61) {{U}}In a family where the roles of men and women are not sharply separated and where many household tasks are shared to a greater or lesser extent, notions of male superiority are hard to maintain. {{/U}}The pattern of sharing in tasks and in decisions makes for equality, and this in turn leads to further sharing. 62) {{U}}In such a home, the growing boy and girl learn to accept that equality more easily than their parents did and to prepare mole fully for participation in a world characterized by cooperation rather than by the "battle of the sexes".{{/U}}
If the process goes too far and man's role is not regarded as important as before -- and that has happened in some cases -- we are as badly off as before, only in reverse.
We should reassess the role of the man in the American family. We are getting a little tired of "Momism", but we don't want to change it into a "Neo-popism". What we need is the recognition that bringing up children involves a partnership of equality. 63) {{U}}There are signs that psychologists and specialists on the family are becoming more aware of the part men play and that they have decided that women should not receive all the credit, nor all the blame. We have almost given up saying that a woman's place is at home. {{/U}}64) {{U}}We are beginning, however, to study a man's place in the home and to insist that he does have a place in it. Nor is that place irrelevant to the healthy development of the child. {{/U}}
65) {{U}}The family is a cooperative enterprise for which it is difficult to lay down roles, because each family member needs to work out its own ways for solving its own problems. {{/U}}
Excessive authoritarianism has unhappy consequences, whether it wears skirts or trousers, and the ideal of equal rights and equal responsibilities is relevant not only to a healthy democracy, but also to a healthy family.