30 Years Ago In Time

Betty Ford's cancer diagnosis in 1974 prompted a TIME cover story on POLITICAL WIVES, which featured Pat Nixon and Joan Kennedy, along with the brand-new First Lady.

Some women, to be sure, would be unhappy no matter what their husbands' occupations and would turn in their despair to drink, to drugs, to affairs. But probably no other career makes such relentless demands on wives and families as politics. Witness Pat Nixon in virtual exile at San Clemente. "We are worried about Pat," an associate of the Nixons confides. "She has not been in touch with any of her close friends. It's not like her"... [The political wife] becomes public property, an extension of the public man, subject to unending scrutiny, judgments, accolades and criticisms. She is often used and then abandoned or ignored or forced to turn the other way as "power groupies" cluster around the Big Man. She must sparkle to help her husband but beware of outshining him. She must know the issues and the arguments for and against. She must often maintain two homes without really living in either. Many such women want out. And yet, for all the pressures and drawbacks, quite a few would have it no other way, particularly after their husbands reach the real heights. --TIME, Oct. 7, 1974