By J. Bailey Molineux

Mary was 43 years old when she first came to see me. She was married and had successfully raised her children.

But now she was bored and restless. Maintaining a home for herself and her husband was not enough to keep her occupied or interested, although her husband was satisfied with the arrangement.

So Mary decided to go back to college to become a teacher. She and her husband could easily afford the tuition.

What a great idea! I though to myself.

There was only one major barrier to her plan: her husband opposed it. He wanted her to stay at home and take care of him. He didn't want her following other pursuits at the expense of his needs.

Although Mary's husband would never have admitted it - indeed, may not have even been conscious of it - he was afraid to let his wife go to college, afraid that her new interests would mean less time and attention for him, afraid, ultimately, that she might find him a bore and leave him if she expanded her intellectual horizons.

On her part, Mary was afraid also. She feared her husband's anger if she went to college, yet she couldn't stand the idea of staying home year after year with little to do. Caught between her desire to please her husband and her desire to do something more with her life, Mary was in my office because she didn't know what to do.

Mary's problem is not unique, according to Lillian Rubin, author of Women of A Certain Age: The Midlife Search for Self (Harper & Row, 1979). When I saw her, she was in the midst of a midlife search for purpose that is common to all women who have devoted their earlier years to raising children.

A sociologist by training and a mother past midlife herself, Ms. Rubin had studied the midlife search in women by interviewing 160 mothers, age 35 to 54, whose children had already left home or were about to leave.

The female midlife crisis is not tied to any chronological age, says Rubin, but begins when the children leave home and Mom has been permanently laid off as a full time mother.

Contrary to popular opinion, Rubin found that most of the mothers she interviewed reacted to the departure of their children with more relief than distress. Those mothers who experienced the most distress were those who were disappointed in their children or had a poor relationship with them. Other researchers have found that the so-called "empty nest syndrome" primarily affects those non-working mothers who have centered their lives around their children.

Rubin claims there are two selves within every woman, each struggling for expression: a self that wants to work and achieve something in the work-a-day world and a self that wants to stay home and raise a family. The mothers she interviewed had chosen to follow the path of the second self but now the first was clamoring for fulfillment.

Married at a young age, these mothers had gone from dependency upon their parents to dependency upon their husbands, without ever having developed the confidence they could make it on their own. All of their lives, they had defined themselves in terms of other people, usually male - Tom's daughter, Bill's wife, Bob's mother - but now felt they had to find out who they were apart from their families.

The two major questions facing the midlife mother, writes Rubin, are "Who am I now that I am no longer a mother?" and "What am I going to do for the rest of my life?" Her midlife search is for a new sense of self that will enable her to feel useful and productive and to find another task in the world. But as Mary discovered, the midlife mother's attempt to grow may meet with opposition from her husband. Or he may overtly encourage her growth but covertly sabotage her efforts.

If she is to succeed in finding a new direction, claims Rubin, the midlife mother must have her husband's support. If she has been dependent upon him for all the years they have been married, and he has enjoyed that dependency, it would be difficult for her to oppose his wishes without threatening the stability of their marriage.

The departure of children represents not only the end of one role for the full beginning of a new role, with the mixture of fear and excitement that brings. Like every other transition period, midlife for Mom carries both promises and perils. Next week: The working superwoman time mother, with all the sense of loss and sadness that brings, but also the possible.

By J. Bailey Molineux

"What do these women want anyway?" is probably the question most frequently asked about the women's movement by those who don't understand or agree with it.

"They have the vote, they have jobs and their standard of living is the highest in the world.

What more do they want?"

Most feminists would say their movement is about oppression, the oppression of women by men. What makes their struggle difficult is that women's oppression is more psychological than physical and so harder to demonstrate to others. Attitudes are not visible, tangible conditions women can point to as evidence of oppression.

If we define oppression in terms of power and the privileges it brings, women are oppressed. Throughout the ages and in most known societies, men have had more power, status, ascribed worth and opportunity to advance than women. Men have held the dominant positions in society; women the lower status positions. Men have achieved in society; women have stayed at home. Men have been more valuable and important; women's importance has been defined by the extent to which they have served men.

Women in the feminist movement don't necessarily want power over men but power over their own lives. They want more control over their destinies and equal opportunities to achieve positions of authority and responsibility. And they want freedom from fear of men's physical power.

One of the reasons why the feminists have been concerned about rape and wife abuse is that these violent acts - usually committed by emotionally weak, desperate men - are physical manifestations of men's power over women. Feminist women don't want equality with men because equality between any two groups or individuals is impossible. People can't be equal in intelligence, strength, attractiveness', or athletic ability.

But they do want equality of opportunity. They want an equal chance with men to become whatever their inner voices tell them to become: a singly career woman, a woman who combines marriage, family and career or a housewife who stays home and enjoys it. And they want to by treated as equals by the elimination of discrimina­tion in employment, pay, promotions and admissions to the professions.

Feminists don't want to become men but to become fully human. They want the opportunity for all people - male and female - to develop their talents, interests and personalities as they choose to and not as sex roles dictate. They want to eliminate the idea that women's role is only to serve and by helpmates to men, and to replace it with the idea that they can make contributions to society outside of the home and independent of men. They want to eliminate sex roles which say that men should behave in certain ways and women in other ways. "The cramped little boxes of personality and social function to which we assign people from birth," writes Jo Freeman, editor of Women: A Feminist Perspective (Hayfield Publishing, 1979), "must by broken open so that all people can develop independently, as individuals."

Liberation of women from sex role expectations means the liberation of men from sex role dictates also, and research shows that both would benefit. People who accept within themselves and express both masculine and feminine traits - so called androgynous individuals – are mentally healthier than those who are strongly feminine or masculine in their behavior. To by androgynous is to by flexible and adaptable; to by strongly sex-typed is to by rigid and less ably to change to meet the changing demands of life.

One major difference between feminists and traditionalists is the way in which each group views

the behavioral and personality differences between men and women. The traditionalists say the differences are God-given or part of the natural order of things, while the feminists claim they are learned and so can by unlearned.

Obviously, there is a biological basis for the division of labor between males and females, the feminists would concede. Only women can give birth and nurse infants. But this does not mean that they should be destined to remain homemakers for the rest of their lives and denied the opportunity to develop other skills and careers, especially since fathers can help take care of the children.

The women's movement can be threatening because it advocates change. It can be a threat to men because they will have to give up their power over women, or have it taken from them, if the movement is to succeed. It can also be a threat to some women who are comfortable in their traditional role and have no desire to change.

But there are so many women who are unhappy with the restrictions and limitations of their sex role that change is inevitable.