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Reviews Sylvia Ann Hewlett's 'A Lesser Life: The Myth of Women's Liberation in America' (1986), which calls for a national policy to support women as mothers that would be similar to that in other industrialized countries, but has strange sympathies with conservative causes.

The section presents comments on articles featured in the August 1978 issue of The American Sociologist. Gerald D. Berreman claims that the ethics and responsibility in social science research are frustrating to discuss in print or in person: the issues are complex and highly contextual so that clear-cut rules-of-thumb are impossible to formulate; they are value-laden and controversial so that discussion often degenerates into preachment, accusation and defense. James D. Carroll noted that each of the articles is a useful contribution to the understanding of law, politics and administration of knowledge. From an analytical perspective, these papers fit well into conceptual frameworks suggested by such terms as "post-industrial society," "knowledge society," and the like. From a professional perspective, each of the papers addresses issues that researchers should be more familiar with, and that professional societies should have greater capacity to address on a systematic basis than is presently the case. From a legal perspective, the paper by Kathleen Bond addresses a constitutional question under the U.S. first amendment, which involves something of a paradox. Carl B. Klockars suggests a model of sociological research that begs the softening of a series of trained incapacities, which the sociological community has worked long and hard against substantial resistance to develop.

This article discusses why geographical displacements threatens social stability in regard to the busing of school children and childcare centers. Busing can undermine the stratification system by disturbing an important mechanism for keeping children within the strata in which they are born. This mechanism maintains the insulation between social classes. In the same way, child care centers will weaken the intensity of social control by giving mothers the chance to pursue other activities and encourage their occupational commitment. The use of physical space is typically linked to the regulation of social relations. Until now, mother supervises processes of gatekeeping and traffic direction for the children, these processes begin at an early age to ensure that the children will move on controlled tracks. The spatial movements of children, their maternal control and the control of controllers is what is at stake in busing and in child-care centers. Removing children from home territory arouses social anxiety because adults feel they may lose control over their children.