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

DATE: SATURDAY, November 19, 1994                   TAG: 9411230033
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BRIEFLY PUT . . .

EVERYONE agrees welfare needs to be reformed. But let's be careful about, and so get beyond, one rhetorical problem. Practically everyone agrees that young mothers, recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children, are going to have to go to work - by which is meant paying jobs.

This should not be taken to mean, however, that young mothers are all sloths sitting around watching TV and eating chocolate-covered cherries. If more politicians took a turn staying up all night with colicky babies, chasing toddlers around the house, pulling fingers away from electric outlets, changing diapers, washing clothes, picking up toys and spooning mush, they might be less quick to dismiss child care as non-work.

OPTIMISTS ARE going to have a hard time looking on the bright side of a report in The Futurist magazine, wherein a psychology professor at the University of California at Riverside warns that optimistic people may be a danger to their own health. Sure, they deal with trauma better, such as surgery; but their sunny outlook may cause them to ignore preventive measures and underestimate health problems.

Grumpy workaholics may have the healthier attitude, says Howard S. Friedman, because they deal with health issues in a realistic, practical way. So they're not as likely to drop dead. That doesn't mean their co-workers aren't likely to wish they would.

IF OLIVER North had had one wish on Nov. 8, it might have been to suspend women's enfranchisement for the day. Had only men voted in the U.S. Senate race, North would have beaten incumbent Sen. Charles Robb by a comfortable 46 percent to 43 percent, according to exit polls.

Instead, and fortunately, women made the difference, preferring Robb over North by 48 percent to 41 percent. It is sometimes difficult to believe in the equality of the sexes, given all the evidence - of which North's defeat is but a tiny example - to support the proposition that women have more sense.

by CNB