There is a growing chorus of voices from all political and social Persuasions calling for the restoration of the two parent nuclear family is a way to combat social problems such as crime and poverty all this week the news information stations, Minnesota Public Radio are examining whether the American family is indeed broken what strategies are being employed to fix it if it is broken and which of those strategies are proving to be successful today on that. They were going to hear some of the voices who have been discussing family including Bill Clinton Suzanne working David blankenhorn and Dan Quayle the debate over families and family values in this country has a coarse continued at least since the mid-60s, but Daniel Patrick Moynihan released his now-famous study of black families going to read something of a crescendo back in 1992. When then Vice President, Dan Quayle said that the Los Angeles riots reflected a troubling decline in American Society of the client that was in large measure a result of the breakdown of theFamily in what became known as his Murphy Brown speech given at the Commonwealth Club of California quail said that the people in the inner city neighborhoods of Los Angeles had no, hope nothing to lose and their poverty resulted from a Poverty of values. He went on to say that government policies and programs must be based on the principles of hard work Integrity personal responsibility and family specifically the two-parent family here is part of our me at midday presentation is former Vice President, Dan Quayle speaking in the spring of 1992.Empowering the poor will strengthen families. And right now the failure of our families is hurting America deeply when family fails Society fails the Anarchy and lack of structure in our inner cities are Testament to how quickly civilization falls apart when the family foundation cracks. children need love and discipline I need mothers and fathers. A welfare check is not a husband. The state is not a father. It is from parents that children learn how to behave in society is from parents above all the children come to understand values and themselves as men and women mothers and fathers and for those concerned about children growing up in poverty. We should know this marriage is probably the best anti-poverty program of all. Among families headed by married couples today. There is a poverty rate of 5.7% But 33.4% of the families headed by a single mother mother are in poverty answers to our problems won't be easy my friends we can start by dismantling a welfare system that encourages dependency and subsidizes broken families. We can attach conditions such a school attendance or work to welfare. We can limit the time a recipient gets benefits. We can stop penalizing marriage for welfare mothers. We can enforce child support payments. Ultimately. However marriage is a moral issue that requires cultural consensus and the use of social sanctions. Bearing babies that responsibility is simply wrong. Failing to support children when his father is wrong and we must be unequivocal about this. It doesn't help matters when Primetime TV as Murphy Brown a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent highly paid professional women. Mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice. I know it's not fashionable to talk about moral values, but we need to do it. even even though our cultural leaders in Hollywood Network TV in the National newspapers. Routinely Jarrett them. I think most of us in this room know that some things are good and other things are wrong and now it's time to make the discussion public. It's time to talk again about the family hard work integrity and personal responsibility. We cannot be embarrassed out of our belief that two parents married to each other are better in most cases for children than one. That honest work is better than handouts or crime. That we are our brother's keepers. That is worth making an effort. Even when the rewards are in a media. So I think the time has come to renew our public commitment to our judeo Christian values in our churches and synagogues are Civic organizations in our schools. We are as our children recite each morning one nation under God. That's so useful framework for acknowledging a duty and an authority higher than our own pleasures and personal ambitions. If we live more thoroughly by these values we would live in a better Society. I was former Vice President Dan Quayle speaking back in 1992 or is Quail was ridiculed by many Democrats for his attack on Murphy Brown the popular television character with a baby when she was not married, but about a year later during his first year in office Bill Clinton praised quails defense of the traditional family saying that America would indeed be better off with more two-parent families in December of 1993 Clinton address the congregation of the Church of God in Christ Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. President Clinton said that America is facing a spiritual crisis and he urged people to make changes in their own lives and their own families. I do not believe we can repair the basic fabric of society until people who are willing to work at work. Work organized is life. It gives structure and discipline to life. It gives meaning and self-esteem to people who are parents. It gives a role model to children. the famous African American sociologist William Julius Wilson has written the stunning book called The truly disadvantaged and witchy Chronicles and breathtaking terms how the inner cities of our country have crumbled as work has this appeared And we must find a way through public and private sources to enhance the attractiveness of the American people who live there to get investment there. We cannot I submit to you repair the American community and restore the American family until we provide the structure the values the discipline and the reward that work Gibbs. So I say to you we have to make a partnership all the government agencies all the business folks. But where there are no families where there is no order where there is no hope. Where we are reducing the size of our armed services because we have won the Cold War who will be there to give structure discipline and love to these children. You must do that and we must help you. Scripture says you are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. But if your light shine before men, they will give glory to the Father in heaven. That is what we must do. That is what we must do. How would we explain it to Martin Luther King if you showed up today and said, yes, we won the Cold War. Yes, the biggest threat that all of us grew up under communism a nuclear war communism Dawn nuclear war with seating. Yes, we developed all these miraculous technology. Yes. We all got to be CR&R home. It's interesting. Yes, we get 50 channels on the cable. Yes without regard to race if you work hard play by the rules and get into a service Academy or a good college you do. Just great. How would we explain to him? All these kids getting killed and killing each other. How would we justify? the things that we permit that no other country in the world would permit How could we explain that? We gave people the freedom to succeed? And we created conditions in which Millions abused that freedom to destroy the things that make life worth living and life itself. We cannot get so I say to you today my fellow Americans. You gave me this job. And we're making progress on the things you hired me to do. But unless we deal. With the ravages of crime and drug and violence and unless we recognize that it's due to the breakdown of the family the community and The Disappearance of jobs. And unless we say some of this cannot be gone by government because we have to reach deep inside of the values the spirit the soul and the truth of human nature. None of the other things we seek to do will ever take us where we need to go. So in this Pulpit on this day. Let me ask all of you. in your heart this a we will honor the life in the work of Martin Luther King. We will honor the meaning of our church. We will somehow by God's grace we will. Turn this around we will give these children the future. We will take away their guns and give them books. We will take away their Despair and give them hope we will rebuild the families in the neighborhoods in the communities. We won't make all the work that is going on here benefit. Just a few. We will do it together by the grace of God. President Bill Clinton speaking late last fall in Memphis early this year in his State of the Union Address in January President Clinton to return to the theme of family praising Congress for passing the family medical leave Bill which allows parents to take an unpaid leave of absence from work to care for a newborn sick child or sick parent. He also asked Congress to pass gun-control legislation and a tough crime bill as you demand tougher penalties for those who choose violence. Let us also remember how we came to this sad point. In our toughest neighborhoods on Armenia streets in our poorest rural areas. We have seen a stunning and simultaneous breakdown of community family and work the heart and soul of civilized society. This is created a vast vacuum, which is been filled by violence and drugs and games. So I ask you to remember. but even as we say no to Crime we must give people especially our young people something to say yes to Many of our initiatives from job training to welfare reform the healthcare to National service will help to rebuild the stress communities to strengthen families to provide work. But more needs to be done. That's what our community empowerment agendas all about challenging businesses to provide more investment through empowerment Zone ensuring banks will make loans in the same communities their deposits come from passing legislation to unleash the power of capital through Community Development Banks to create jobs opportunity and hope where they're needed most but I think you know later really saw this problem. We'll all have to put our heads together Levi radiological armor aside and find some new ideas to do even more. And let's be honest. We all know something else to my problems go away beyond the reach of government. They're rooted in the loss of values in The Disappearance of work and the breakdown of our families in our communities. My fellow Americans we can cut the deficit create jobs promote democracy around the world pass welfare reform and Health Care pass the toughest crime bill in history. Still leave too many of our people behind. The American people have got to want to change from within if we're going to bring back work and family and community. We cannot renew our country when within a decade. More than half of the children will be born in the families where there has been no marriage. We cannot renew this country went 13 year old boys get semi-automatic weapon to shoot 9 year olds for kicks. We can't renew our country when children are having children and the father's walk away as if the kids don't amount to anything. we can't renew the country when our business is eagerly look for new Investments and new customers are bra but ignore those people right here at home who give anything to have their job and would gladly buy their products if I had the money to do what we can't renew our country unless more of us. I mean all of us. are willing to join the churches in the other good citizens People like all the black ministers I work with over the years of the priest and the nuns I met at Our Lady of help in East Los Angeles are my good friend Tony campolo in Philadelphia unless we're willing to work with people like that. People who are saving kids adopting schools making streets safer. All of us can do that. We can't renew our country until we realize that governments don't raise children parents do. Parents who know their children's teachers and turn off the television and help with the homework and teach their kids right from wrong. Those kind of parents can make all the difference. I know. I had one. and I'm telling you we have got to stop pointing our fingers at these kids who have no future and reach our hands after them. Our country needs it. We need it and play the song of it. And so I say to you tonight. Let's give our children our future. Let us take away their guns and give them books. Let us overcome their Despair and replace it with hope. Let us by our example. Teach them to obey the law. respect our neighbors and cherish our values Let us leave these 30 threads into a new American community that can watch more stand strong against the forces of Despair and evil because everybody has a chance to walk into a better tomorrow. home there will be nice there to fear that we won't be equal to the challenges of this time. What's a misread our history Our Heritage even today's headlines? All those things tell us we can and we will overcome any challenge. when the earth Shook and fires raged in, California When I saw the Mississippi dead use the farm lands of the Midwest in a 500-year flood. When the centuries bitterest cold sweat from North Dakota to Newport News, it seems as though the world itself was coming apart at the seams, but the American people and put just came together. They Rose to the occasion neighbor helping neighbor strangers risking life and limb to stay total strangers showing the better angels of our nature. Let us not reserve the better Angels only for natural disasters leaving our deepest and most profound problems to Petty political fighting. lettuce Let us instead be true to our spirit facing facts coming together bringing hope and moving forward. Tonight my fellow Americans. We are summoned to answer a question as old as the Republic itself. What is the state of our Union? It is growing stronger. But it must be stronger still. With your help and God's help. It will be thank you and God bless America. President Bill Clinton speaking this past January during his State of the Union Address. Of course politicians aren't the only people have been discussing the family and during the rest of this hour as we continue Minnesota public radio's week-long focus on the family going to be hearing from two people who've written and spoken extensively on the subject David blankenhorn and Sue's and working blankenhorn is President and founder of the institute for American values in New York. That's a research and public education organization on family policy and Civic values in a speech last year at the conservative minneapolis-based center of the American experiment blankenhorn focused on how the increase in single Parenthood in this country is affecting the nation. What we are looking at is not a series of discrete social problems and not just this little thing called father-absent. We are looking at a fundamental kind of breakdown hear of one of the basic scripts of our civilization something that could be called the fatherhood script. You know, here's what the Anthropologist Margaret Mead all of the people who've looked it's human societies across diverse cultures. They'll tell you this that human societies depend decisively upon the socialization of males. The whole idea is the hardest male energy to prosocial purposes and I don't want to be willed or you with complex academic. Jargon, but let me just suggest that there's your two basic categories your good and your bad. The bad thing that men can do is become violent and isolated. And sexually irresponsible. That's the bad thing. They can do the good thing. They can do is become husbands and fathers husbands and fathers is the universal prescription of human societies for the socialization of the mail. The primary solution for the socialization of the mail to link male aggression energy purpose to maleness to a pro-social purpose in the way human societies do that is by linking them to the lives of their children into the lives of the mothers of their children through marriage. That's how it works in all it is at this is a universal Human Institution. And what we have decided recently is that we don't have to do that anymore and increasingly we're not doing it and as we don't do it social and child wellbeing declined this question that we have to look at is a relatively simple one do children need father's here is our aunt. Answer to this question in the United States in 1993 do children need fathers. Not necessarily. That is our answer. Turn on the news read the paper look in the magazine. That's the answer. Not necessarily we have changed our minds. On this question. Let me give you two quick metaphors for understanding how this shift works first the first metaphors that of a movie script the principal character male character of earlier scripts had been who I called the good family man guy who puts his family first when he dies the people at the funeral say old Frank, he was a good family man. We've all heard this ride a lot today our idea in our culture. Is that who I would call the Superfluous father the notion that fatherhood is a social role is either unnecessary or be part of the problem. let me quickly give you the couple of quotes on this Who's the woman that women of Brewster Place the ABC miniseries a couple of years ago? Young shy woman. I don't have a husband older wiser woman. Well, I've had five and you're not missing much. Here's Karen James the television critic of the New York Times on the increasing number of unmarried pregnant women now feature on prime-time television sitcoms. This is before Murphy Brown. She says these new shows have kept television. This is the quote in touch with the shifting realities of women's options the most important of which is that women who want children do not need or necessarily want a spouse Under Foot. Here's an acute of the institute for Public Policy research. The father is no longer is Central to the economic survival of the unit men have not kept up with changes in society. They don't know how to be parents at the same time women don't have many expectations of what men might provide. Well, I won't read you the others but I just want to say we have changed our mind on this basic question now. Two more points on this one is what we could do about it into Wiz. Why we're not likely to anytime soon. You know if we wanted to know if we wanted to change this. If we did change our minds there are a range of things that we couldn't ought to do. We were talking at lunch with Peter Bell and some of our friends have their number things you could do in the area of the current welfare system is an astonishing disincentive for responsible fatherhood in for marriage our current child support laws and efforts at paternity identification or wildly inadequate to the task of Simply identifying the fathers of children born in the United States and establishing as a social principal that the father's obligation to his child is unbreakable. So in the area of welfare reform in the area of child support in the area of marriage and divorce law in the area of the tax code in how we organize public housing and other forms of Public Assistance where it's very hard to be a married couple there are Range of policy and political levers for the type of cultural change that would reflect our changing our minds on this question of do children need fathers. And if we had more time, I would love and maybe during the questions we can go in some of the specific policy things. I I know that when I get to talk to people like when I talk to people I feel like you know, you need to have your policy agenda if you just accept for a moment. I have one probably not the best you all probably have your own policy ideas to but let's just stipulate as they say that there is a policy agenda for shampoo trying to change things in the direction of increasing the proportion of children who grow up with their fathers when I want to do not not in an attempt to be Not even temp to be pessimistic but in an attempt to look the problem squarely is tell you that it's unlikely that we will do that. It's unlikely that we will make those changes because we haven't changed our minds on the basic question. Once we change our minds on the basic question. I think the policy agenda would flow rather naturally in what is really troubled me and made me curious as to why is it that this is such a hard thing for us to discuss. Why is it that there's such die sent us out there on this issue quite honestly, it seems to me that what I have just told you is the social science equivalent of declaring that the Earth is round. It is not complicated. My grandmother great / highest educational level was the second grade and nothing I've said would cause her to do anything other than say they pay you to say that But folks why is it that we can't talk about this in a way that that is a SORA Tatum in that causes actual change to happen in the wives of American children. Why is it that we are contending with kind of the Flat Earth Society out there on this subject. I don't know the answer. Maybe you do. I want to list very quickly in the interest of time. I want to race through 5 reasons why and I really will go quickly. I really want to just give them names and then you can either discard them or maybe help me flush them out. These are rules of the conversation on sexuality procreation and fatherhood. Rule number one is what I call the principal of adults in tourism, which is simply means that we look at things through the eyes of the adult less than we do Through The Eyes of the chai and we really have come increasingly to believe that children are pretty tough and durable. They can take a lot. They can certainly take a lot more than we used to think and that there was should be a kind of a redefinition of Burden sharing in the society children not to share more of the burden that adults have previously assumed for themselves. So you going to the Hallmark Greeting stores now and you see a whole rows at least in New York, maybe I don't know, you know divorce cards for children in cards for children when you're not going to win the parent is not there with the child and it says things like I know it's tough that I'm not there but every ending is a new beginning to kind of make them feel better. Situation that they're in so we have sort of shifted the center. We now think about this mostly through this point of view of what's good for adults. The second one is what I would call the therapeutic imperative and it is simply this that in the realm of what I would call social ecology. You may not say anything that might make someone feel bad. Just that simple now in the realm of natural ecology. We can say things that would make people feel bad if you light up a cigarette people are going to make you feel bad. Passive smoking causes cancer. It's terrible if you light up a pipe no one here is smoking. Why because you're stigmatized. If you do just probably a law that says you can't for all I know and anyway, yes, okay. you are In the realm of the natural ecology, we will stigmatize certain behavior and we will say things that make people feel bad put out that cigarette don't throw litter on the ground don't use racially derogatory language. You're out of bounds. If you do that, we don't we shun you if you do that. Pretty strong stuff none of which would have happened to generation go half. The people in this room would have been smoking but in the area of sexuality and procreation of children, we are not permitted to say anything that reflects Judgment of others. It's not permissible. If you do it you were shown the door of the conversation. The third is what I would call The Nostalgia barrier, which means that you can't suggest that any social institution used to be better than it is now and if you do say that you are there by said to suffer from a mental disability called Nostalgia for the Mythic past that never existed and you're shown the door. In the fact that maybe the institution of husband-wife institution used to be stronger than it is now is not given a hearing on the grounds that you are simply indulging in Nostalgia for the Mythic past that never really existed. Okay. 50 of 4 C is what I call the clinical Vito which means that a specific point at specific example can invalidate what social scientist call it confirmed empirical generalization. A convert. Let me give you an example of a confirmed empirical generalization. The Surgeon General has determined that cigarette smoking can be harmful to your health. Let me give you an example of what could be used as a clinical Vito why I know Frank next door. He smoke two packs a day for 40 years and he's healthy as a horse. We don't let Frank. Vito be confirmed empirical and generalization that cigarette smoking can be harmful to your health. Because we're dealing in the natural ecology. But in the realm of the social ecology, what is good for children? What are the conditions that tend to produce good outcomes for children? What are the conditions that tend to produce bad outcomes for children? We are governed by the clinical Vito. Lastly and I really will conclude on this. This is the hardest one for me. We are influenced by what my friend Bill galston who teaches at the University of Maryland called the regime effects and it's particularly appropriate that we be discussing this with the center of the American experiment because here's what it means to say a regime effect a regime effect is the transferring of the founding principles of the American experiment into the sphere of sexuality and Parenthood. Okay, what are the founding principles of the American experiment will we all know them? We love them individual liberty. personal autonomy radical self-creation individual rights This is the American narrative. This is the American story. We left the old country in through off the encrusted obligations and oppressions and restriction of the old place to come here where we could be free and we can move to the west and we could do this and we could recreate ourselves and it's the Poetry of Whitman who sings the song of the founding principles of the American experiment from this hour. I ordain myself loosed of limits and imaginary lines going where I list my own Master total and absolute. This is why immigrants still from around the world want to come here. They want to be free if we transfer these founding principles of the American experiment into the area of sexuality and procreation. We have a disaster disaster. We have a responsible fatherhood. We have declining child well-being and we have the growth of this entire range of social problems. So there's an important sense in which they said there's a uniquely American aspect to what we are struggling with here because we taking the principles that the country was founded on in projected them into a sphere of Life which has this result. The result is the undermining of those institutions which permit the flourishing of individualism in personal freedom. Freedom doesn't come from nowhere Freedom comes from courcy bit institutions. It takes root in basic social institutions the most important of which is the family if we undermine that we undermine the conditions that make possible free societies. I don't mean to sound hyperbolic and maybe I should qualify this but I honestly that's the way I see it. We're struggling with part of our own history here. We're struggling with the meaning of the American story. We're struggling with a turn in the American story in which we no longer see a connection between on the one hand the pursuit of happiness and on the other hand the notion of family commitment. That was David blankenhorn who is president and founder of the institute for American values in New York. This is midday coming to you on Minnesota Public Radio is our focus on families continues course during most of this hour. We've been listening to three people discuss what's wrong with the American Family to conclude the hour or a different view of the family and the most popular speeches we've ever broadcast on your day was a 1989 Chautauqua lecture Byrider Suzanne dworkin. It was called traditions and family in this excerpt from that speech to work in talks about the challenges that she faced traffic to break with some of her family's long-held traditions. Religious tradition pulls at all of us no matter how far we have strayed from whatever fold we were born into. Let me tell you of a miracle of Faith, which I witnessed with my own eyes. In the Jewish religion, there is a deeply felt to believe that the bodies of the Dead should never be tampered with the ranch. Now being that when the Messiah comes and the dead rise, the dead should be as far as possible in one piece. No, I had a cousin who gave up being Jewish shortly after his circumcision, which was about eight days after he was born. He led a life of dedicated left wing in this until he was struck Between the Eyes by Ronald Reagan and let a life of dedicated Supply sidedness. Not once in this man's long life. Did he visit a synagogue say a prayer Wonder at the existence of a Divine entity or make a contribution to the Federation of Jewish philanthropies. Then he died and the doctors asked his children who are exactly like him if it would be all right to perform an autopsy. You would have thought that Moses himself and reached up out of the dust and grab these people by the ankle, Unsinkable and Abomination. I'ma doctors backed off convinced that they were in the presence of deeply religious people. We know that tradition Simmons the family don't deny it if it weren't for Christmas a quarter of the population will probably never go home. I'm about tradition does not only cement the family sometimes under certain circumstances. It becomes the family. I have seen this miracle to with my own eyes a long time ago. I was in Iran on the Persian Gulf. I was there in this god-forsaken oil besotted desert as a journalist. All around me there were Americans. Some were socialists social workers determined to bring Comfort to the trachoma written impoverished population of the surrounding province of whose has done some were members of Christian Missionary groups trying to do exactly the same thing and converting a few Souls along the way. Summer oilman taking horrific risks on their bobbing Platforms in the sea because a they would danger Freaks and be because the money was terrific if you could stay alive long enough to get back to the States and collect it. A good many of the Americans with CIA people doing various nefarious deals to keep the shine power and some were American women who had married to Ronnie and and one of these was plotting to murder her husband. It was July and breathtakingly hot and all the Americans in this group really hated one another. On July 4th in Aguas on the Persian Gulf this disparate group of antagonistic people came together in a park made of closely planted date palms that provided not fruit but shades. I don't know what brought us to the park. It was as though George Washington himself had reached out of the dust and grabbed Us by the ankle. Somebody brought hot dogs and somebody brought buns somebody brought beer in a Muslim country and some nuts actually brought firecrackers. And together for want of any other family than our own right-wing left-wing religious-secular greedy devious murderous lonely Countryman. We celebrated American independence. Who of us in this Gathering has not experienced the irresistible tug of the undertow of tradition. We was sure we had abandoned long ago. We are all of us caught between the values. We have decided to live by and the priorities of our ancestors in that buys and not tension. We are made ridiculous and we are made wonderful. If you ask me what we do with that tension constitutes the single most important body of decisions. We have to make in raising our children. I was raised an economic conservative in a privileged community of people who had not-so-long-ago languished in the poverty of their immigrant parents lives. The women did not work in my hometown they shopped. They decorated they were decorative. My stepfather let an eighth grade education who had worked for a living since he was twelve who came from a family of 11 brothers and sisters wanted nothing so much from his Newfound Prosperity than to hang it upon the body of my mother. Her black Sealcoat her pearls these were the symbols of his success and she displayed them with a delight and a verb that are pulled both more established Americans in the nouveau-riche. They said I was a little girl and her own children who were missions established Americans mom. We said for God's sake don't wear those diamonds to the beauty parlor. This decorative woman mom living symbol of the American dream. What did her daughter to marry a successful men? In order for this daughter to marry said some successful man. The daughter was sent to a really good college very close to the Harvard Medical School. the Harvard Law School and the Harvard Business School Where she did what she studied John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx and William Butler Yeats. and the history of the American Revolution What was the result said daughter married the guy she wanted to marry and she rejected everything her mother stood for political conservatism shopping decorating and being decorative. And said mother being a wise woman under all those pearls figured. She had done a terrific job of raising her daughter. I sit now in a family with two sons and one daughter. I tell you it has taken all of my strength my husband strength our witch and our determination to keep the happiness of the boys from dominating the happiness of the girl. To make sure that her work in her arms and bushings are equal to theirs to make sure that when they want to eat she does not automatically serve to make sure that when they want to go out. She does not automatically stay home. The traditions of our ancestors right down to the generation of my mother are against us in most branches of my family. Everyone is very clear on what boys should do and what girls should do the boys take out the garbage the girls wash the dishes the boys do the carpentry the girls sweep up the sawdust the boys eat the girls serve the girls eat the boys pee. If you break with this Litany of my new show, you know what they call you a radical. A radical in my marching with Ortega funding the Irish Revolution lying down in front of tractors at nuclear facilities. No. I am telling my boys to wash their own socks and in my family that makes me a radical. I am not a radical I protest I am just a concerned mother, but nobody believes me. I'll tell you a story my son. My eldest son was working a few years ago in a trackless desert planting date palms. You may wonder why people in our family so rarely visit temperate climate. I have no answer for that, in the course of this experience. He met a nice young lady and he began keeping company with her as it were. So I go to visit them and I'm walking on a path through this trackless desert and I see this nice young lady coming towards me and she's carrying a laundry basket. Hi, this is Mark and she says but I am riveted on the laundry. Why because I recognize the laundry. 21 years. I have struggled to make sure that this boy of mine would be detergent Lee independent that in one summer. This girl is blowing the whole shebang. So what do I do? I say put it down put it down. Put it down this minute. Well, this poor girl was terrified. How could she have known that in her ever to make my son a door her? She had offended the most deeply held traditions of my family. You can bet my son was in a bad to tell her. She cried. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. She dropped the laundry in the middle of the trackless desert where it is probably taking route by now and turned it to a date. Is this foolishness on my part perhaps? Is it more foolish than expecting dad to support everybody all by himself and Mom to stay home and say how was your day dear? I daresay it is not. Is there a reason for it? Yes, there is. I have a brilliant friend in California a management analyst much hired by great corporations now a divorced man. One day describe to me the agony of his conflict with his wife whom he adored the mother of his children. He said when my grandfather's sat down at the table his wife Stood Beside him and watched him eat. When he was done, she took his plate away and sit down the next course and when he was done she took his plate away and set down the next course and when she was done he took his plate away and he's and she brought him his coffee and when he was done and he got up from the table and went to read the evening newspaper. My grandmother sat down and ate dinner. Why can't I have what my grandfather had said This brilliant? How much to ask? How long is a little love? Now if I go crazy in the desert and holler at this hapless girl for doing my son's wash it is because I do not want him to grow up and become that man equating love with service love with self-abnegation. I do not want him to live the male half of the fantasy that is at the heart of the sexist tradition. We heard yesterday from a woman who seem to regret with all her heart losing her marriage under what she said with the pressures of feminism. Well, I got to tell you there are at least two people on this stage who forged long and stable marriages under those same pressures. Let's hear it for the guys who wash the dishes watch the kids who gave up some of the power and kept their lives and their loves and then marriage is intact. Does success stories need to be heard from two not every family that abandoned sex is tradition fell apart. A lot of them just made a little more room for the girls and grew their by bigger and wiser and stronger. Writer Suzanne to work in an excerpt from her 1989 Chautauqua lecture called tradition and family.