DATE: Sunday, October 5, 1997               TAG: 9710050084

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Guy Friddell 

                                            LENGTH:   51 lines

MEN SHOULD RALLY TO HELP WITH WOMEN'S DAILY CHORES

Herewith, views from a cranky old contrarian who quite possibly should be locked up for expressing them but who would go right on railing behind bars at passers-by.

Men milling on the Mall in Washington, D.C., a kind of belated Boy Scout Jamboree, raise the question that if these fellows are so conscience stricken over women's plight, then why aren't the husbands at home these three days giving their wives a break from the grubbing household chores or careers outside the home?

Let men baby-sit, play catch or fish with the boys, take little girls to tea, all the things fathers supposedly yearn to do while moiling at their desks or lasts.

Better yet, make these three days a family outing. Rent a fleet of buses and while the men are lolling in the blessed sun on the national front lawn, indulging their sense of guilt, the women could be visiting Washington's museums, shops, movies and shows. Might even ride to the top of the Washington Monument to scan all mankind at their feet. For once.

One of the Promise Keepers' leaders said women have several groups to advance their sentiments, but this is the only outlet for men.

Quite the contrary. One reason the country is in a perpetual mess is that men dominate Congress, state houses, and city halls and county courthouses, and raise their voices through a variety of clubs, lodges, and bars.

Not until the 1960s did women liberators step forward with charges against societal inequities and face scorn for daring to do so.

One place where women hold their own, at least in numbers if not rank, is television. One commentator noted that while few women are among the masses of men on the Mall, hundreds are working in a kind of support cadre - controlling traffic, carrying messages, offering refreshments - a not unfamiliar role for women.

Most of the movement's leaders seem well-intentioned. One spokesman agreed that many women in the ministry feel shut out of the religious revival among men. The leaders are putting their several heads together to figure how to include women of the cloth in the movement.

The leaders also insist that the revival is aimed at men's hearts, not a political agenda. One hopes that's the case. Midway, at least, political operative Ralph Reed has had the grace, or sense, not to show his prayerful face on the assembly.

One rule I learned long ago - to let a wise woman review my cross-grained views. A colleague, hearing these, noted that what troubled her, when writing obituaries and reporting divorces, were the number of families with no fathers. Something, she said, had to be done. ``Are many of those absent fathers among the promise-keepers?'' she asked. Let's pray so.

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