The sight of a strange car outside the house is not usually cause for concern, but a 9-year-old child who is home alone waiting for a parent to return from work might have a different view.
”Afterschool Phone Friends,” a hotline based on the Southwest Side, has been helping answer the many questions and concerns of ”latchkey” children who return from school to unsupervised homes.
”At one time latchkey children were individual cases to be pitied,”
says Alexis Leslie, director of the Families That Work Program of Southwest Women Working Together. ”It was an oddity. . . Now 50 percent of all children born today will spend time in a single-parent home.” There are an estimated 5 to 13 million latchkey children across the country, Leslie says.
Over the past 18 months four volunteers have staffed the lines during after-school hours, taking approximately 150 calls each month from 100 different children across the city, from pre-school age to pre-teen. The volunteers may spend two minutes or three-quarters of an hour on each call.
Most calls are from children who have ”a vague discomfort at being home alone,” says Leslie. Some report hearing strange noises in the house; others ask if it is all right to answer the doorbell.
The volunteers help the children assess the situation using common sense, often asking them to repeat the directions parents gave previously about strangers or noises. ”We don`t tell them what to do,” says Leslie. ”We explore the consequences of different ways of handling the situation.”
Often children want permission to do something, such as bake a surprise birthday cake for their mother even though she forbade them to turn on the stove. ”We tell them that their mother would appreciate the thought of a surprise birthday cake, but she would be happier that they abided by her rule,” Leslie says.
Many times children just want someone to talk to until a parent returns.
”For some, we are the only source of constant support,” Leslie says. Volunteers encourage the children to discuss their fears with their parents when they return home.
According to Leslie, older children who call may have concerns unrelated to being home alone, such as when to become sexually involved. In these cases, the volunteer discusses the issue and advises him or her to discuss the situation with an adult whom they trust.
Hotline volunteers are supervised by a certified social worker who handles crisis calls about possible child abuse or life-threatening situations. New volunteers are welcome.
Southwest Women Working Together is a not-for-profit community service organization sponsored by the United Way. The hotline, funded by the City`s Department of Human Services and the Chicago Intervention Network, is available weekdays from 2:30-6:30 p.m. by calling 778-KIDS.
SOURCE: By Darlene Gavron.
DEPARTING ON A HIGH NOTE
When Darleen Cowles Mitchell began putting musical notes on paper at the tender age of 8, she knew she wanted to be a composer.
”I never really wanted to be anything else,” she says.
Thirty-six years later Mitchell will depart her hometown of Chicago as a successful composer and having been instrumental in giving women composers an audience in the Midwest. She will pursue her career in Boston, where her husband is stationed in the U.S. Armed Forces.
Mitchell, 44, is one of the founders of the midwest chapter of American Women Composers Inc., an organization of musicians, composers and performers that provides a showcase for the talents of female artists.
Chairperson of musicianship and composition at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, Mitchell says goodbye in a finale concert March 20, featuring compositions she wrote for AWC members. The concert includes ensembles for flute, English horn and harp, vocal chamber music and two solo pieces.
Mitchell`s award-winning works have been performed nationwide, and her
”Translucent Unreality No. 1” is featured on a recording of music by American women composers under the Capriccio label.
She formed the local chapter of AWC in 1981 after attending a string quartet conference for women composers in San Francisco. ”It was a wonderful experience, meeting other women with whom I could share ideas,” Mitchell says. ”Women find it difficult to move into the mainstream of musical composition and performance. (They) have to form their own channels and organizations.”
Mitchell feels that after ”years and years of knowing only male composers,” the public has been slow to recognize the contributions of women composers. In time, she says, ”society will see women as able to be composers and not just music teachers or performers.” Mitchell plays several instruments, including piano, violin and French horn.
For her music is a family affair. She composes for and performs with her husband, Robert Mitchell, a tuba player. A few years ago her granddaughter was the highlight of a concert of Mitchell`s music at the American Conservatory. Eight-month-old Madeleine sat in a 4-foot cube filled with six wind chimes and made music of her own. After three or four minutes ”when she had enough, she just crawled out” to grand applause, remembers Mitchell.
At that same concert, Mitchell`s daughters danced and played flute and percussion. Her twin sister, Marleen Sansone, provided slides and paintings. It was a family portrait done with sound.
”That`s something you wouldn`t really see a male composer do,” says Mitchell.
When it comes to composing style, Mitchell doesn`t find differences between the works of men and women. ”If anything, listening to works by women composers shows that the music is very varied,” she says. ”You can`t tell that a piece is by a woman just by listening to it.”
Mitchell notes that women have been composing since the 9th Century, beginning with nuns who wrote religious music. It was a Catholic nun at St. Alvernia High School, where Mitchell was a freshman piano student, who first encouraged Mitchell to pursue a composing career.
Mitchell`s concert will be at the Chicago Public Library Cultural Center Friday, March 20, at 12:15 p.m. For more information, contact American Women Composers at 744-1970.
SOURCE: By Darlene Gavron.
NEW FORMULA FOR DR. SPOCK
Dr. Benjamin Spock has rejected some of his own advice because ”a number of mothers told me I gave them a terrible sense of guilt.”
In the 1968 edition of his best-selling ”Baby and Child Care” he had advised new mothers against returning to work. In the March issue of Working Mother, Spock modifies that stand. ”I am now faced with the fact that more and more mothers are going to work no matter what I and other psychologists say,” he says.
”The mother can go back to work as soon as she needs to, but there are two important points to make about it: It ought to be done gradually, and she ought to try to return to part-time work. There should be at least a week of overlap between the mother and the sitter.”
Earlier he had said that if it was not essential, the mother should postpone returning to work. ”If a mother realizes how vital care is to a small child, it may make it easier for her to decide that the extra money she might earn or the satisfaction she might receive from an outside job is not so important after all,” he wrote in 1968.
Spock now says: ”We still don`t know what happens to babies under 6 months of age, but my advice is that no matter how pressed a woman is for money, she should still make it a gradual process for at least a week. I wouldn`t compromise on this.” He says research shows that babies are disturbed by an abrupt, wrenching separation. He believes that babies between 6 and 24 months will become depressed and may temporarily lose interest in their environment.
A PROMOTION FOR WORKING WOMAN
Working Woman magazine is proving to be as ambitious as its readers, this month claiming to have become the largest-selling business magazine in the U.S., passing Business Week, Forbes and Fortune in total paid circulation estimates.
Publisher Carol Anderson Taber says the magazine is second only to one other business publication: the venerable Wall Street Journal.
The year-end national figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulation show Business Week and Working Woman battling it out (788,205 to 775,512, respectively). The new numbers won`t be out until June, but Working Woman just raised its advertising rate base to 850,000 promised readership, 40,000 more than Business Week`s anticipated rate rise in May.
Mary McGeachy, Business Week`s public relations director, says that because the editorial content of the two magazines is different, Business Week doesn`t compete with Working Woman. Taber says she doesn`t label or categorize the magazines but prefers to describe Working Woman as a ”communications vehicle” for ”ambitious people who want to better themselves in their careers.”
Says Taber: ”Our magazine speaks in a female tone of voice to people in business,” adding that the difference in writing style is often as subtle as using female pronouns. Profiles of successful women are a staple, such as March issue`s feature on Houston mayor Kathy Whitmire. Articles such as ”When It`s Your Turn to be the Boss,” ”The Executive Who Tried All the Tax Angles” and ”How to Cut a Monster Project Down to Size” join more traditional women`s magazine subjects such as health, cooking and fashion.
Taber says Working Woman began 10 years ago because women ”needed information, tools to figure out how to `make it.` The lack of role models for women (in the work force) is what got the magazine off the ground.” She describes the average Working Woman reader as college-educated, in her 30s and earning a salary near $30,000.
Tops among reader concerns: stress management and a need for better child care, according to Taber. Women also want to know where they stand in the professional world. The top-selling issue is Working Woman`s annual salary survey.
The magazine regularly conducts reader surveys on such topics as love and money, the results of which frequently gain public attention. ”Working Woman has become an observer of culture,” says Taber, noting that the magazine`s readership represents a relatively new demographic group.
The magazine is written for achievers, adds Taber. SOURCE: By Darlene Gavron.
