c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

UNDATED _”Men and women have declared a cease-fire in the war that raged between the sexes through much of the last half of this century. In its place, they face common new enemies …” Thus begins a recent series of articles in The Washington Post. But anyone who does serious data analysis will smell ideology _ and methodological flaws _ intervening between the narrative and the poll data, sponsored jointly by the Post, Harvard University, and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Without precise time-series analysis _ for example, how were the poll’s questions answered 20 or 30 years ago _ the writers have no right to claim there has been any change in the”war between the sexes.” Indeed, the series is one more effort by baby boomers to insist they really are different from their parents who lived during the raging”war,”something the writers”know”existed if they have no data on past attitudes.

Thus, the Post argues that while the war between the sexes is over, it doesn’t mean we’ve returned to the world of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, whose 1950s sitcom self-worshipping baby boomers think is a fair summary of the way things were in their childhood.

In fact, like every era, the post-War period (1945-1963) was a lot more complicated than a few media images suggest. There’s much more continuity and similarity in the problems _ then and now _ than pop social science is willing to acknowledge.

Yet one of the most startling findings of the Post study suggests that many men and women yearn for the days of Ozzie and Harriet.

When asked, or example, whether it would be better or worse to return to the gender roles of ’50s _ although what those roles were is unspecified in the Post survey _ more respondents (38 percent) said it would be better than said it would be worse (34 percent).

Moreover, by almost a two-to-one majority, women _ 51 percent vs. 26 percent _ said they have more respect for mothers of elementary school children who stay home full time to take care of their children than for those who work.

But 68 percent of women agreed with this better-worded statement:”It may be necessary for mothers to be working because the family needs the money, but it would be better if she could stay home and just take care of the house and children,”68 percent of women agreed.

I submit that these findings ought to be red-hot news. They challenge the current conventional wisdom about gender roles in a most basic way.

Yet the Post writers did not think they were worth emphasizing in their reports. Indeed, their feminist ideology seems to have blinded them to the implications of the findings.

In truth, as the data show, most women with young children work because they need the money and not because of career satisfaction. Incidentally, the institution in our society that most vigorously championed the rights of women during the last half century has been organized labor, for whom the boomers have nothing but contempt. And, unlike women who might work at the Washington Post, most women, like most men, have jobs, not careers.

There’s another startling set of items the writers did not notice in the Post study. While 21 percent of women acknowledged they had sex when they didn’t want to”because someone pressured you,”so did 14 percent of the men.

Moreover, 68 percent of women respondents think men are often or sometimes harassed by women and 78 percent of women think women often or sometimes file a false complaint against men for sexual harassment.

Naturally, such a finding remains unnoticed because everyone”knows”only men are guilty of sexual harassment.

But in a National Opinion Research Center study of American sexuality a few years back, 17 percent of men and 17 percent of women reported they had been touched sexually before puberty. More than half of men reported they had been touched by a woman older than they, a third by women over 18. No one paid any attention to these findings either because in terms of the reigning ideology, things like that don’t happen.

When man bites dog it’s news. So it should be news when women sexually harass men. But it’s not news to the Washington Post _ an example of poor questions, poor methodology, and poor journalism. Amateur night.

DEA END GREELEY