For sex to be wholly satisfying, we must have at least as much concern for a partner as for self - a requirement that doesn't live comfortably alongside the exhortation to 'do your own thing.' In the end, we are left with an extraordinarily heightened set of expectations about the possibilities in human relationships that lives side by side with disillusion that, for many, borders on despair.

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.

In fact, the family as an institution is both oppressive and protective and, depending on the issue, is experienced sometimes one way, sometimes the other - often in some mix of the two - by most people who live in families.

Children crawl before they walk, walk before they run--each generally a precondition for the other. And with each step they take toward more independence, more mastery of the environment, their mothers take a step away--each a small separation, a small distancing.

Women find ways to give sense and meaning to daily life--ways to be useful in the community, to keep mind active and soul growingeven while they change diapers and cook vegetables.

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

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