Behavior: The American Family: Future Uncertain

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It is not only woman's aspirations that have changed, Hacker adds, but society's support of her as a wife. "In the past, the role of wife and mother was reinforced by the church and the community. The whole complex descended on women and said, This is what you are; this is what you will be.' Now marriage has to be on its own, because the reinforcements are no longer there. So women are listening to all the subversive messages."

One Women's Lib theoretician, Margaret Benston, has made an economic analysis that places the blame for the "exploitation" of women directly on the family. Since women's work in the home is not paid for, she reasons, it is considered valueless by society. Moreover, at present, equal opportunity of employment simply means that a woman has two jobs: one at work and one at home. All work must therefore be taken out of the home and paid for like any other product; only such innovations as communal kitchens and universal child-care centers will "set women free," she says.

APOTHEOSIS OF CHILDHOOD. In the Middle Ages, children were considered miniature adults, according to French Sociologist Philippe Aries. At about the age of seven, they were sent to other homes to serve as apprentices and often as servants. Thus they grew up in huge households, with no dependence on their parents. In contrast, the child of today, as the center of the tiny nuclear family, has become its raison d'être and is therefore kept psychologically, financially and emotionally bound to it.

Without realizing it, many American mothers, under the aegis of benevolent permissiveness and the pressure of civic obligations, actually neglect their children (see box). Others, imbued by Dr. Spock with the notion that every child has a unique potential and that it is her mission to create a near-perfect being, become the child's shadow, with equally damaging results, according to Brandeis Sociologist Philip Slater. The child soon recognizes that he is the center of an extraordinary effort and that his happiness is a matter of great stakes. He will seldom turn out exactly as planned, and when family dissension ensues, the mother will resent her "sacrifices." Moreover, though she may have brought up her child to be "more cultured, less moneygrubbing, more spontaneous and creative" than she herself was brought up to be, she is nevertheless upset when he then refuses to remain on the same treadmill as his parents.