THE DISAPPEARING SEXES

Dr. Odenwald, a psychiatrist (Your Child's World- 1958) deplores the fact that the Vive la Difference between the sexes is not only dying out but destroying the general structure of family and morality. Certain aspects of the equalization of the sexes are to be observed through the dominance of the female, the disappearance of the male and the prevalence of the homosexual. Women, not so much working as earning more money; the pill and the new sexual freedom (we feel he overvalues the effect of the pill as a liberating influence); etc. are part of this talk-think piece. Sometimes the think aspects seem controvertible: do parents really want children as a status symbol in more cases than realized? does ""more often"" than admitted, a working mothertake a job to ""improve her bargaining position"" at home? is the ""unpopularity of breast feeding"" (what supports this contention?) a sign of the new defeminization? Dr. Odenwald draws much of his material from currently popular literature, Vance Packard, Jeff Stearn, Betty Friedan as well as his own consultation room and most of these charges against the whole laxity of our culture, the stridency of the female, the slackness of the male, have been leveled before. In any case, it's a rebuttal of the mystique.