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

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

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.

How then can we account for the persistence of the myth that inside the empty nest lives a shattered and depressed shell of a woman--a woman in constant pain because her children no longer live under her roof? Is it possible that a notion so pervasive is, in fact, just a myth?

We are a society that values a man for what he does in the world, a woman for how she looks.

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.

Sometimes we choose a friend who mirrors our fantasies, dreams of a self we wish we could be.