A family is a family is a family
And the Family Affair children prove it
By Carolyn See

Something weird is happening to our concept of family life in America. Children have had stepparents since before Hansel and Gretel took their walk, and widowed mothers since Jack went up the beanstalk. But now we don't seem to view all that with quite the same alarm. Can it be that a "broken home" has something in common with the other kind?

Television mirrors this new feeling that a family is--like beauty or something--whatever you say it is. Julia and her son, Mrs. Muir and her kids, Doris Day and hers, Lucille Ball and hers, are all doing nicely. And part of the success of Family Affair (next year will be its fourth season), may be due to the comforting premise that happiness is possible in all kinds of households.

The kids on Family Affair (who are certainly also major contributors to the show's success) have, naturally, families of their own. The differences in the domestic lives of Anissa Jones and Johnnie Whitaker seem large indeed at first, but perhaps the differences are superficial. Neither is "normal" in the two-child, two-car, split-level sense; both seem to work just fine.

Anissa Jones' mother is divorced, has been for five years. She has no plans to remarry and spends most of her time with her two children, Anissa and Paul (a younger brother who is a year or so younger than his sister and maybe eight inches taller). "We're the three musketeers," Mrs. Jones says. "We stick together. We're our own family."

Anissa lives with her mother and brother in Playa del Rey, a kind of beach town cul-de-sac where brightly painted, two-story, picture-windowed houses cram together. We meet to talk at the local beach club.

"Our house is being remodeled now," Anissa says. "I'm not too sure what it is they're doing to it. Knocking out walls, putting in new furniture. Stuff like that."

This particular room of the club is deserted. It is drizzling outside. Past a very wide stretch of gray sand we see a thin ribbon of sea (where, by some fluke, the sun is shining); and right beneath our window, a swimming pool; a single, shivering, hardy swimmer.

Although Anissa is in the sixth grade by now, she is still a very little girl. She stands awkwardly, leaning on a low table, shifting her weight from one foot to another, gazing into the middle distance. Her mother is gone, seeing about getting us all a snack. Her brother lolls in another chair, restless, not banging against it, but testing its strength. Both Anissa and her brother have been washed and have had their clothes changed since an hour ago when school let out.

I ask Anissa what the differences are between her life when she's working and when she's not; how--in each case--she spends her days. She looks over at her mother who has returned with goodies. "I don't know," she says.

"Anissa," her mother says, "she's just asking what you do, what's different when you work and when you don't."

"Shooting is work," Anissa says. "I like going to my own school better. I see my friends there."

"Except for the cafeteria," her brother remarks. "Oh, yeah, the cafeteria's awful," Anissa says, pouncing. "It's got terrible things, nobody can eat that food."

"Yeah," says Paul.

"Sometimes it isn't bad," Anissa continues, warming to her subject. "Sometimes they have hot dogs, or they have diced turkey pudding, or spaghetti, but the worst is hamburger."

"Children," their mother says fondly, "don't you think it might hurt the principal's feelings if he were to read that in a magazine?"

"But it's awful, Mom," Paul says with ghoulish delight.

Anissa climbs up in her chair, turns to me. "I want to ask you one question," she says. "Just tell me honestly, what do you think of these shoes?" She waves a skinny leg at me which has a saddle shoe stuck on its end.

"Anissa hates those shoes," her mother says.

"They're baby shoes," she says speculatively. "They're baby shoes. Nobody wears them at school."

Anissa wears them at work; they go well with the line of clothes which she endorses (and usually wears). Even when she's not shooting, a variety of business functions demand her presence. "We're going this week to record Anissa's voice on a new Buffy Doll that Mattel's making," Mrs. Jones says, "and later this month we're going back to the toy convention that they hold every year in New York."

Mrs. Jones has an MA from Purdue. She taught junior high school when she and her husband first came to California, and--after their separation--sold real estate. Now Anissa's career is her full-time job. She is a calm woman, pleasant, self-contained. "It takes guts to be divorced," she says, looking out at the rainy sand. "You have to do everything for yourself; you can't depend on anyone to take care of you. But we have a pretty good time. This summer we're going to take a long train trip. When you're not accountable to anyone, you're free; you can do whatever you want, you know? I'm not sure I'd ever want to get married again. We three have too much fun together."

In contrast to the Joneses, Johnnie Whitaker's family would have been considered "normal" in the past, but what was ordinary then is (especially in Hollywood) exceptional now. The Whitakers live in San Fernando, one of Los Angeles' oldest suburbs, where frame houses wreathed in bougainvillaea still survive among the stucco boxes of the Sixties. Their house is white, medium old, and has a wide lawn, bare in places from where kids have run around on it. The living room is plain--one couch, two chairs, a piano with a book of hymns (open) on the rack.

Johnnie asks if I need him yet, and when I say no, runs off somewhere. In a minute I see him through a window, zipping around the back yard on a scooter, propping a ladder against a tree, climbing up, jumping down, back to the scooter, yelling a lot, back to the ladder, etc., etc. His father, a shop teacher in a junior high school, sits opposite me, going through the mail. Johnnie's mother, Thelma, is beside me on the couch, bracing her feet (as I am), on the floor; kids have been jumping on this couch and it slants.

Both elder Whitakers project a calmness and serenity which is pleasing at first and then incredible, as the enormity of their domestic project, the style in which they spend their days, becomes more evident. Mrs. Whitaker and I talk, Mr. Whitaker interjects a few comments, while Sherrie, 16, Stephen, 15, Laurie, 13, Linda, 12, Mary, 6, Billy, 5 (as well as Johnnie, 9), stroll through, are introduced, say hello, stroll out and back in, throughout the interview. Baby Dora is asleep.

I ask Mrs. Whitaker how Johnnie's career has changed their lives.

"I used to do all my own canning and baking; I made all my own bread, ground my own wheat. Some of that's had to change, of course. When Johnnie's shooting, I stay with him at the studio. It's usually a 12-hour day by the time we get there and back. But even an ordinary day is hectic. I usually get up around 4 or 5--the older children go to church school before their regular school, so I get them up and dressed and take them, and then get the middle children off, and Mr. Whitaker has to have breakfast and I get him off, then there are always interviews for Johnnie, or tryouts, or movie work..."

"Don't you have any help?"

"One thing," Mr. Whitaker reminds me. "Children in a large family all help each other. We're running a sort of family affair of our own around here. Everybody does their share. She's not quite so hard on 'em as I am, but I see that they do their chores, or the next time they ask me for money, I'm not quite such a soft touch. And we all work for the family, we all spend time together. Our church recommends a family council once a week, where parents and children talk things over, they show us what they've learned in school, or give each other moral lessons or lessons in how to help each other..."

By now Linda, 12, is perching on the coffee table. She is watching us gravely, as are three small children who sit on the floor at the door of the living room, clutching milk and sandwiches. Mrs. Whitaker recounts more family folklore; how she shops late at night when the kids are asleep, buying tuna and mayonnaise by the case--through Mr. Whitaker manages the household budget far better than she--how on those occasions when Johnnie had more work than it seemed that he could handle, she read his lines to him while he slept, in the hope they'd be easier to memorize the next day.

Johnnie comes in and tells us about a play he's been in today at school. "I was the king, I get to be king. Today I did it really really very good. I was really good. Except Greg, he forgot a line, then Laura forgot her lines. Then we all began to laugh, gee. Do you want to see my costume? This is my robe, this is my vest, this is my crown, I made it myself."

"Johnnie," his mother asks, "which would you rather do, act in television, or in school?"

"In school," he says, "because you can dress up. You can play anything. Last year I was Grandpa Bunny..."

Dora, 2, walks in, rumpled and sleepy from her nap. Johnnie plays ring-around-a-rosy with her, over and over, as his mother goes on talking. Sherrie, 16, is on her way to the store; someone has to make a birthday cake for Stephen, 15. Someone takes Dora, and Johnnie attacks the piano: "Drink to me only wi-ith thine eyes," he yells, "and I-I will pledge with mine."

"I used to take several of the children to piano lessons all over town," Mrs. Whitaker says, "but now I have just one teacher come to the house. Whoever is around gets the lesson."

She tells me how they spend Johnnie's money--3 percent in the bank for him, a small salary for her as his manager, about 30 percent in taxes and the rest spent on insurance policies for his brothers' and sisters' educations. "They give up things and work for him; it's only right that he should give up for them."

"Each of our children is an achiever in his own way," says Mr. Whitaker.

Some of the older children are getting ready for volleyball practice tonight at the church. Mrs. Whitaker will also participate in the tournament.

"On family council nights," I ask, "don't you ever get tired and just want to pass it up and lie on the couch and watch television?"

They both look at me in surprise, as do the children who happen to hear. "Oh, no," Mrs. Whitaker says, as her husband shakes his head. "Oh, no."

If the average American family arrangement is usually somewhere between the Joneses and the Whitakers, it's comforting to know that both homes have produced not only competent actors but nice, confident kids. What else is a family supposed to do, anyway?

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