Families at Work poses a question: What are 

 families for? What common impulses unite the 

 mother raccoon with her tumbling babes, the talismans 

 attached to children's garments in many cultures, the 

 ingenious toys constructed of locally available 

 materials — rushes, gourds, animal bones? A useful 

 formulation comes from Dr. Dorothy Gross, of New 

 York's Bank Street College of Education: "What the 

 young need, what parents provide, is affection, pro- 

 tection, role modelling and elbow room." Protection is 

 the bottom line. Families at Work shows how animals 

 born naked and blind are sheltered in nests where pa- 

 rents keep them safe and warm. Human babies are 

 swaddled, strapped onto carrying boards, bundled into 

 baskets and backpacks. (Some carriers come equipped 

 with drainage facilities; others divert young riders 

 with bouncing devices and jingling bells. ) In the in- 

 sect world, protection may be a simple matter of 



shielding eggs and larvae from predators; more soph- 

 isticated, but still instinctive, is the canny ruse of the 

 killdeer faking a broken wing to distract attention 

 from the vulnerable eggs. Human parents move 

 beyond physical protection to spiritual; the exhibit 

 showcases a wonderful variety of supernatural defenses 

 against harm: the Chinese silk lion, stuffed with frag- 

 rant leaves to protect a playing child, Indonesian 

 charm necklaces, a Sioux Indian turtle amulet 

 containing — magic specially potent — a piece of the 

 wearer's umbilical cord. Even color may be chosen for 

 its magical properties, like the yellow dye of Kiowa 

 Indian leggings. Most often charms are worn, but 

 some may be placed by cradle or basket, like the silky 

 Ojibwa nets designed to catch bad dreams, or the 

 evil-looking fungus used in Madagascar to scare 

 off malign spirits. 



Affection, surely revealed in the multiple 



Ron Testa and Diane Alexander While 



