NONFICTION - Nov. 24, 1991

RIGHTS OF PASSAGE: How Women Can Find a New Freedom in Their Midyears by Elinor Lenz (Lowell House: $19.95; 224 pp.). For young adults, the liberalization of sex and break-up of the extended family in the 1960s brought exhilarating freedom. No more kowtowing to grandparents’ politics or politely conversing with boyfriend or girlfriend on the front porch; now kids could spirit off into a romantic, intimate world of their own making. Somehow, though, this freedom has landed an inordinate burden on another segment of American society: middle-aged women. Members of what the elegant writer Elinor Lenz calls the “sandwich generation,” many of these women are burdened both by kids whose new freedom has made them dependent into their 20s and 30s and by parents who can no longer count on the extended family to care for them in their old age.

Perhaps more daunting than social obligations are social expectations, Lenz writes in this lively self-help primer. While she is too mellow to be contentiously feminist, Lenz essentially criticizes our assumption that because middle age is a time of “landing” for men--of slowing down once a professional identity has been secured--it must be so for women. On the contrary, she writes, the end of one’s mothering years should herald a time of hip and sexy self-realization; for women, it should be a time for “taking off.” The ascension is rarely smooth, Lenz warns, but her uplifting case histories leave no doubt that it can be joyful.