Nation: BRING THE GIRLS

FOR the love of a man and the votes of 62 million women,* presidential candidates' wives this year are suffering tortures that would have given Martha Washington the vapors. Ethel Kennedy, three months pregnant, takes a fall on the ice as she and Bobby skim a rink for the benefit of photographers and the skaters' vote. Abigail McCarthy totters out of a sickbed to stump for Gene. Happy Rockefeller endures scores of bone-crushing handshakes daily. Pat Nixon makes her millionth airport arrival, to beam and greet the faithful. Only Muriel Humphrey, recuperating from an operation, has been spared.

More than ever, Americans vote for the family package, not just the man. From McCarthy's twelve-year-old daughter Margaret to Kennedy's 77-year-old mother Rose, wives, sisters, cousins, nieces, in-laws, daughters and family dogs are out there working the territory for their man.

"Awful Choice." The McCarthys are the newest national political family in the race, but they have come on with elan. Abigail McCarthy, 53, a matronly former schoolteacher, is as independent-minded as her husband. Though plagued by virus attacks earlier this spring and then by gallstone trouble, she has stumped valiantly through all the primary states, frequently on heavy schedules of her own. Even so, she candidly admits that she did not want Gene to run for President. "But I have an awfully bad record," she adds. "When he decided to run for Congress, I thought it was nice being a professor's wife. And when he talked of running for the Senate, I thought it was nice to represent a good safe district. When he decided to run for President, I said, 'Does it have to be you?' "

Then there is Mary McCarthy, 19, the Senator's intense, freckle-faced second daughter. A sophomore government major at Radcliffe until she took a leave of absence last winter to work in the campaign, Mary is more than campaign froufrou, as she proves at coffee conferences by ranging through the war, the gold flow, the draft ("First of all, eliminate General Hershey") and alternatives to her father ("It's a pretty awful choice"). Ellen McCarthy, 20, will pitch in after her exams at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. The youngest McCarthy, the Senator's self-styled "secret weapon," is Margaret, 12, who has already made her contribution by addressing a New York group called "Living Kids for McCarthy." When Mrs. McCarthy asked her daughter how the speech went, Margaret said disgustedly: "They didn't ask me about any really important issues."

Different Style. Republican family acts are more sedate than those of the Democrats. Happy Rockefeller clutches every hand in sight, but otherwise limits herself to staring raptly at Nelson during his speeches. Nancy Reagan dislikes travel, although she did fly last month to Cleveland and Chicago to take in part of non-Candidate Ronald Reagan's eight-city speaking tour.