Year's Eve, but I imagine that makes me just about average.

4. What Do You Do, Daddy?

A young boy asks his father, "What do you do, Daddy?" Here is how the father might answer: "I struggle with crowds, traffic jams and parking problems for about an hour. I talk a great deal on the telephone to people I hardly know . I dictate to a secretary and then proof-read what she types. I have all sorts of meetings with people I don't know very well or like very much. I eat lunch in a big hurry and can't taste or remember what I've eaten. I hurry, hurry, hurry. I spend my time in very functional offices wi~h very functional furniture, and I never look at the weather or sky or`people passing by.

I talk but I don't sing or dance or touch people. I spend the last hour, all alone, struggling with crowds, traffic and parking." Now this same father might also answer: "I am a lawyer. I help people and businesses to solve their problems. I help everybody to know the rules that we all have to live by, and to get along according to these rules."



5. I Can't Stop Working

There have clearly been three times in my life when it would have been not only appropriate but reasonable for me to do something other than earn money. Once my father would have supported me while I went to summer school. Once I could have supported myself with savings while I was on strike. And once I would have been supported by my husband while I raised small children.

I couldn't do it. I went to summer school at 9 a.m. and to work at il a.m. During the strike I did a radio show and magazine work. And during my maternity leave, after the checks ran out, I started to get nervous. Very nervous. I was having a wonderful time with my children, but there was this little flutter in my stomach that said, "You haven,t got a dime." For whatever reason, I am not good at joint assets unless my assets are making some substantial contribution.

It's hard to figure out why I can,t be more relaxed about this, why I never backpacked through Europe like my friends because I had to be at work. I grew up in a comfortable middle-class home. My father worked very hard-too hard, I always thought -to fill the role of working man and the role of Dad, which probably made him just about average for his time. My mother never worked outside her home. It,s hard for me to figure out how a little girl in such an environment wound up thi.nking of herself as a breadwinner before current fashion dictated that she should do so.

It probably has a great deal to do with independence, with feeling beholden to no man-and i suppose I do mean man. Mothers worry now about raising daughters who are willing and able to support themselves and their children if their marriages go crash. But I worry about being a woman who is not quite able to relax about her own self-worth and the incalculable value of the domestic functions she performs, not quite able to let the household run for a time driven only by her husband , s paycheck. It would make sense for me to do that, when my next child is born. For a time, as I did with the other two, I will not work. But the flutter will begin and I will want to have earning power again-not to buy anything in part.icular, just to know I am still a player.



6. When Taking Home a Paycheck Means

More Than Dollars and Cents

I have worked for money since I was 16 and went to the principal's office to ask for worki

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