Dear Ann Landers,
burned when I read your brutal statement to "Dis-turbed Mom." You said, "No mother loves all her children equally." It is ob-vious that you are not a mother. I am. I have four children and I KNOW I don't love one child more than another. The mother who has a favorite or actually dislikes one of her brood must be mentally ill. Every normal mother loves her children the same, for they are all her flesh and bone. If you wish to print this letter and state why you made such a barbaric at-tack on motherhood I would be interested in your explanation. And so would thousands of others who must feel as I do. love them all

dear love them all,
I don't think it's possible to feel exactly the same about any two humans, be they children, brothers or business associates. Love is an emotion. It cannot be weighed or measured for intensity. We grow wiser, more patient (or less patient) depending on what happens in our lives. No woman is the same all through her childbearing years. The changes in her disposition, degree of stability and the knowledge she gains through experience all have an effect on her children. An unwanted child, who senses a mother's hostility, is bound to react un-favorably. Children who do not receive ample love and attention often get into trouble and cause their parents grief. A mother who insists she loves a sullen, rebellious, antisocial child as much as the happy, well-integrated one is lying to herself to cover her guilt. 782 THE ANN LANDERS ENCYCLOPEDIA No one should feel guilty about his true feelings. Being able to recognize and face reality is a sign of good mental health. Very often I hear from teenagers who say, "My mother is partial to my brother"-or "My sister gets all the attention. Mom likes her better." Chilt" }, { "Letter": "Recently a dearly loved, much-admired and re-spected man died. He was an ideal husband and father, a community leader, financially successful and the sort of person everyone looked up to. After his death, his wife and adult chil-dren went through his personal belong-ings-together. What they found was shattering and heartbreaking. They dis- covered a collection of pornographic magazines and books, stacks of ob-scene pictures and a suitcase filled with stag movies. The family is crushed. They now feel his life was a sham-that he was a hypocrite. No one can understand it. How could a person have kept his true character so completely hidden from those who were so close to him? A 874 THE ANN LANDERS ENCYCLOPEDIA prurient interest in sex is as unlike this man as night is from day. Please ex-plain. STUNNED IN CONNECT-ICUT", "Signed": "", "Response": "DEAR STUNNED: It is not unusual for a person to have a private, kooky compartment in his life-ranging from the slightly offbeat to the wildly bi-zarre. This needn't mean the person was evil or sinister. It merely means that, in THIS particular area, he had strudel in his noodle. SHE SHOULD HAVE KEPT HER HOT HANDS OFF DEAR READERS: Pass the humble pie, or the crow, or whatever you want to call it. Ann Landers has her fork ready. There's nothing like 54,000,000 daily readers to keep a girl on her toes. Every now and then I reverse my advice, usually because the readers have persuaded me I was wrong. And so it was in the case of the mother who found a collection of nude pictures in a box under her son's bed. She wrote to say she had cured her 17-year-old son by pasting the nudes on the living room wall and shaming him. "That," she crowed, "ended his career as an art collector." I thought it was ingenious and amus-ing, and I said so. Hundreds of readers let me know it wasn't funny. Hundreds more said it was a destructive thing to do to a 17-year-old boy. They said the lad's behavior was normal, and Mom should have kept her hot little hands off the pictures and said nothing. The following letter is a fairly repre-sentative example of what made me change my advice.