ALVIN TOFFLER
Well, I think the idea that it's a traditional notion of romance which has of course over the years been fostered by the women's magazines and the whole complex of interests, the advertising, and so forth and so on, is not likely to survive in its present form. And I think we are beginning… The fact that there is a women's liberation movement and that this movement is not just localised, but is in fact international, is, I think, an extremely healthy development, and I think it's good news for men as well as for women. But I think that, as any movement, there are… Any movement — whether it's the labour movement in a period of… early organisational period, or whether it's a movement for any cause — develops fringe groups and crazy ideas at the extremes, and so forth and so on, but a lot of these need to be aired before the movement begins to get a focus on where it's going. I think that… you see, the idea that a family is a mother, a father and 1.8 children or 2.8 children is basically a fairly recent notion. It's an idea that fits with industrial society. Industrial society needs families that are mobile. It needs workers who will move — when the job in the factory closes here, they can go over there. And therefore, in some inchoate, unorganised, unsystematic way, the industrial society began to favour what we call the nuclear family, stripping away the old folks, stripping away the relatives, putting them off in old-age homes, or finding some social, state-supported way of taking care of them. And the result of that, I think, has been a fixation on a single model of acceptable family life. That single model fits the suburb, it fits industry, and so on, but it's terribly confining for many, many people. And I have the right to say that since my wife is here and we've been married for 23 years, and I have no reason to believe we won't go on indefinitely. I like the nuclear family arrangement for myself. But it's quite evident that it's terribly confining for millions of people, and not just in any one country.
HOST
Is there anyone at all who'd like to put a question to Mr Toffler, before I come back to the panel, as it were, on marriage or the family? Simply on that. A lady preferably. Yes.
WOMAN
Well, I wasn't going to ask that one exactly. Could we leave whatever you're going to ask till later? I do want to keep it to marriage or the family. It's fairly challenging, I would have thought. The gentleman up there, yes.
MAN
Mr Toffler, you state that the present system is for many, many people very confining, but various of the proposals mentioned in your book — temporary marriages and various other things like this — are changing of the institutions which we regard to be normal in our society. Do you think that perhaps this will be a more important thing or perhaps a more disruptive thing as far as the human psychology is concerned? The shortening of ties with other people. Because, after all, our memories and so on of other people are a very important part of our lives. Do you that this is one of the most important parts of this future shock?
ALVIN TOFFLER
Yes, I do. I think that in our focus on economic growth we have overlooked all of the rather subtle but very important psychological consequences of the kind of society we're producing. And I personally think that while I like my life filled with short-term relationships, meeting new people, travelling, learning, developing, through contact with people whom I've just met, that's fine, provided I have some stability in my life, which is connected with either my marriage or some friends I've had ever since I've been young. I think having that kind of continuity makes it possible for people to deal with more change and more transient contact. All I'm saying is that the nature of the present change makes that kind of continuity more and more difficult to hold onto. And I think ripping that out of people's lives is a very dangerous thing.
HOST
One more before we come… Yes.
WOMAN
Mr Toffler, you said that you approved of the women's liberation movement, which is international. You also said that we have the nuclear family, which suits the technological society because it's more mobile. But then you also were talking about… you were saying that we must look to the future, we must look sensibly at how these changes are going to affect society and not just accept the future blindly. Well, don't you think that the women's liberation movement ultimately could bring about the complete destruction of family and marriage as we know it, and even intimate relations?
ALVIN TOFFLER
No, I don't think so. I think that the women's liberation movement is an attempt to cope with some of these changes. I think that… It depends on how we define the women's liberation movement. There is a very wide spectrum of opinion collected under that general name. Many of those opinions I wouldn't agree with for two seconds flat. But as I would regard it, what the women's liberation movement is saying, in its mainstream, is that we live in a world in which it is unfair to both sexes for the women to be deprived of access to various opportunities within the society. The idea that the only proper role for a woman is to stay home while her husband goes out and deals with the big, wide, interesting world, it seems to me, is not only an unfair idea in our kind of civilisation… Not necessarily one in an agricultural society, where husband and wife and family all work together in the fields, and that's the life that all of them know together. But the idea that women should be confined into a rather constricting little box while men have the freedom to move throughout the society, and then to think that you can have good relationships between the two sexes under those circumstances, seems to me to be a delusion.
WOMAN
Yes, but I was thinking… extending it a bit further than that. If women become liberated to the extent that there are preschool centres for their children and they pursue their careers, etc, then you're going to reach a stage, surely, where a husband can't pursue his career because it's a question of which one's going to move.
ALVIN TOFFLER
Well, this in fact happens, and that's a tough decision for the couple to make, and, sometimes, I know of cases where that has led to the end of the marriage. But why should there be an automatic answer to that question? Why shouldn't that be a subject for proper negotiation?