The Second World War brought great disruption to family life. Migration, changing work patterns, hasty marriages, housing shortages, rising rates of juvenile delinquency, sexual promiscuity, and unwanted pregnancies created great consternation during the war. In 1943 many worried that such instability would increase if Congress endorsed the armed ser vices' call to draft fathers. Thus, in September 1943 Congress held hearings on the drafting of fathers. Proponents of drafting fathers made a simple case: The military needed the men. By contrast, opponents argued that drafting fathers was unnecessary and would heighten juvenile delinquency, force women into the workforce, ruin small businesses, and ultimately undermine the family biologically, psychologically, economically, and morally. Such blows would ultimately weaken America itself. In the end, however, the military prevailed and fathers became subject to the draft. As these men left for war, attention centered on their psychological indispensability to family life, particularly to sex-role development and early father-child bond ing. Commentators worried that fatherly absence promoted maternal overprotection, effeminacy, softness, and perhaps even homosexuality. They called upon mothers to do everything in their power to find proper father substitutes and to keep absent fathers present in the lives of their children. Child advisers urged wives to remind their children constantly of their fathers, and testimonials during the war suggest that women took such advice to heart. Writing in Parents' Magazine in 1944, one mother seemed confidant that her efforts to acquaint her daughter with her absent father had succeeded: was amazed at how many opportunities present themselves for talking about Daddy, for making him a part of our lives. And I know that when he comes home Debbie will experience no shock, for he will be no stranger to her. Looking back, a veteran testified in the same magazine that his wife's efforts to keep him informed about his child had been successful: I, like many other men who had never seen their children, used to receive letter after letter that was meant to prepare me for parenthood. My wife, like many other wives, tried deter minedly to teach her husband the joys and responsibilities of being a father?by correspondence. In the document that follows, an Iowa mother adheres to the advice of child experts and writes a letter to her husband, who was stationed in Okinawa awaiting the invasion of the home islands of Japan. The author of the letter, Kathryn Wisdom, had gradu ated from Iowa State College in 1934 with a degree in home economics and had taught high school for three years in small Iowa towns. Later she worked in the test kitchens at General Mills in the Twin Cities and wrote for Farmer s Wife Magazine, and then moved to Des Moines where she continued her career in home economics and journalism. While in Des Moines, she met William Wisdom, a lawyer, and they married in 1942. Bill joined the service in that same year and worked in Nebraska, Iowa, and South Dakota with Army Intelligence before attending Officers Training School at Camp Lee, Virginia. After a stateside assignment with the Quarter Masters Corps, he left for the Far East, but not before Kathryn gave birth to their first daughter, Virginia, in 1944 (three more daughters would follow after the war). With his departure, Kathryn and Virginia went to live with Kathryn's parents in Rolfe, Iowa, where her father published and edited the local small town newspaper. With the help of her mother and father, Kathryn cared for Virginia and pursued her journalism career by writing for her father's paper. As a home economist, journalist, and dedicated reader of child guidance literature, Kathryn undoubtedly had seen the admonitions about keeping absent fathers informed of their children's intellectual, psychological, and physical development. To this end, she sent Bill a letter on 1 August 1945 while he was stationed in Okinawa, a letter written as if the one-year-old Virginia were the author. As you read this letter, what conclu sions can you draw about Kathryn's attitudes toward child rear ing? What is the general view of children that comes through in this document? Would you characterize it as permissive, and if so, why? What role do grandparents have in rearing Virginia? How might they have made it possible for Kathryn to combine child rearing with her career as a journalist? What benefits and liabilities did this living arrangement offer Kathryn? Can you tell anything about her actual living accommodations from the letter? What are Kathryn's assumptions about a father's relation ship to his children? How might a G.I. like Bill Wisdom have