The honeymoon's over

...MAUREEN O'SULLIVAN...

...In the seminar, it was daunting to see the lack of concern our women students showed about just how they were going to "have it all...

...We need to find ways in which our students can realize that ideal as well as the personal fulfillment that most Americans expect...

...I, in that prefeminist age, with my con-sciousness unraised, said, quite sincerely "Oh, thank you Fa-ther...

...Finally, through personal appeal, two men agreed to enroll in the class...

...Evidently, questions of family function and structure are "women's" issues...

...The seminar was part of an ongoing forum on contemporary values, funded by San Francisco phi-lanthropist, Louise Davies...

...The dean of the college, however, thought otherwise...

...The male students, on the other hand, complained that "all" the topics were oriented toward women, although two of the five guest speakers were, men and half the topics con-cerned patriarchy, male roles, or family issues...

...Reading Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique was, for them, not unlike reading Malleus malefwarum-interesting, in, an antediluvian sort of way...

...The Catholic tradition ideal-izes family life...

...Neither world, however, has addressed well the problem of combining personal growth and fulfillment (usually viewed as occurring in a career of some sort) with family needs, especially those of children...

...Still, we got no response...

...At the University of San Francisco, Elisabeth Gleason, an historian, and I have just completed a seminar on "Women, Men, and the Family...

...They just assumed they were...

...The male editor of the school newspaper refused to run a story on Betty Friedan's public lecture, because, he said, "Nobody knows who she is...

...He had decided to let me stay, he said, because I would be like the rabbit at a greyhound race, who encourages the dogs to their best effort...

...I agree with David O'Brien that the concern here must be the involvement of young men in these issues...

...Today, I am an associate dean in a thoroughly co-educational Jesuit university...

...Through her generosity we were able to invite well-known thinkers, such as Betty Friedan and John Demos, to discuss the topic with our students...

...To attract male students, we wrote individual letters to more than 150 male honors students, signed by a male dean, emphasizing the male issues which would be addressed by the male speakers...

...I had been allowed into the all-male under-graduate psychology classes by a new department chair, who had women in his graduate classes and saw nothing amiss in registering a School of Education female into undergraduate classes...

...My generation had the honeymoon of sex-role liberation-the newness, the excitement, the hope...

...He poked his head, perturbedly, into several classes and after a few weeks invited me to his office...

...Reminding our students that doing for others is often doing for oneself may help...

...Time has seen massive changes in the small world of Catholic education, as well as in larger world...

...Today's young people have the reality- women (and men) with two full-time jobs (in the home and at work) instead of one, both father and mother working outside the home because one income is no longer sufficient, children and parents coping as well as they can with makeshift and often inadequate child-care situations...

...Our faculty ads firmly declare we are an equal opportunity employer and my Jesuit colleagues are among my most helpfui supporters...

...I agree with O'Brien's suggestions that we talk with our students, especially the men, about life and love, about the problems as well as the rewards of family life...

...In selecting students, we were struck by the fact that all our applicants were women...

...Because the male students wouldn't want me to best them, they would work harder...

...After 550 people came to the lecture, the newspaper belatedly "covered" the story...