ABSTRACT
The company of children confers an ancient, reassuring legitimacy. The author have taught one to drive, another to play poker, and given another her first Nancy Drew. Her love lacks any security of blood, any sanctity of law. The author, who grew up without television, must permit the goofy returns of 'Love Boat'. She, was told about the old sex intelligently, must refer now to sperm banks, Louise Brown, and adolescent diaphragms. Even as feminists skeptically analyze a family that others fancy, they seek to imagine new communities of intimacy. In her novels, Marge Piercy has conjured up Utopian societies that are harmonious yet egalitarian, sane yet poetic. In feminist theory, Sara Ruddick has asked why men and women cannot practice 'maternal thinking', a habit of mind that respects a balance between self and others, between self-assertion and altruism.
