman and the growth of the man and the growth of the children.

- Anybody out there wanna comment on this? Anybody here? The father image is kind of disappearing in our family. And I think the place to catch them is in high school where they can be taught each other's feelings and emotions and the care of children. Integrated family living course with a mandated part and made around what to expect in family life.

- I was rather hoping that people would comment some on the attitudes that men might have towards this. I wasn't sure it was fair to ask Jean to represent all men. Obviously, he has a great deal of interest in raising children. But I suppose that many of us who are mothers wonder if it's going to be difficult as we go into the future that we see before us to get a greater participation of men in child rearing. Does anyone wish to comment in that? Jean, I don't know whether you want to.

- I could comment, Connie from a professional viewpoint that there are many men now turning to the profession of early childhood education and finding it quite satisfying. Up to this point, they met much discouragement when they approached the field, but I just picked up a popular magazine, Parents Magazine. And there's an article in there showing young men working with slow learners. And these are the kinds of things that are happening. They're becoming accepted in the field and good things are happening because of it. It's very, very satisfying.

- I would like to add in here, you took the positive side, Louise, let me take the negative side. I've been watching a little bit of television recently and I think Life Magazine also had an article on boredom with the blue collar worker. And they were talking about the young man who are on the assembly lines. And of course, she'd seen the 40 hours a week plus overtime when I seen the tool. And they're very angry and very frustrated and very bored, they do it because it's good pay, but 40 hours a week at that kind of job, is just killing them in fact. Now that doesn't make sense, does it? To have somebody on an assembly line for 40 hours a week dying of frustration and boredom. Probably, a wife and several children pre-school at home who says, "Why can't I get out sometimes?" Why not really help the men and help the women by saying, "Okay, please don't feel blue collar job between you. Take half a day on the assembly line or two and a half days a week and then somebody else do it."

- Norma, I think you have to come back for our four sessions about that. And I wrote a letter to the Vice Magazine along those same lines. They didn't print it, but I reacted the same way you did. We have a comment here in Madison.

- Or as long as we're mentioning magazine articles, I'll mention one I ran in Better Homes and Gardens. This was a poll that was evidently sent out. I don't have a subscription to the magazine so I was not able to see the original questionnaire, but this was sent out to all subscribers. And there was about 350,000 replies to this. And it gave a summary of their answers in the latest issue. And looking at this, I was very surprised at how women felt. A lot of women were against women's lab, but even more surprising was the fact that they felt that a lot of family problems and conflicts, a lot of trouble with children was the fact that men were no longer considered the heads of the household. Now, I found this very shocking because I kind of agree with Helen feelings in this type of family situation. I really don't consider my husband the head of the household. I feel that this should be something that a man and woman should share. And well, in all aspects, I think now we have certain divisions of working and staying home, caring for the home and things like this, but in caring for children, other responsibilities, I think this should be an equal job of both parents. Like I think most of our panelists have been saying and I was really surprised to see the majority of women evidently don't seem to feel this way.

- There was to this.

- answering the telephone saying, "You want management, this is labor."

- Just think who is subscribing to Better Homes and Gardens. The working woman, the two working parents are subscribing to Better Homes and Gardens. Your sample is way biased.

- It is interesting that so many women do feel that way.

- commented on something I had mentioned that the people who feel the lack of a head of a family might be feeling and I would translate that into the lack of some kind of natural authority. And authority in the sense, not so much of a commanding and demanding obedience, but there is a certain natural authority about older people being wiser, bigger, taller, more experienced, et cetera. And I still relate this back to the fact that we are not therefore any longer the strong models, possibly neither of us, that we were in the past. We're not as sure of ourselves. And this is a kind of transition time to get hold of ourselves. And I think I mean this in the sense that what I'm asking for those children is an access to the reality of what real authority would be. And I could be a more real authority if I were more responsible for myself, then I might be and my husband might be. This translated head of the family as a natural authority that is someone those children have there as a strong person with something going for himself. That's a translation. I don't know if it's correct.

- Helen and I can put a question to you that changed the topic. And it goes back to your presentation. You said something in there that really sort of irritated me because it sounded like a misuse of words. You said, take too good care of children. Now, I don't have to go into that little bit. I think that if you really have a wise parent who knows what it's all about, he knows the good care of children is stimulation in the early years and control when the child's judgment is not fully formed. And that real expression of parental love is letting go constantly over the years. And I think what you referred to wasn't good care of children, it's bad care of children.

- Yes, I totally agree. What I do often is use much stronger language than I need to. It's a question of definition and we're both talking about balance. I am of course, reacting to what I see as over care or what they call over-mothering in the sense that the whole fulfillment of that woman seems to go through her child. And then the child comes to bear the burden of all this over-mothering. And in the sense also of, you might say demanding a certain kind of thing of that child. I think what I'm really saying is that, although, there's a very small portion of her life, which is actually put in on the rearing of children, she has a whole life out there which she must take care of and when the whole burden of that falls on what those children become, I would call that you could invest too much of the wrong kind of attitude. Also, simply that I'm afraid at that point we've talk about teaching and guidance and I am talking about producing responsibility. It's a different balance.

- When a woman's career is raising children, she's perhaps have to invest too much in seeing that her career is successful and therefore the children are successful in her terms.

- have a little voice on it. I'm alone . And I think you've completely neglected the role of the father in the family. Let's face it. He gets up early in the morning. He works long hours, comes home late at night and he's supposed to function efficiently. The male as we know has a higher mortality rate. It's subject to more diseases. You women have a higher longevity or you don't seem to be doing too badly. What are you gonna do to change these institutions where we force the men, let's say to work on the assembly lines and took increases productivity and we're pushing him right to the brink. And I think it's time that we start getting after the institutions and making some of these changes like you mentioned the plan in Norway. How can we go about accomplishing some drastic changes so that he can function as a humanistic person in the family?

- I think this is marvelous 'cause do speak up right at this point, we're going to have to close, but this is the point. I am sure that feminism is speaking to more humanization of our system that makes it possible for both men and women to live and to reach fulfillment. All right, now for next week, we're going to be moving from feminism in the family as it relates to the care of children, to feminism in the family as it relates to marriage and intimacy. Connie, is there anything else that needs to be said before we sign off?

- I think not. I'm sorry that we didn't get that comment from us as soon as we didn't hear your voice here and we certainly will deal with that in our next two sessions. And it's a very good thing that you have alerted us. If we have neglected that point, I'm sure that all of us did not intend to and in some ways, meant some of the comments that were made to apply to that. But obviously, we didn't say it very well. So, thank you and we'll try to adjust ourselves next time. I think it is time to quit and we will see you same time, same place next Thursday.

- This has been a University of Wisconsin-Extension presentation. The Educational Telephone Network. Another of the educational media for continuing education.