P ATTERNS OF RELATIONSHIP between women and men are changing. Why they are changing, and how rapidly, are matters of debate. It may be that the chief forces for change are, e.g., economic. 1 Industrialization and the accompanying trend toward smaller, independent families accounts in part for husbands having to share in domestic tasks which stand-in female members of larger, extended families would have assumed. Technological development, which eliminates the requirement of physical strength for many occupations, accounts for the decrease in sex differentiation in portions of the work force. Mass media make feminist ideas accessible to otherwise isolated women, facilitating an unprecedented broadening of the base of challenge from women no longer willing to live within past role definitions. Rising affluence eliminates the need for parents to choose to educate sons in preference to daughters.It may also be, however, that much of the change in patterns of relationship between men and women is more apparent than real. Some researchers claim, e.g., that despite the seeming loss of authority on the part of fathers, husbands still retain the preponderance of power in the family. 2 Feminist interpreters of life in society and the churches call attention to the fact that since the 1920's women have lost more ground than they have gained in their struggle to share in the public world. 3 Statistics show that in the United States women's growth numerically in the work force has not significantly changed their economic status vis-à-vis men. 4 Whatever the actual changes already realized in women's and men's social roles, there can be no doubt that there is an important change in *See studies such as Harriet Holter, "Sex Roles and Social Change," in Hans Peter Dreitzel, ed., Family, Marriage, and the Struggle of the Sexes (New York, 1972) pp. 153-72. It must also be noted that there are economic causes which reinforce old patterns of relationship. See, e.g., the analysis of the effect of the Industrial Revolution on familial structures in Viola Klein, The Feminine Character: History of An Ideology (London, 1971) p. 10.