Marlo Thomas Takes Aim at ‘Liberating’ Family

“That Girl” is at it again, hoping to do for the family what she did to sexual stereotypes back when the phrase “women’s lib” was more than a worn-out cliche.

“Free to Be . . . A Family,” the book, the record album and the ABC special tonight at 8, is the next incarnation of Marlo Thomas’ “Free to Be . . . You and Me,” the 1972 record album and subsequent book and TV show that taught a generation of children that they were no longer limited by obsolete definitions of “boy” and “girl.”

“When I did ‘Free to Be’ that’s what was happening, that’s what I was thinking about--the liberation of the definition of male and female,” Thomas said here the other day.

“Over the years, everybody wanted us to do another ‘Free to Be,’ but I didn’t want to go back. I hate sequels. So time passed and there was a new thing to think about--the family. This is about liberating the definition of family . . . to say to kids today, even if you don’t live in a family where there’s Mom and Dad and Junior and a dog named Spot, don’t worry. You’re not alone. That is not the definition of a real family anymore.”

Marrying talk show host Phil Donahue eight years ago and suddenly becoming the stepmother of five children helped trigger her interest in the changing shape of the American family. The fact that her brother lived in a “traditional family” with a wife who stayed home and took care of the children, while her sister was a working, single mother was another.

Then, a Carnegie study reporting that only 6% of all American children live in a “Leave It to Beaver” traditional family “shocked and amazed” her into developing a new multimedia project.

She solicited the help of Whoopi Goldberg, Kris Kristofferson, Lily Tomlin, The Fat Boys and many others, and they collaborated on a book, published a year ago, that featured a new “Cinderella” complete with a “really nice stepmother,” a new comic book version of “Superman,” the world’s most famous adopted person, and a poem about trying to feed the earth’s “one big family” of 5 billion with one gigantic turkey.

An album containing many of the book’s songs and stories was released last month and features Jane Curtain, Mel Brooks, Phil Donahue, Robin Williams, Gilda Radner, Mike Nichols and Elaine May.

“Kids today who have stepparents or are living with only one parent are given the feeling that they’re living in a broken home,” Thomas said. “We’re trying to tell children that there is no such thing as a broken home. If your family is loving and caring, then there’s nothing in need of repair. There’s nothing broken.”

Unlike the first “Free to Be,” however, Thomas chose not to dramatize the stories from the new book for tonight’s television show. Instead, after visiting the Soviet Union last year with her husband when he taped a week of “Donahues” in Moscow, Thomas created a “Free to Be” TV show, to be broadcast here and in the Soviet Union, that features children from New York and Moscow dancing, singing and talking together via a satellite space bridge.

It could be argued that in today’s social climate a television show dramatizing the book’s theme of liberating the American family from its traditional stereotype would be more urgent than a documentation of the new-found friendship between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Thomas responds that she probably will create a special dramatizing stories from the book sometime in the future, but she decided that fostering understanding among the “global family” is the key to the survival of nuclear families everywhere. She felt she couldn’t afford to pass up the opportunity she stumbled upon in Moscow.

“I think it’s important for children, for all of us, to start to become aware of how big the family is,” she said. “To me that is the most pressing thing. I thought that reaching across the great pond to the global family would be a wonderful way to express the spirit of ‘Free to Be’--extending the limits of the extended family.

Thomas selected 40 New York children, who then became pen pals with 40 children in the Soviet Union. They exchanged letters, photographs and gifts for one year, and then finally saw each other via the space bridge when Thomas taped the show last September.

On top of performances by Lily Tomlin, Robin Williams, Bon Jovi, Penn and Teller, Kermit the Frog and Carly Simon, the program contains a few glimpses of the nuclear family: A Soviet boy takes the camera on a tour of his apartment in Moscow, an American does the same in New York; one American girl asks her Soviet pen pal if there is divorce in the Soviet Union and about half the Russian children respond that their parents are divorced.

But mostly the show illustrates that children are children there and here--interested in dating, fashion, school, fairy tales and first and foremost rock music. Bon Jovi performs in New York and the Soviet children scream their approval. Then a Soviet rock star, complete with long hair, torn denim jeans and a Michael Jackson-esque voice sings in Moscow and the American children get up and dance away their prejudices.

“I cried the first time I saw those Soviet kids singing “Free to Be” with us,” Thomas said. “Imagine if we can turn out a whole generation of children who think we’re a family instead of hated enemies.”

All proceeds from the book, record and TV show go to the Free to Be Foundation, which funds non-sexist, non-racist programs and groups that help assure the health, safety and education of children and their families.