Connecticut College Digital Commons @ Connecticut College Linda Lear Center for Special Collections & Alumni News Archives Spring 1979 Connecticut College Alumni Magazine, Spring 1979 Connecticut College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/alumnews Recommended Citation Connecticut College, "Connecticut College Alumni Magazine, Spring 1979" (1979). Alumni News. 210. https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/alumnews/210 This Magazine is brought to you for free and open access by the Linda Lear Center for Special Collections & Archives at Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Alumni News by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author. EDITORIAL BOARD: Vivian Segall '73 Editor(15A Latham Lane, EXECUTIVE BOARD OF THE ALUMNI ASSOCIA nON: Britta Noank, CT 06340), Gertrude E. Noyes '25, Sarah Hargrove Schein McNemar '67 President I Michael J. Farrar '73 Vice Harris '57, Wayne Swanson, Marilyn EHman Frankel '64, Marion President / Sally Lane Braman '54 Secretary / Platt Townend Vibert Clark '24 Arnold '64 Treasurer Class NOles Editor, Elizabeth Damerel Gongaware '26 Assistant Editor, Britta Schein McNemar '67, Louise Stevenson Directors-at-Large: Anne Godsey Stinnett '56, Terry Munger '50, Andersen '41 ex officio Gwendolyn Rendall Cross '62, Nancy L. Close '72 I Alumni Trustees: Virginia Golden Kent '35, Jane Smith Moody '49, Joan The Connecticut College Alumni Magazine (USPS 129-140). Jacobson Kronick '46 I Chairman of Alumni Giving: Helene Zimmer Official publication of the Connecticut College Alumni Association. Loew '57 I Chairman of Nominating Committee: Ellen Lougee All publication rights reserved. Contents reprinted only by Simmons '69 I Chairman of Finance Committee: Sally Lane permission of the editor. Published by the Connecticut College Braman '54 / Chairman of Clubs Committee: Sue Weinberg Alumni Association at Sykes Alumni Center, Connecticut College, Mindlin '53 / Chairman of Classes Committee: Terry Munger 'SO I New London, CT four times a year in Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall. Chairman of Programs Committee: Nancy L. Close '72 / Executive Second-class postage pending at New London, CT 06320. Director: Louise Stevenson Andersen '41 / Young Alumni CASE member. Representative: Ken Crerar '77 I Legal Advisor: Jay B. Levin '73 Communications to any of the above may be addressed in care of the Alumni Office, Connecticut College. New London, CT 06320 .. The Connecticut College Alumnl Magazine VOLUME 56 NUMBER 3 SPRING 1979 The Protean American Family 2 All in the Family: the Alumni Survey 2 1I~__ 1IrI '" - My Mother, My Shelf/ Rae Downes Koshetz '67 4 What's Newsweek? / Elizabeth Peer Jansson '57 6 ·r Milkarpie Mother/ Helen Rich Baldwin '21 8 : A Baby? ... Maybe/ Elizabeth Murphy Whelan '67 9 Unworthy Desires/ Christina Downs Dondero '69 12 The First Three Years/ Margaret C. Holmberg 14 Mom and Anti-Mom/ Robert L. Hampton 16 Home Away From Home/ Barbara McCann Butterfield '70 18 The College ] ourney into Darkness: 20 The Connecticut College Eclipse Expedition John Baumert Round & About 22 Book Reviews 24 Letters 25 Class Notes 26 Drawings: Pages 5, 31 and 40, Lee Astheimer '73. Opposite, 7 and 17, Royce Becker '80. Design: pages 35 and 41, Sarah Hargrove Harris '57. Photographs: page 10, used by permission of American Baby magazine and Jeanne Dzienciol; page 35, courtesy of the college archives. Cover: an enigmatic period piece from a private collection . • All in The 1976 alumni survey has been tabu- The Protean lated, and we'd like to share some of the results with you. The questionnaire was sent to all classes from 1919 through 1976. Like all Alumni Association ma- terial, it went out to graduates and non- graduates alike. Fifty-one percent of the American graduates and 24 percent of the non- graduates returned the survey. We think that's a remarkable response, considering our all-inclusive mailing list, our peripa- tetic alumni and the time required to answer all the questions. Family We do not havea scientifically pure in- strument, so there won't be sweeping What seemed invincible and unquestion- generalizations. There is, however, a great able in the 1950s has gone the way of deal of interesting information about the people who replied, ali of it sorted an~ bobby socks and saddle shoes. recorded by ha nd by two dedicated alumni So, too, with the 1960s. volunteers who gave 1,000 hours of their time to the project. Although that ~as a slow way to accomplish a huge task.It was homemakers. But what seemed invincible also meticulously accurate, folksy and and unquestionable in the 1950s has gone free. We don't claim that these observa- the way of bobby socks and saddle shoes. tions hold true for all alumni-the figures So, too, with the 1960s. Many couples on post-graduate study are already ",:,oe- who postponed having children or even fully out-of-date-but we think you might vowed to remain childless are now part of enjoy finding out what alumni said about a growing delayed baby boom. Our iron- themselves at the end of 1976. clad assumptions about what families must be like seem to be traded in as often Boom and Bust as our cars. Connecticut alumni of the 1940s and According to one of our contributors, it 1950s participa ted in what might be called was social pariahdom in the 1950s not to a marriage boom. Just five percent of be engaged by Easter of senior year. In alumni from the 1940s and four percent the same vein, columnist Ellen Goodman from the 19505 said they were single. has pointed out that "Until the 1970s, it These figures are in sharp contrast to the was most often the employed mother who alumni taken as a whole. Twenty percent felt the harsh judgment of society: she of all people answering the surve~' were was the one criticized and put down by single, 69 percent were married, SiX per- both men and women, and especially by cent divorced or separated and five. per- the mothers at home." cent widowed. Of those listed as single, Without a firm idea of what is valuable fully 62 percent were from the classes of and necessary in our lives, or how men What is bappening to the American fami- and women and children can live together, ly? How have the changes in American the harsh judgment of society becomes as out a career goal who was regarded as family life affected Connecticut College capricious and inflexible as fashions in incomplete-sort of a modern parallel to alumni? Often, lives are glanced at and neckties or hemlines. The rebellion primitive superstitions toward barren labelled as one or another lifestyle. The against motherhood selected a new pariah: women. Another unreasonable image also fusion of the words life and style should the housewife, who was made to feel less began to take hold: the superwoman, who be a clue to how deadly serious the matter worthy than people who worked. The defi- manages a competitive career, mother- of style is. Just as there are styles in hats nition of work was too dogmatic to em- hood and a household simultaneously. and cars and dresses, so there are styles in brace people who cared for children with- It has been sixteen years since The birth control devices, cancer therapy and out pay. Taking care of children for money Feminine Mystique was published; bra in our most personal allegiances and was, conveniently, another matter. It is burnings, once so newsworthy, are long goals. ironic that many professional couples de- forgotten; Kate Millett has turned ~er .at- Social pressures about careers, mar- pend on an entire caste of women who, tentions to Iran; men are even begmmng riage and parenthood are as relentless as on the whole, would prefer to be at home to collect alimony. The feminist ~ove- the dictates of fashion and just as fickle. with their own children, but find them- ment changed many things, but within the In the 19505 it was assumed that marriage selves caring for other children out of women's movement many changes have followed college graduation, with the men economic necessity. taken place as well. Where once mother- entering careers and women becoming By the mid-70s, it was the woman with- hood was excoriated as the basis of worn- 2 ----- the Family: the Alumni Survey 1970 through 1976. The classes of 1919 uninterrupted decline, falling to 2.5 in the teaching, and two percent were in a scat- through 1929 (20 percent of whom were class of 1959, 2.0 in 1962, 1.4 in 1965 and tering of other fields. Twenty-two percent single) and those of the 19305 (13 percent finally, with the class of 1969, dipping be- of the degrees reported in the survey were were single) could best be compared to low 1.0 to a figure of 0.8. This downward from professional schools-law, business, their colleagues of the 19605, 14 percent trend has continued into the 1970s, with medicine and other health professions, of whom were single. the class of 1975 listing 0.2 children per social work, library science and the Alumni of the 1970s put an end to the family. ministry. marriage boom, setting a pattern of their Caps and Gowns Arts and Letters own. More than half of these alumni-52 Achievements in the fields of arts and percent-were single. The college's first As the number of children born to letters were attained by nearly half of coeducational class, 1973, was also the alumni has declined, there has been a Connecticut's alumni. Nineteen percent first class in the survey in which single tremendous jump in the proportion of had published articles or books and 14 people outnumbered married people.