Behavior: The American Family: Future Uncertain

(8 of 11)

Liberalized adoption laws are also making it possible for single and divorced women to have children and to set up housekeeping without the necessity of a father. Ruth Taylor, a secretary at a hospital in suburban Warrensville township, near Cleveland, was divorced shortly after her daughter, Kelley, was born three years ago. Because she did not want the girl to grow up as an only child, she adopted a little boy who was listed as a "slow learner" by the agency (there was a three-year waiting list for normal Caucasian children). But in the year that she has had Corey, 2, the boy's personality and intelligence have blossomed. To Ruth, adopting a child is the answer for both single and married people who have decided to forgo children because of their concern about the population explosion. "Form a family with what has already been provided," she suggests. "That way you will be helping to solve the problem."

The re-examination of the traditional family and the desire to try other forms have also produced some bizarre experiments. In La Jolla, Calif., Michael, an oceanographer, and his artist wife, Karen, both 27, had been married for four years when Michael met Janis, who was studying at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. Janis often came to study at Michael and Karen's apartment, and a strong attachment developed. When Michael took off on a field trip to Antarctica, the two women became good friends and decided that because they both liked Michael, all three ought to live together. Last May the trio formalized it all with an improvised wedding ceremony attended, incidentally, by other trios.

As the three were leaving for a summer session at the University of Oregon, they were delighted to learn that Karen was pregnant. "We'll all take turns caring for it," says Janis, "just as we share all the household chores. That way each of us has time for things we like to do best."

There are other far-out experiments. One group, living at Sandstone, a handsome complex of houses near Los Angeles, has varied in size from three to twelve adults, and currently consists of only five: three men and two women. Says Barbara Williamson, a member of what she calls the "intentional" family: "It's a smorgasbord. It's so much more exciting to have nine different dishes than just one." The group has had no children yet because it wants to stabilize its "marriage" first.

Such eccentric arrangements obviously have no meaning for the vast majority of people, except perhaps as symptoms of an underlying malaise. Thus, while some sociologists and anthropologists make their plans for the reordering of the social structure, most are more immediately concerned with removing—or at least alleviating—the stresses of the nuclear family.

Emancipated Women