From our earliest beginnings, we have been a nation obsessed with sex, titillated by it at the same time that we fear it, elaborating rules to contain it at the same time that we violate them.

Contrary to all we hear about women and their empty-nest problem, it may be fathers more often than mothers who are pained by thechildren's imminent or actual departure--fathers who want to hold back the clock, to keep the children in the home for just a little longer. Repeatedly women compare their own relief to their husband's distress

The ideal visions of one age eventually are seen as its excesses by the next.

Intimacy. We hunger for it, but we also fear it.

Indeed, it is that ambiguity and ambivalence which often is so puzzling in women

Interesting, isn't it, that even though more than two and a half decades have passed since the sexual revolution brought women a new measure of sexual freedom, there's still no word in the language that doesn't reek with pejorative connotation to describe a woman who has sex freely. Since language frames thought and sets its limits, this is not a trivial matter. For without a word that describes without condemning, it's hard to think about it neutrally as well. When we say the words 'promiscuous woman,' therefore, it's a statement about her character, not just her sexual behavior.

From our earliest beginnings, we have been a nation obsessed with sex, titillated by it at the same time that we fear it, elaborating rules to contain it at the same time that we violate them.