Whatever else we may say about sex, it is at least as much a social and psychological phenomenon as it is a biological one.

Whatever else we may say about sex, it is at least as much a social and psychological phenomenon as it is a biological one.

The authoritarian child-rearing style so often found in working-class families stems in part from the fact that parents see aroundthem so many young people whose lives are touched by the pain and delinquency that so often accompanies a life of poverty. Therefore, these parents live in fear for their children's future--fear that they'll lose control, that the children will wind up on the streets or, worse yet, in jail.

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.

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

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.

That myth--that image of the madonna-mother--has disabled us from knowing that, just as men are more than fathers, women are morethan mothers. It has kept us from hearing their voices when they try to tell us their aspirations . . . kept us from believing that they share with men the desire for achievement, mastery, competence--the desire to do something for themselves.