A witty columnist sees a new concern with civility
Bastardy was the harsh, old-fashioned word, then illegitimacy, but now the letter asks a little desperately about a "nonmarital family." The husband in the affair has a nonmarital wife who is doing her best "not to keep things secret" and a nonmarital child of nine who "knows what the dynamics are." But there is also the marital wife who "knows, but tries to ignore the nonmarital family," plus some teen-age children who "sense something amiss." The husband is struggling—manfully, one might say—to deny everything. So, the letter asks, what would be "the ideal social relationship" among the various children, who are beginning to develop "mental-emotional problems"? And between the two rival women? And the grandparents and other relatives?
DEAR Miss MANNERS: . . . Please help.
To this reasonably typical confusion in the contemporary lifestyle, Judith Martin, 46, the inventor and sole proprietor of the magnificently omniscient syndicated persona called Miss Manners, offers a brisk answer: "The ideal social relationship, since you ask, would be one big happy family, all gathered together at Thanksgiving to enjoy this interesting and varied network of relationships." But since that is highly unlikely, Miss Manners urges that "tolerance and kindness should be summoned, at least to those who are nonvoluntary participants in the relationship, the legal wife and all the children."
GENTLE READER:. . . Miss Manners is also trying to work up some sympathy for the father, but is finding it difficult . . . Miss Manners confesses that she would be pleased if the two families got together and eliminated their common problem, namely him.
Judith Martin used to spend much of her time on "what we called the garbage run," flitting from White House dinners to Embassy Row cocktail parties as a society reporter for the Washington Post. (Her most memorable distinction was being officially banned from Tricia Nixon's wedding.) While acting as a features reporter and a drama critic, she asked her editor one day in 1978 if she could try a column on etiquette; she got a very skeptical go-ahead. "Editors all thought etiquette was dead," says Martin. "Even the word was a joke. I thought I was just writing for a bunch of old cranks like myself, but then I started getting floods of mail from young people. These were the people who were supposed to think etiquette was stupid and ludicrous, and they were all writing me and asking me questions. I found out that these people realized that they had been lied to by their parents."