For answers to such questions we must turn to the anthropologists, the biologists, the historians, the psychologists, and the sociologists. Long ago they consigned the notions of Kyne and Dixon to the scrap heap.

False ideas surfeit another sector of our life. For several generations much fiction has appeared dealing with the steprelationship. The stepmother, almost without exception, has been presented as a cruel ogress. Children, conditioned by this mistaken notion, have feared stepmothers, while adults, by their antagonistic attitudes, have made the role of the substitute parents a difficult one. Debate is not likely to resolve the tensions and make the lot of the stepchild a happier one. Research, on the other hand, has shown many stepmothers to be eminently successful, some far better than the real mothers.

Helen Deutsch informed us (The Psychology of Women, Vol. 2,, 434) that in all cultures ``the term 'stepmother' automatically evokes deprecatory implications,'' a conclusion accepted by many. Will mere debate on that proposition, even though it be free and untrammeled, remove the dross and leave a residue of refined gold? That is questionable, to say the least. Research into several cultures has proven her position to be a mistaken one.

Most assuredly ideas are invaluable. But ideas, just for the sake of having them, are not enough. In the 1930's, cures for the depression literally flooded Washington. For a time the President received hundreds of them every day, most of them worthless.