Framingham Community Forum; Margaret Mead: Marriage In An Age Of Social Change

It's my pleasure to introduce a very eminent Forum speaker Dr. Margaret Mead is presently curator emeritus Knology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York as well as professor of anthropology at Columbia and Fordham University. She has authored numerous books and monographs. Some of which are cited in the bibliography you receive the same thing her professional specialty is the study of contemporary cultures. In the light of perspective gained by the study of small homogeneous stable societies and for the development of cultural theories of human behavior that to me has a daughter and one grandchild. I welcome you to the forum and project after my meet. And. Madam Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen every time that there is upheaval in the world people try to do something to the

family. If the family has got very tight they loosen it up and if its being very loose they tighten it up because theres a general feeling when ever ever there is any kind of tremendous sense of change and movement up to something to the family and in a sense its a very safe thing to do because the family is the toughest institution we have is the oldest and the toughest and it can stand a lot of buffeting. And so people getting very upset and trying to do things to it doesn't do too much harm. It's much safer than monkeying with a lot of other things. In 1948 we had the First World Conference on mental health in London and it was very striking that all the people from the United States from North America and Canada from the United Kingdom and from Scandinavia were terribly worried about the family because it was too weak and all the people from the Mediterranean countries from Greece and Italy and Spain and Portugal

were terribly worried about the family because it was too strong and you could see people steadily moving in and out through time as we found which appears to us to be too weak or too strong. In the 1940s Mr. Lawrence K. Frank who is one of the people that did most in this field was talking about the fact that the family was subsidizing every other institution in our society has taken care of the sick it was looking out for the unemployed and was nursing the insane saying no bringing up the handicapped children. It was doing all the things that we ought to do but it wasn't more than 15 years later that we can say every institution in the United States was being bullied by the family. This was the period when you couldn't get young men to take new jobs. You couldn't get young men to take promotion. It was going to interfere with family picnics. And when big institutions like the Ford Motor Company when they got ready to promote

people would tell them to go home and talk it over with the family and see the family were willing to let them which we never heard of before in human history. You call a family council of the six year olds and ask them whether they let fall the take another job. And that worst of about half of the candidates right away from it so they wouldn't come. The other half were then desperately voyage you know Saturday morning they just wait until they thought the picnic basket was packed and they telephone some of them back to work and they bullied them and harried them and interfered with their family lives and that nothing other than the ones that still stuck to it got promoted. This was the early 1950s. This was a period when we instead of having tired business man in the home we had the tired father in the office. Who also couldn't remember back to the dear dead days beyond recall in the late 1940s may also remember this was

the period when we thought we had the best families we've had in the whole of American history. We had the most devoted young fathers. This was a GI who came back and who had been dreaming about having babies while they looked at the kids on Okinawa and gave them oranges and they came back on the college campuses and lived in trailers and the baby sat on father's term paper and you had to pay attention to. And we got fathers who were loved having babies. In those days it was my father's advice. My students just to identify themselves it was the boys and told how many children they had not the girls on Wall Street young fathers who were carrying around pictures of their children. And it was said that the kind of camaraderie there used to be on Wall Street when people cursed Roosevelt was now being replaced by showing children pictures of their babies. You know it looked like a very good period. And there were four young parents were interested in their children and

more interested than I'd ever been. And they were all moving to the suburbs and setting up housekeeping interested in their children. Now one of the things that is confusing people today is why the children of those marriages. Are some of our most obstreperous critics of President this is because it is on the whole the children of the marriage as there were people who were very interested in children who thought they were bringing them up the best possible way. Many of them are having the most trouble but now I think because of the nature of those marriages I think the point because the trouble that we're having today regarding people isn't about parents and children isn't about teachers and pupils It isn't about professors and students it's just about everybody born before World War 2 and everybody born after wherever they are anywhere in the world. It is not to be traced back.

To the say or particular film and as many people feel that we've got a tremendous number of worry guilty self approaching parents that America always has guilty approaching because we've built up the notion that every child could be turned into a first rate citizen that only people did the right thing. We really have no suspicion that there may be some children that just aren't first rate citizens and if we contrast our notion of the family with the British who believe that every child is born with a large amount of the devil in them and that if the parents do the right thing they may get the devil out of most of them and the rest they send to a stranger or some. Guy. It's a very striking difference because we have cells in this country that the parents can make the child and do whatever they want which means that if a child does well the parents get all the credit and

take it. And if the child does badly First the parents feel miserable and guilty and to blame the other version we have today is in the Soviet Union where everything that a child does is right the party takes credit for everything it does wrong. They blame the war. Which is a really very tough place to play. Your child doesn't do well in school. Father's trade union calls him up and asks him why. You are your brothers and sisters in the youth group are called in. Why isn't Jimmy doing well. And it all points back again. So the family has to take up the slack. All you hear people today who were writing the incredible amount of nonsense is the family since his marriage. And also it's because at the present moment people are prepared to have anything to say at the drop of a hat. And so.

And of course there are quite a large number of people that think that our civilization finished the plants finished the solar system is finished galaxies and so goes along with it. I think it's very useful to realize that the family is the oldest toughest institution we have. The. Functions that serve we'll still have to be served and the chances of the family going out I think are absolutely minimal system that's the whole plan that goes with it. At the same time you know this country has been married. With the most married country in the world today. And we thought everybody should be married all the time from 16 to 19. We always denied it. One old lady of 88 marries a man of 90 and. Marries him with exactly the same economic legal and religious arrangement is that they even have

twins on. That. And in the 1960s. We certainly over did man which mothers push their daughters into marriage first it's mothers for every dollar that the mother pushes in to marry some boy has to marry. So even though the mothers of boys weren't so anxious for them to get the same number of boys got married. And we were beginning to see in the 1950s the result of that now was being the second generation of the nuclear family the nuclear family was not named after the bomb but it probably should have been. But it was named after having a nucleus the same way the bomb was and is of course the family that consists of father and mother and minor children and has no tolerance of any adult. The same time that the nuclear family became the prevailing style of this country.

We invented the only new kinship terms that's been invented for a couple hundred years and let's face it. And. We invented the word babysitter to be used for in-laws. And we saw the whole problem because. Everybody knows what a base is you only have them there when you're going out. So as your mother or your mother in law comes in the door you say good enough to take off your hat and show me the ice box the baby's bottles are going to have to come by and doors and in-laws and doors and all I ever had to talk to each other again was a big brain machine. And we set up the standard mean with nobody there except the parents should know how to hold the baby while the Salsman upset the doorbell or telephone or both ring at once no one to help.

When a mother of six can't say just flat. No one to turn to no one to for the children to spend time with. Many instances at all and we hear more and more and more young. Tremendous distances from their own kin distances from everyone. After World War Two 30 million people moved to this country and we had a situation that has never really happened in history except in moments of terrible war refugees or something else over this wasn't war refugees. We're just getting another job somewhere in which we have these very isolated with no one I remember when my sister who lived in California moved to Washington during the war and after she'd been there about six months she said I need a grandmother I need a grandmother who knows how to live in Washington D.C..

She put the mattresses down cellar and of course they were all extras they were all mildewed. She knew what to do with the ants. She just didn't know how to live in Washington D.C. She didn't know or housekeeping in California and it isn't only what you do with a mattress is that what you do with the hands of what you do in any emergency. There is no one to turn to. And we now have very good studies that show that the chances of a young mother having a postpartum psychosis after the birth of her first child are definitely a function of how far she lives from either female relatives or from female friends. Isn't that true. She's nobody could tell her it won't be like this all the baby's bath will take up the whole day leave here. So it's too easy. You know. In another way you'll feel like a human being but there's nobody to tell her. So she buries all the knives in the garden and runs down to the police station and says she's afraid to wear her baby.

It's not very funny. You know I know that was a nervous laugh but still it's not very funny. The number of young mothers that were leaving alone so that I think that this country is beginning to realize looking at the life that people are moving beginning to realize that the nuclear family is isolated and as lonely as it is is not a safe place to bring our children. And we're also of course placing a tremendous amount of say your first marriage. And I think this is a very important thing to recognize the number of people who can't manage marriage without trying it once and not doing it successfully next time they don't do so badly. But to me it's very wasteful and it's terribly wasteful to say you have a child in the 50s they always had a child if not if they weren't pregnant before they got married they had a child. Close to my

second marriage is possible. And so we have this tremendous number of broken homes with young mothers trying to look after their children with no one to help them. And now that the daycare center. The real issue daycare center is is not women's lives. But what they'd like is the number of working mothers have no place to put their children while they work and they have to work and no allowances. And this is the really serious issue. So I think that after 25 years of looking at the nuclear family looking at people marrying. The first time primarily to get away from home not because they want to be parents they were old enough to be parents they were and they can be self-sufficient enough to be parents they weren't experienced enough to be parents but they wanted to get away from home.

They wanted to be independent and the only way that the average girl in this country can get away from home was to get married. Still you know the family can afford to send her to Vassar and then send her for the experiment in international living every summer. She doesn't spend more than two weeks at home during her four years of college and people survive. And so the marriage rate among girls who lived in residential colleges was low for quite a few got through college now was needed is money sure of a lot of kids. But the girls that live at home and go to a nearby college or work. Her only way out of prison is to get married. And the result is that we had tremendous numbers of marriages of convenience. It was a marriage of convenience is when you get married for some other reason Love your parents wealth or royalty and they need a name or something of that sort.

He calls our bees and we had a massive marriage of convenience and of course we don't believe in marriages and we still believe that there should be real choice. It didn't work very well and a great many of them broke up. One of the interesting things in the 1950s is that love has disappeared. You can go for months and never see a pair of lovers because they all got married. Flowers. Come by. Now. This is the bachelor and I think it depends which we're having the kind of discussions that we're having. You know people are rebelling against the isolation and the fragility of this kind of marriage. And of course they're going to opposite extremes in talking about marriage and really

worried about marriage and just forget it. There's no society where women have anything to say that anything. But now we have a chance. In Germany after World War One there were several million women more than men. And everybody said maybe they'll try polygamy but they didn't as far as we can tell most women would rather have no man than a possible hold off for a whole month. So. We get serial monogamy but we don't get blamed. And the experiments. And the experiments and the mass media pick up and make so much of our interesting commentaries on these things. But nothing so far. No there never was married in the whole history of the human race.

There are various sorts of arrangements have happened to history polygamy very small. Most men like it. But they don't you know because if if you're having three wise men you have to build three houses and three canoes we three garments for the very strongest men can get away with. And a lot of people prefer peace and quiet. But there's been a great deal of polygamy in history as a way of taking care of spare women when you don't know what to do with a people that isn't married. Obviously you have to marry someone there's been a little polyandry that doesn't work very well that several husbands and one way. That. It has happened a few times in history. They're pretty peculiar and rare and we don't think it's a very viable form but marriage.

We've never had as nearly as we look back and try to reconstruct the early history of men we have to realize it's a reconstruction we don't have and yet what we think of as couples for which a man takes care of a woman raiser. Is hard. For her and she feeds him and he takes care of her child. He does not. There was a long period where you didn't know they were his child but it took took all the children with the wife. Maybe they didn't have the wife wife and he came home with the same case. Most of the time if you go to swingers look of anxiety because their husbands going by in the morning you see them we have a residual fear. That. Maybe they won't come back to the same path. As. The basis of your.

We know from the moment that you. You've got to kill or you or woman get some food and cook a meal instead of each person going out and feeding sells grapes all that without a meal. You had the beginning of the whole meal is still the meal and the end is on. And. In the West it is the principal reason some with that within the intervention we may get married. I mean is that why they're no longer say man and wife. So they say you've got to have a wedding do the. Eskimos had. A right to their. There are different reasons but. It's the division of labor and compatibility and the cooking place to come home to at night. And someone will wonder where are you or. That's been going on as far as we know for hundreds of thousands of years. Grant me the

an institution of human rights and the basics there is still compatibility of people who have a place to come home to and when they get there someday to see them and wonder where they were going you mean was cases it always went back home. Because of course it is a size where they beat women. Women need to be they behave in a way that provokes you. So then of course the discomfort is necessary and you have trouble becoming modernized for a while. Things go very well still ahead if they need to be the men and women who have to work the system relationship. You guys are on stage we can believe in way over in

my own state of Pennsylvania and you know very recently you were about to meet a wife but this is a. And if we look at the family through human history it's had two grandchildren and to settle the relationship for who is going to sleep with you and your methods as possible. So that people will settle down. And no society has ever over time a way of bringing up children that has completely worked. Now we have a few religious rights who have for centuries and who do bring their children up in a pretty common fashion and to be heard.

They are. They don't really want to be anything else. And her eyes don't go up because people in the world. They're stuck in a place where they go now. The same is true of the kibbutz. They can bring their children quite collectively and seem very sad. And then they stay on the bus so to each other that they can't bear work. One of the great things about the real family is that you can believe that. This. Is. Where. One of the some of the American family particularly is to have children who can be cannot be self-sufficient and get married and have them and this is one of the things that families are supposed to do. And we've had quite a lot of experiments in history where they've attempted to get rid of them. So if

you actually try to get rid of the early days and they were going to bring children up and collecting nurseries and divorce was going to be very simple and easy. Now one of the most puritanical countries in the world and if you want to make any progress within the party get a divorce. Because they found they couldn't produce the kind of character they wanted without the assistance of the town. Of course we can't say that we may not in some other way women children but we certainly are not doing this because what the family does is to begin with to teach people to accept relationships as given what you've got is your father is your mother your brothers and sisters and take them as given Well done challenging whatever

their temper is whether they're red haired or black hair. You learn to accept them as they are as people forever within the. Children. Children where boys and girls differs from one side to another. Whatever it is they learn what's masculine behavior and what's fair. And they learn how to be fathers and mothers fathers and mothers fathers of course in this day and changing society. The children are perfectly happy for this because they to the same kind of fathers and mothers their fathers and mothers were an Eskimo woman for instance when she discovers she's going to have a child she makes them all separate fires starts cooking her food on a separate side. She never has the embarrassment of saying to her because he knows what it means and she cooks something separate for perfectly solid good communication.

For those of you who've seen berries. Mary Rose You may remember the line. How was he to know that is a good sign with his wife. So the other issue. Is you know because it is a standard to throw over your husband when you're pregnant. So there's no way to know when one wife did it. And if one looks in any sort of stable old fashion society you find that young people have learned how to be husbands and wives and fathers and mothers while every child in the whole world. And they carried out. The first here. They can't do that because no one is going to be the kind of fooling their mothers were no boy is going to be the kind of man his father was. The boy doesn't want his wife to be like his mother. The girl doesn't want her husband to be like his father

or her all the changes so rapidly. That you can use models. We can use a bit more than we used to in the United States. And. This is evidenced by the fact that today we have customers for cold weather and this is a shop in Philadelphia that has had a. Mother in our house for weddings. The two of them dress to match. Which is just unbelievable in terms of how much is a few years ago. But nevertheless every marriage is contracted here has to be worked out and new with out any clear how and how to behave and with young people who have had in many instances no experience whatsoever raising children. This is the first society in the world where the first baby a woman goes off

and when she has nothing to do with the break her. Arms will come off. She just has to learn. French. And so we've had to develop a style of marriage where there's a great way to spend a great deal more talk and if people can talk they can go and make fires like this one trying to but this doesn't do any good. And if they can't talk they can't really communicate well with each other. And so they have this tremendous emphasis on communication tends to talk about the American family. It's very important to realize is that American culture is primarily a culture in which which was built by young adults back to the first pilgrims of land. They were young adults who grew up

somewhere else and then they came here and then Generation after generation of young adults came. And you can bring young adults up like little children you can't take them and get them to sit somewhere near the nursery grounds so that they have gone through the whole experience of growing up in America. So you write and we write a book about everything whether we want people to write books about sex and marriage and love other cultures right now about sex and cookbooks about curious things but we're the only country that writes out the most simple thing for people because they just don't know and nobody knows how to tell because you don't treat adults. So our image of marriage is something that people don't

know about. They do. Now we've had a good deal of talk in this country about crime. But marriage is something you can try because the thing about marriage is your marriage isn't a triage it's not because the thing you have to figure out is bear each other 24 hours a day. And can you bear the fact that oh we are always on his rallies and all your friends and all his friends you know your married. And your clothes are all there. You decide not to go home we're going to get a clean shirt. Now these are things you can try out. You can go on a camping trip you can go on bicycles to you people can experiment with pieces of marriage. You can try our cooking.

Somewhere. Still. But you can try out the fact that those two people are there together. And so in a sense triage is not a very feasible thing. Now we have frozen a great deal at. The same. Radical so called right now and arrangement is a case for me to get right with the approval of his family and your family and the minister of the dean of women. Which isn't marriage. No they weren't getting married. Has as far as I can tell and all the disadvantages of marriage and virtually none of the advantages the girl thing is just what it is at the moment.

What are the demands of the young that somehow they want they want the sense that the marriage will last forever. They feel that this is something that our society developed and how over 2000 on the west now or you could count on women care more about this. Than. Men. And. They still believe that if something is something about marriage the work hours when you call them God. And so they want to keep the irrevocable building at the same time. So the fact that they're not certain what they do now I think that the direction that we're tending towards now and that we'll be struggling with the next 10 years or so is one towards fewer Americans that will not be necessary hopefully for young people to

get married in order to leave home. We will have other things to do. I hope that they do not have any hope. That we will have higher standards of parenthood. We don't have any standards of prayer and prayer. If you're over age having married somebody else and how the money for a license or a marriage license you have a right to have. As many children as you you can be as effective as your father or mother as anybody can possibly be. You know what you don't have any criminal records you don't tell a girl. How gleeful Jean's family present present anybody in this country who is of age and I'm married to somebody else has a right to be. And I think we're going to revise this to revise it legally. But I mean revise it in terms of what we're asking for that instead of wishing

you people in your memory. So we did and to some extent still we will suggest that they do not have children until they are certain that they will make good parents and if they are willing to pay the price of care for which the minimum prices to stay around other children. And this with you obviously reduce the number of persons if they have this kind of a commitment. I think I think this will come I think will have more binding commitments I don't know what form it will take but when people become parents we need it more than if they're not and have different kinds of behavior different kinds of religious ceremonies legal ceremonies for people who aren't going to be parents but would like to be live together in comparable

peace and without reproach. But I'm not good parents yet. They're too young in school. They haven't money or they're too old. They had their children this is a second marriage. They don't want their first children or their pay. And these are the recognizes other kinds of relationship because we've we've got stuck with just one form no matter whether people are going to be parents or not. I think the big breaking word. Have a great deal more adoption of children you need to be adopted. Now what we sort of in the past is the adoptable child the adoptable child of this country has been a child of the. Parent. Actually on both sides. The agent you want the agency to testify to the

impact integrity about care of the child. And. You want it to be legitimate so that the parents will give it up and you have an absolute position. I think this will shift in favor of people. Who are. Parents who need to be very interesting to watch what's happens when you only 50 adoptable babies born sweet and sweet to end up doing great. Children. Children. Children of mixed ancestry who are particularly miserable time will because they don't belong anywhere. They have the sort of slogans that parents need children and parents need children and parents need. So I think adoption will grow. And then also we're going to have.

Good people who don't marry or who don't remember we have to have a place for them to live where they work at home. Where they have some access to children and where when they come home like this of scrambled families with a plate chest or something. So I think we're going to have to develop forms of living where young people for them and widows can also have some access to children and the children in turn will have an extra. Of. Proxy and some of those. Parents as children used to when they grow up in small communities and have grandparents and aunts and uncles to flee to to pound themselves on I think we're going to be experimenting with this kind of thing and some of the residential home students but I think the economically self-sufficient companies are going to stay where they are where such

comments always have. Extreme experiments. Sites as. Well. As. Some residential homes in which groups of young people some children now live somewhere close together and other people help take care of children. I think this is one of the things that's going on. Now we're going to do with our. Ideal of my marriage which was quite easy to manage in the days when the average expectation of life was 30 seven. And it's a great deal harder to manage when that your expectation of life may be 70. I don't quite know at present. The woman who has brought her children and kept a man's house and done everything they couldn't possibly have had all these things done how they were

coughing for four or five times as much and you have to pay for the cheapest labor in the world. This was. If you had to buy or had to hire a housekeeper cook permanent base for her mistress her chauffeur current secretary currently kind of all the other things that was to be the men men don't stay with children don't stay married because they can't afford it. They go find somebody else to do all these things. And the pregnant women in their lives they are now bringing up the children managing half of it and are giving away my recognition if their husbands want to leave them just for them and they don't have Social Security in their Social Security. They'd be making as much of a contribution to the country as other people.

And so in the past society has pretended it hasn't been true since the Industrial Revolution but they pretended that in return for staying home and having children will be cared for. And with widows be fed always have a roof over her head. This has to be true for a long time and we keep on pretending. I forget to cut down a number of children in families and we certainly are. And a girl has two children when she's 21 23. We're just deciding is not going to support her or her two children. It is very reasonable to support women at 15 and 16. It was very reasonable to support women who died when I had a third child and a fourth in the city because we expected all women to spend their whole lives as many

children as possible because so many die it isn't true. So we're probably be looking towards some other. Way in which women can also have a sense there are people in the sense that we give them now. And now we're still on the whole good job. You could be a wife and mother and live in the suburbs or give up in a way and live in the city and you can be a secretary live in the city and have children or you have the children who live in December and any sort of solution except this is very hard to manage. So one of the things that will probably happen is one of the things that the women's lives is. Too. Extreme for the crankin precursor is that if women are going to be asked to take a place in public life then we have to give them a reason to do it. But none of this

means the sound. Is going to disappear. Sure it will be rewritten but we won't have as many children and we won't have. As many families with children. Proportion of the population is when the children we say hopefully the children will be much safer because it is more of a demand that people should be good parents before they have children. This will be safer for the children. There will be more adults to be free to backstop emergencies because they don't have children of their own. So what we used to have when we had all those made now. You have to work to Britain was run by Made. They never would have gotten to work. To me we used to have loads of men who did all those things and stayed together married sisters in the afternoon. We need some

back. They would be quite the same. But we will have more people without children who are free to help with children and less of a burden on family because they can. But. The family disappears and children and families. To disappear and hopefully they will be very very careful because there's one characteristic that is very important to look at today. The more we know about what we can do for sure medically psychologically to get anywhere the more time it takes to do it while every 30 children don't have. Does not have a vision you don't have to tell them to be taught.

It takes hours and hours and hours of a highly skilled person to do your work with your kids all out of here. That can be corrected but again it takes hours to do. We're saying today we want every day is born but the children say fragile where and when the baby is born. And so we need more and more skill time for every child. And one of the things we're suffering from depression is not doctor do the things that children nurses doctors hospital beds and not enough good teachers to do and that was reducing the number of children in the portions of the population that have more time to care. We still

have a sort of an image for living on a farm where a father and mother could bring out ten children come to live because the first five grow up. And it was a fairly stable form of life. Father mother didn't present pretty good mouth what the future was going to be. And so we're going to have a lot need a lot more accessible adults for each child to be sure that each child finds most of the them has enough health. Care so that we can bring them up even though they are more fragile than children to be. So I don't think that any number of mass media exposure that is. The tax status of the family is going to disappear. Need work. But what we do need to worry about is the tremendous toll at

present that has been taken especially on children with broken homes and the number of broken homes that we have in this country. And we need to go from there. It is not so exciting is better supported so that more parents can look after their children and more young people who don't have children and they can't get. Anybody got a question to bring up right away. The number of fall of most homes has become overwhelming. Do you foresee a continuation of this trend. The mother is the head of the fire with no male persons. And how will this affect the male role and identification in future. I think most of these males have these homes should never have children and a very large number of them were kids who got married because some girl wanted to get married and the girl wanted to get married in the home

or just to an affluent class in the inner city because there's no for the men and men without work in this country you can't don't make very good fathers. And so they get pushed out. So that what we need to correct is premature immature marriages and we need to correct the conditions with them and with no work where their families do better on welfare. We have families today for instance no state out with seven where a man can't support them. So if he married his wife they're very much worse off than if he doesn't. Well that kind of organization of welfare doesn't exactly solidify the home and we need to change that so the thing to do is set up a situation so fathers can be self-supporting and support and. So forth.

They're both. Now we keep talking about the male role may never be my role. Very good a role if he could bring home the bacon if you just decided we expect to be able to bring home the bacon you can't get a job. The mother takes over for his mother and these are her son. She lives too hard on her son when he gets married. He leaves and this goes on generation after generation. Say this is Elaine Warner. What about a woman what 40 to 50 years unable to start a new family whereas a man has no problem in this area. This is one of the uncomfortable facts of life. And as far as we can see we're not going to change it. It's one of the things that of course people are going to feel is an injustice.

But you know there's a there's a parallel in justice that's very hard on men. Men have no outpost that I don't. Know now they substitute a new wife and she helps alone. But. Most men in this country by the time they're 50 have gotten as far as they're going to go. You know they may be working for another 15 years but if they've only made that second vice president that's where they're stuck but they're only going to be principal of that high school. They lost their chance to be serving in the schools in New York City. And although most men who aren't you know president of the United States are governors there's a handful of

men that have a very interesting life for quite a long time just as before. But the majority of men have gone as far as they're going to go with it. And they'd like to have a quiet life and do more fishing show that are grown up and their daughter hasn't brought home three children yet for them to support all their. And just that moment five children or their wives start feeding. So it would be. Good to have around the house. And I think. This is the compensatory factor. Now you see one of the great. Inventions of human biology was roused and which may make it possible to save women's lives in a very primitive time history

that you couldn't save the men at all they were they went out and they were caught by lions and they were drowned going over the reef and they were killed in warfare. And there was no way of saving them but by stopping childbearing women could live longer and couldn't be there to tell people where to find food. Twenty years ago when we took them. And probably this is one of the very important things that make the civilization possible but it has worked out to me because women can have children up to something but they get the best years of their life after that melanoma can have more over 70. But at the same time they don't have the same texture climactic effect. So maybe it's fair if you really stop out and look at all the neighbors. Why do you say the second world war is a dividing line between generations

John. Because the things that happened at the time of the Second World War is not the war but the more beginning of space the electronic revolution. Television the computer all these things can. At the time to all at once. And. As the world became one we explored it always flew over it all we knew where everybody was for the first time. Now the experience of the world the current world could actually beginning to go into space where people never really believed they could doing television and actually see what was happening everywhere else. Instead this was an extraordinary number of things to happen. And by one. All around the world when we introduced the gap between generations

such as we've never had before and we have no reason to believe that we will ever have again. I figure that to produce the same kind of work experience would have to have something of the order of putting it on the moon and then blowing up the earth. Now that would be a real gap between the people of Sydney or the people that grew up after there was a new world record everything has been worse than the depression. And you have to realise that this generation gap is not. A gap between parents and children. It was five years ago when the name of the oldest were 20 and they were all in school. Now the oldest of 25 there are school teachers doctors young lawyers now to be 35 and they'll

still be the same again next year. It could happen now since it happened. Bob Davis how do we know if one of you a good parent for four. Well you know there are things you can practice you can borrow the neighbours children and keep them for 24 hours to start. You can go and visit people who have three children under four. I would. Like to see you I'd I can see is a requirement from graduating from high school you like learning to swim. I hate to require every student spend a weekend weekend in a household with three children before we now have some with pre-winter Council. I

know will be a very good idea. Your parents knew each other long enough to have siding with the other person to say what to do. I saw a couple and it wasn't the first marriage the second marriage for both of them to be married for six months and recently started to say something about religion. The wife said I don't believe in hell do you. Dr. Susan now I'm not putting up financing like that you probably used to the mispronunciation. If there are large changes to common learning styles of presence or stigmas attached to these how do you feel the stigma has to be removed so that broader kinds of lifestyles will be acceptable.

Well. To do that particularly refers to religion. We put up with changes of religion for a very long time. And. One of the reasons think that we have a lot of things that went on in the 50s was there were so many changes in religion. I tried to get large numbers of the clergy in this country to refuse to marry girls who were seven months pregnant and a white male you know because their mothers would have kept them from getting pregnant. Their mothers couldn't have a white wedding. And if we said of course they should marry. The church will say you made a mistake if you're willing to collectively become married and become parents will marry. But why should they have married them all in white things and allow them to register their silver and have. Those things that went

on in the 60s and we could cut down all of this premarital pregnancy is premature. If the clergy be willing to cooperate they say wouldn't be. And I think we've had an enormous change in attitudes of the church today. I guess one reason why people are so nervous it's very nerve wracking. What's going on with the church. You can't tell when you're going to meet the sister talk to the school minister. It's disconcerting but I'm not at all afraid that we won't make the adjustments. I don't think that's the real danger. There is just. A little tiny bit of danger that we might have an awful lot to cure and go back and punish everybody and experiment in 20 years before this could happen. But I don't think it will actually. But we have had cases where the party's

been in power too long and they wanted to get rid of the other party to be there too to be too long too when they called Women and said when you were married 11 years ago your first baby was four and seven months after marriage. In fact the case is. Now. Whether we would ever do this again and I don't know but it's the reason I advise people to get married instead of having arrangements because we can't be sure. Has there ever been a society where a stigma against unmarried women women has not access to say stigma will dissolve in this country. Did you read think the beginning of the book. No. I been curious why there was no statement on the Middle

Ages. A women were not. They were students. They were treated with reverence they were given the economics of the system. They skipped Parenthood and took care of God's children the sick or the off and they were also given my not afraid of women who have the greatest freedom in the Middle Ages were people etc. who were charging up and down the country making bishops nervous and no man could possibly do. But they got their freedom and their respect and their lack of stigma by now and so this was the price and there were many societies who if one would have children. And one of the things would be fighting. Our

country is divided over when to have children and do these things and have a style of life that doesn't demand that the only way you can get married is to spend your life in our presence. Very time consuming style stay at home for three weeks waiting for the phone. I. Elizabeth right you find her you know I wish you stand up when I call your name so the rest of the audience knows whether you're 16 or 16. Would you please explain according to your prefigured even more that's a reference to my post for two adults may learn in their attempts to communicate with me. I'm using the word prefigured to mean that we live in a society now where the

children have had experiences of the adults not the nuns the adults and therefore the adults are going to have to learn from the children what the children like in order able to teach them. You know the simplest thing is if you're a schoolteacher and are teaching children on the theory they know what you mean when you were teaching you what they call children probably learn all that seven years ago. And the most important thing I think is for the older people in the world where to learn to listen when we're getting something very interesting that the parents who will not listen to their children because the minute they get out housing get a job they listen. Now this is not really surprising because we respect people standing on the roads it

can be independent and college students in this country are treated like second class citizens. They're either being supported by their parents or by the taxpayer scholarships. And we don't think they have any rights to pay. We don't think we should be able to draft them and send them out to fight. We think it's all right to let them be parts of planes that if they drop a bomb we may destroy the world but they haven't any right to peace. So always every school the they get out of school and get a job. The parents do this. So now we're getting one of the parents Mr. Prince you know it was a turning. I. Know I think we've got to learn the lesson younger. We've got to learn to really listen to a 10 year old and not say I was a 10 year old once I know what it's like to be a 10 year old.

We don't we never we're 10 year olds with a man on the moon. We never were 10 year olds were telling us we never were 10 year olds in this kind of world. And. If you watch American parents. The children show talk to them all the time and the children talk all the time and I think most of the time the person that they really don't listen well can't blame this much talk but. That's what we have to learn to do. And you realize that when they say something. When you get a 14 year old boy who says you know I used to be interested in space when I was young. It's pretty hard for a 40 year old teacher and dad to get your man on the moon. And I never asked him to find out why. So this is just an area. DONVAN And it

is as you said there may eventually be special arrangements for people who don't wish to have children. Does this mean that children are seen as the only purpose of marriage. No know I think it's wonderful that you reinvented the idea of marriage so virtually disappear. Lots of people in the 20s and what if a man had a special kind of career he was going to be a musician or an artist or the governor of the state or something. And his wife was an important person and she wanted to give her full time to taking care of him. They didn't have children and nobody persecuted them. Nobody wondered if it was his fault her. Nobody told the try official insemination baby. My mother used to love my mother had five children and she

used to say our elections show those people who went to every summer Hounshell and perfectly respectable. In the 1920s not to have children and for young people to say we don't want any child we want to do other things we want to be visionaries or we want to be working hard politics we want able to travel. I want them to be able to do a lot because remember most married men's lives are just as real as married women. That's the thing that women's lives forget. For every woman is part of the suburbs as a man that's bought for the job. We've forgotten she said so in the 40s. If you didn't have children you adopted and it was a period of people somebody or produce we went what we need is farming impeccably bred sure.

To reduce the number of young couples in this country thought they had right to get from somewhere and take the trouble to find out whether that was a fair amount of whether they were capable of having children. So I mean lots of marriages with people who decide that they are not they would do a better job of not having children you have to kill your genes. Or one or the other have a noticeable Carmel my friend how would you like her and what they were then what Schober to see. We see lots of people really we often show that we are. Good. Some married couples can have the children who can never get married people.

This is not really yes. Children are harder to talk about dead marriage than people begin to be just talking to each other. Well there are mountains where the children are there so that the children outside. We all know that. And certainly it isn't good for children to grow up in an atmosphere where they distrust everything because of the way they see each other. And the British position is divorced now is that what you have to do is to declare a marriage death. And the relationship is a living thing just as living as a. The child can die and is dead.

I see all of them have a few people call out the back door the first time you hear the Christmas card. A different. I think the people you ought to be able to with dignity recognize and then they try. But this relationship is with we week without pay and without having to fight with the right people through legal proceedings or to say hey this stuff is so good. And we are now. I didn't read the last sentence here. The emotional versus legal divorce I suppose I'm talking about what we need in

every case is protection for the child. I hope we're going to reach a stage where we recognize that two people have a child when we're married. Joe Jackson the older brother as we say if your brother said very clearly no one can divorce his sister in court every name in the world refused to see her. But you can say she's not. There's no way of this on your sister. There she is. I don't think there should be anywhere just because you were joined in that trial. Why. That's a partial truth and also doesn't work you are me. OK. And we began to realize this. We have found that people will make an effort to continue to be caught

even if they were good spouses. Raymond McIntyre do you have any opinion on the possible effects of the TV family series such as death wish the father was to take it as a foolish and common people the image of the Father that we can in our culture such. Well if I have to be a for many generations you know we've always had to come in as a character. In fact so far he wouldn't be so fun. Sergeants has been in fashion but he's always been a joke. And you go way back to the comic strips of 19:00 you find this kind of form depicted

in standard American culture. No one wants a strong fall it the old sense you know somebody who's worth more than everyone Trego when it came in the door. So it had to be for him where he's speaking from this kind of stuff is not the American idea that all these forces are creatures of the kind of strong follow them just because for Americans when the whole kind partnership where each person respects the earth where they can change roles within a certain sense and fair play and. American women don't want that kind of husband. The men don't want the kind of work that goes with that. And some of them don't stand because

you know the kind of time put your hand out under what you want. I had a girl who grew up in Turkey living with this one sister and I couldn't figure out a way to do murder because I never got my key out of the door to make any difference when I came home. She was there. The door never reached for anything she put down. I don't see why you don't marry but Birchmere men don't take come home. Married American women who don't do this or thing do anything because the door open the door. I haven't seen that for years. So we don't we don't want that kind of father. We don't want that kind of what we want that kind of man. Now we know a lot of people come from other countries and bring some of the old

styles with but the general style of American just is not work and have an equal and fair count on young men. What time is a teen teenage young person today be thinking. And why and what alternatives. Well you know there's quite a spectrum of over years ahead. One of the curious things that has happened and the length of life has gotten longer in reality people began to feel that this last time instead of this work there's a tremendous time. When I was an undergraduate we used to laugh at those dead days when you were 24.

How soon could you. Because we could have a child of. So why. Why would you want to do it. Why not try things out. Why get yourself out of the tires. Well. I think the most important one of the troubles in this country at present is that we try so hard to make everybody make up their mind. So in the 1950s a boy of 15 who didn't know what he was did you know the girls down. Maybe his mom have dates with him we have tremendous pressure for everybody to make up their minds about her one of the funny things is that nobody wanted to marry geologist's because they I believe that the Earth size was such a long period that their husbands would be away from home or all over the country.

RG We had a wonderful story. One of the daughters of the president of MIT announced to her mother when she grew up she was going to marry a mediocre mom and her mother asked her why she said So you stayed home. We tried several things. Find out who you really are and trying to find a life that. Dos will do not need to make people settle down so to make an expectation of 77 years a lot of work needs to be done will pay for doing the experiment. Before you try to get some to our kitchen. Did I understand you correctly when you mentioned the fact the whole situation was more somber as the days of yore when there were more than two generations living

in the same room. I referred to grandparents living in the same home. I was always the impression that it was a major cause of divorce. Know they didn't have divorce that. They were divorced so you just went on living with people lived in the same house for 20 years you didn't speak to each other. It's just fairly common knowledge that the three generations down here for generations was very small children are still a in France. Man is really not too much of his father and his father died in the 60s. But his laws as far as a lot more of the old system and the Americans are the ones that have decided you can't happen is partly because we have so many cross marriages cross national cross religious cross class. And of

those two sets of it you can't say one thing which is one reason we try to set them both to. Mr. Barry pressman in marriage partners for additional sex outside the marriage. So can this be arranged in the future. I said. Well it's been very well arranged in the past. I had. To question the person I. Do call in this country that we have

no idea of any sex that doesn't do to mount. So you have a man who's quite happily married you know seven years and glamours all say to him on his wife's birthday with on her children he really you know like to stand there and meet somebody when he starts an affair the person she wants to know. So now I want his marriage to and about what he's got to betray when there's no other course. If you have to betray us face and you tend to choose the younger set as well. This is when you said the number of men who divorce a woman married just like for 20 years or 10 because they get themselves in this way or whatever that is wrong.

When you get over this to do was wrong. Do what you want him to run after all just like wrong thoughts and wonderful manners are to me work with them. Well we're going we're going against our code ever says something for other women's lives. What do you say. Well Tiger is like. Has. This entire crime it's. Not a war crime it's what they call bomb made because of the need for friendship and some. Instead of having one man with the hair

which is one of the pictures by. Some So you have a coalition of three males and for him is a run over. This is a cold bomb. And he said don't do it. We don't know that man. But then he goes on constructs a theory that when men start to go hunting in part have a group of men or captain are going to get on with the track you know so many of those women didn't change minds. And now he's forgotten what it's like to live with six women at home alone just as much as I mean now.

And I think for many instances when the slightest evidence that women don't get along well with the chain and all of this picture the men have these special aggressive capacities which can be turned into friendship. And the women of ground for the cultural evolution. So we have to consider is that right through human history because women born children and children are. The women stay home and they were kept near by men domination but by the way if a woman had to feed a baby carriage she can't carry much else and she can't a lot. Now. And the point about cultural evolution I think it's worth considering is that we'll never get well

once in a great while they got here for a short period of time and they use brooms and rolling pins and other things of this sort. If they are forced to fight. But we've never met and I'm kind to think that this was one. That was for a very simple reason that women don't fight for some men. Most of the time they fight for something they find to show they fight to find out how strong. They fight to be sure they're brave and they're willing to fight you don't fight with Rangers. Women fight to defend something they very very they cover their home and then they find it for keeps.

I can't imagine good women who are defending their homes agreed to Christmas to New Years. True. I. Mrs. Bushin. You stand up I can see you. Please. How does a child brought up in a commune identify with his own mother when he has so many people acting out the role of mother for the day when his mom can be traumatic. Well you know in the average extended family we've had all around the world we've had families where there were 20 and 30 people the children know they are quite bright. And even I worked in societies where other women would breast a child but everybody knows who the mother is the

fact that you have a lot of substitute mothers doesn't make any difference in how mothers and. The children know their mothers are perfectly well their mother's breast feeding mothers come take them for an hour a day and mothers take them over with their ties around and wait for their prayers to be clear. You don't have to lock every door and get a watch dog and live in a house in the suburbs where nobody ever to find. Why is marriage counseling not used more actively by our society to prevent divorce. We're mad at our marriage counseling be effective prior to the divorce hearings. Mr. Gordon Dwyer I don't think mandatory therapy is ever effective.

I think mandatory waiting for a divorce with children has given us this time for counseling. This is the most important thing we need is a kind of he says one needs to. And I think the way that counseling pre-divorce counseling or proposed divorce counseling is to realize that you are out of the church. We are now divorce and break up with family children for them to separate the time any time. Secondly somebody outside to give advice to chill a couple then sit down and say and work again worry about the children in the course of really worrying about the children they may come to get the kind of counseling that is mandatory. It is considered in some has

some laws is pretty perfunctory and I don't think it's going to work very well. Just as I don't demand that is why Sikelel also the clouds can persuade her to leave. This is very good. Dick Hodge's roles in marriage trying to reverse where the marriage is a different generation. I the wife brings home the bread and the husband does the housework. Well I think in some instances he no be getting orders for thousands of years because they had their wives cooking. There are lots of men that are better cops and women. Now why in the world is a better coach say doing the coke once we've decided to I mean there are lots of men that are better little children when they're in the same of being alone.

They makes a good nurse and lots of men are marvelous was more I enjoy it. I think their future will have more to change all the girls. There's some women that are much better if they were actually officer of the cooking family wouldn't have all sort of children to go to sleep. All sorts of things might happen that don't happen. We don't have the slightest proof that there's anything in a woman makes her a good mother. We're the only people that can produce children. I think they're my roommates. But as a woman who was born a child and breastfed it will be more to volunteer. But that doesn't mean she'll be a particularly good person to have around all that. And so I think there will be more changeable roles with less

fuss and people will call M&Ms and things of that sort. But we are not there yet. I heard about a case a couple of years ago where the husband was right. He said let's go ahead and have a baby. And I'll look after the baby and right now I can do that. And you go and teach. So they had the baby. The wife is going to produce the money because he was like most Russians have the money. Yes. He was going to write a great novel and then he got sick and was in the hospital for five months. And her mother didn't help with that baby because she shouldn't be at home behaving like a proper wife. So she had her with the baby. So until we've set things up a little more flexible it's going to be tough both on the husband and on the wife can I married women who purposely have a child after they bring them up.

Sharon Davis lady on the front row we will bring them up. We know widows have brought up the best people in this country. If you ever read the articles it's a piece of shit to me and we wish you nothing to show that we just go with it. How the pharmacist was most worried about children now. Well maybe the worst would be all the same. I think our marriage should be about adoption and we have laws that they can. I think a married man should be treated.

I think people should be allowed to adopt children. Everybody should be allowed to choose what to do with the babies or scare the doctor should we. But the point about bringing it up is not that she's married. But what was the degree of selfishness. That said I want to have a child and I bothered to provide that child with the right kind of father. We can tell you one of the great differences between men and women is women have always known my understanding. And then you had nurses and ready to take a man with help. Men have never had any such reservation. I think probably this better be the last question do you think so. Because it probably has been. Mr. Fleischer how will that

change in status for a higher calling marriages occur. Is this just part of a cycle for you to raise your standards for marriage seems to be a solution or population. How about the need for procreation. Well the individual means for procreation we haven't any proof that says that thousands hundreds of thousands of years that women didn't know anything about procreation. You know they just they thought that women produced the children didn't have a clue that men were here. We don't know for sure that it isn't better for a woman to have to face the cancer occurs we're married. It doesn't matter and it's possible that every woman who can possibly have a child can have a child which means that our standard of marriages will mean that we

have children evenly divided. We may however find out that you don't have children with him that the baby is very far from somebody else doesn't. We have no proof in the world that men have anything and procreate. It's very good for you to know their fathers and be responsible and to build a society all of it is a disposable. But we don't have any proof that there's this psychological issue whatsoever. Men are very very. So I don't think that's what we need to work with men watching as many men do today when they decide to be parents and they decide to make the sacrifices necessary to be parents and they decide to find a woman they can stick with while they're indulgent to procreate.

I