
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 10, 1990                   TAG: 9005100483
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NO CAREER?

BARBARA Bush is welcome almost anyplace she decides to visit. The gregarious first lady seems to be comfortable in crowds that range from blue collars to white lace, from little people to gray heads. But there's one place she's not welcome this spring. She's not being greeted with open arms as Wellesley College's commencement speaker.

About 150 Wellesley students staged a protest recently of the choice of Bush as graduation speaker, saying she doesn't represent the type of career woman the college seeks to educate. The first lady went to Smith College for two years, then dropped out to marry George Bush. She has devoted her adult life to roles as wife and mother.

The problem the young Wellesley women have identifying with Barbara Bush is mostly the result of a generation gap. In one sense, there is a positive message in the protest: It shows that the status of women has advanced considerably since Bush was a young woman. When Bush was the age of her protesters, a career woman was a social oddity. Most working women were single. They usually quit work when they got married, or at the latest when they had a baby. The jobs open to women then were not career-track.

On the other hand, First Ladies generally are impressive figures in their own right. Barbara Bush certainly is. The students' criticism prompted George Bush to rise to his wife's defense at his news conference last week. The president said he thought the young women could learn a lot from Barbara Bush's "unselfishness and from her advocacy of literacy and of being a good mother and a lot of other things."

One of the "other things" might be that career success isn't everything - to a man or a woman. Someone such as Barbara Bush who has taken a supporting role, yet has her own identity intact, might have a strong message. It would be one about guarding individual integrity, about doing the best at whatever you do, about the value of human relationships in developing a total person.

Barbara Bush won't be able to instruct young women on how to succeed in the corporate boardrooms. However, she ought to be able to advise the graduates that they don't have to measure their success by male standards. That might be the most meaningful advice they could hear.

by CNB