WESTFRIED, Alex Huxley 1919-

PERSONAL: Born December 17, 1919, in New York, NY; son of Ernest (an importer) and Yvonne Westfried; married; wife's name, Caroline (divorced, February, 1989); married Maria Betania, July 20, 1990; children: Maria A., Eric. Education: University of Pennsylvania, M.A.; Syracuse University, Ph.D. Politics: Democrat Religion: "Yoga meditation." Hobbies and other interests: Oil painting, pencil drawing.

ADDRESSES: Home—289-B Heritage Village, Southbury, CT 06488. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Western Connecticut State University, Danbury, professor of anthropology and sociology, 1965-92; retired, 1992. Lecturer on comparative family studies at universities and other academic institutions.

Worked at his father's import firm, New York, NY; U.S. Department of Commerce, worked as economist; also taught social studies at a Quaker school in Overbrook, PA. Military service: U.S. Army Air Forces, Intelligence, 1943-46, including a period as prisoner of war; became first lieutenant.

MEMBER: American Sociological Association, American Anthropological Association, Comparative Civilization Studies Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Summer fellow, University of Florida, 1980-81; also funded by National Endowment for the Humanities.

WRITINGS:

Ethnic Leadership in a New England Community:Three Puerto Rican Families, Schenkman Publishing (Cambridge, MA), 1965.

Reinventing the Culture of Womanhood in America and Brazil: An Anthropological Perspective; Models for the Twenty-first Century, 1964-2001, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 2002.

Contributor to periodicals.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Research on the emergence of the democratic family in Brazil and America.

SIDELIGHTS: Alex Huxley Westfried told CA: "My primary motivation for writing is to educate middle-class American women to realize they are not taking action to have a better life with the social supports society should provide. My latest book shows that Brazilian women know how to organize effectively to gain good-to-excellent day care paid for by the country. They have demanded and received good materials to learn from and have made better family policies at work than American women. One could write a book on 'stupid and unaware American women.'

"Carl Rogers is a big influence on my writing. John Gottman is a big influence on marriage. Among many other influences, Maslow is important in understanding human relations.

"My writing process is to test a hypothesis about emerging Brazilian families and middle-class Brazilian women. A now independent woman is emerging who is emancipated socially, sexually, and economically. The feminist movement since 1964 has also been very effective in Brazil. I used qualitative sociology to do thirty interviews of women over ten years to check that my interpretation was correct. I also took a course in writing from a school in Cincinnati, Ohio, to make sure my style of writing would be first-class.

"My writing was inspired by a course at a Florida university on unity and diversity in Brazilian society, along with the discovery that Brazilian women then doing master's degrees had mothers who never worked and did not have college degrees. They were real pioneers."