An Unconventional Family

Sandra Bem's name is familiar to two decades of behavioral scientists and their students through the Bem Sex Role Inventory, a research and teaching device that measures androgyny. Her earlier Lenses of Gender set out a feminist theory of gender, and the present book describes a practical and personal family experiment deriving from the theory. The trajectory of Sandra and Daryl Bem's engagement, marriage and family-rearing parallels the development of feminist theory closely. This is, in her words, ""an autobiographical account of an attempt by a woman and a man to function as truly egalitarian partners and parents and also to raise children in accordance with gender-liberated, antihomophobic, and sex-positive feminist ideals."" Luckily, both the author and her (now ex-) husband Daryl wrote and lectured frequently on their undertaking, so a detailed, forthright chronicle was available, and Bem supplements it with a short essay giving Daryl's viewpoint and edited interviews with her now grown children. The difference in this family's history is that a plan was devised for marriage and children, and behavior was deliberately channeled to fit the framework. A consistent certainty of being right pervades the narrative. Events are analyzed according to whether they fit or did not fit the model, presenting a certain joylessness about living that one hopes didn't reflect the family's day-to-day experience. Bem provides positive spins and rational explanations for lapses in feminist practice. The book is well written and thoughtful, and achieves its purpose, but also shows that utopian experiments are truly hard work and allow little time for just being. (Oct.)