The Road To Equality: The Dreams of Youth

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For their part, many women fully expect to do their share as breadwinners, though not necessarily out of personal choice so much as financial need. "Of course we will work," says Kimberly Heimert, 21, of Germantown, Tenn., a senior at American University. "What are we going to do? Stay at home? When I get married, I expect to contribute 50% of my family's income."

When asked how family life will fit into their ambitious plans, young people wax creative. Many want to be independent contractors, working at home at their own hours. Some talk of "sequencing": rather than interrupting a career to stay home with children, they plan to marry early, have children quickly and think about work later. "I'll get into my career afterward," says Sheri Davis, 21, a senior at the University of Southern California. "I'm not willing to have children and put them in day care. I've baby-sat for years and taken kids to day-care centers. They just hang on my legs and cry. I can't do that." Other women claim to be searching for the perfect equal-opportunity mate. Melissa Zipnick, 26, a kindergarten teacher in Los Angeles, saw her own working mom wear herself out "catering" to her father and brother. "I intend to be married to someone who will share all the responsibilities," she vows.

But such demands and expectations are accompanied by a nagging sense of the obstacles. The fear of divorce, for instance, hangs heavily over young men and women. Nearly three-quarters of those in the TIME poll said that having a good marriage today is difficult or very difficult. More than half would not choose a marriage like their parents', and 85% think they are even more likely to see their marriages end in divorce than did their parents' generation. "A lot of ^ my friends' parents are divorced," says Georgetown's Parsons. "In most cases it happened when the mother was trying to decide whether to stay home or go to work. And the women were left so vulnerable." Careers become a form of insurance. "I don't want to depend on anybody," says Kellie Moore, 19, a U.S.C. junior who plans to get a business degree. "I have friends who have already set up their own credit structure because they watched their mothers try to set one up after a divorce."

Given this combination of goals and fears, young women would appear to be disciples of feminism, embracing the movement as a means of sorting out social change. But while the goals are applauded by three-quarters of young people, the feminist label is viewed with disdain and alarm; the name Gloria Steinem is uttered as an epithet. Some young people reject the movement on principle: "The whole women's movement is pushing the career women," says Kathy Smith, 19, a sophomore at Vanderbilt, "and making light of being a homemaker."

Others feel that the battle belonged to a different generation, without realizing that the very existence of a debate about family leave, abortion, flextime and affirmative action is the fruit of an ongoing revolution. Minority women seem to be the group least likely to abandon the feminist label, perhaps because they are most aware of how many critical battles remain to be fought. In fact, argues Stephanie Batiste, 18, a black freshman at Princeton, "minority women are almost a separate women's movement . . . You're very alone. You get a lot less support."