The women’s movement has been with us for a decade, but it is still surrounded by confusion, mixed emotions, and a largescale refusal—on the part of many men— to listen to its central arguments.
“Human beings, being mammals, spend an inordinate—but scarcely disproportionate —amount of time involved in institutions whose task is to make into an orderly and predictable entity the expression and control of sexuality, replacement of the population, succession to rights and offices, and education of the young. ... [It has been] claimed that the nuclear family is universal in the pursuit of these ends, and often other ends as well. Whether or not this universality is more than an epiphenomenon of the mammalian mode of reproduction is open to argument. . . . But what is not open to argument is that there is a wide variety of ways in which human beings can mate, reproduce, and train the young.”