THE ENEMIES OF EROS

An attack on the feminist movement's emphasis on choice in career, love, and marriage matters, which the author claims destroys the sanctity of family life and victimizes women and children. Gallagher, a former articles editor for the ultra-conservative National Review, passionately points out the inequities in divorced families in which the men get richer while the women and children get poorer, but turns the blame for divorced men's defaulting on child-support payments and deserting their children on feminist support for freer divorce laws. Men, says the author, will be men; when the man of the house feels his breadwinner role is being usurped by a working wife who also cleans house and raises the children, he is likely to react by running off with his secretary. Gallagher's solution for what she considers a gender-based need is to put women back in the house, let the men work late at the office without worrying about changing diapers, and put the fault back in no-fault divorce The author claims that women want to stay home with their children, and blames feminists (rather than the current economic realities) for their having to work. She asserts that the feminist-instigated rise in birth control and legalization of abortion have caused men and women to consider both sexual partners and children as ""disposable."" This, in her view, leads directly to child beatings and guilt-free abandonment of women and children. Every couple having sex, Gallagher says, should be prepared to raise a baby together, despite violent differences, for the sake of the children. Strongly reactionary arguments that to many will seem at best wildly unrealistic; others will feel that in blaming feminist demands for men's reluctance to form commitments, Gallagher is following the erroneous path of blaming the victim.