Rosalind C. Barnett, a clinical psychologist and senior scholar at Radcliffe College and co-author of She Works/He Works: The New American Family, will discuss the success of the new dual-income American family in a free public lecture on Thursday, Oct. 16, from noon to 1:30 p.m. in the Faculty Commons, Martha Van Rensselaer Hall, on the Cornell University campus.

Based on a four-year, $1 million dollar study funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health, Barnett's study found that the "Ozzie and Harriet" family of the 1950s is dead and "the new American family is alive and well. Both partners are employed full time, and according to the latest research, the family they create is one in which all members are thriving: often happier, healthier, and more well-rounded than the family of the 1950s," Barnett wrote in her book.

Barnett debunks common myths about working women and their families, such as: working women are wrecks, men's well-being springs from the workplace rather than the home, and a return to the past with homemaker moms will ease the stress on today's children and families. Betty Freidan calls her study "groundbreaking. . . . eye-opening, reassuring for all ages." Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe writes: "A wonderful antidote to all the books peddling guilt to the two-worker family."

Barnett, author or co-author of six books including The Competent Woman and Gender and Stress, has devoted her professional life to studying the impact of multiple roles and workplace stressors on mental health in women, gender similarities and differences in the stress-illness relationship and the interaction of work and family experiences in exacerbating or mitigating the stress-illness relationship.