[Soap] operas have come a long way…. Soap writers are increasingly using the serial form—as Charles Dickens once did—to educate audiences or lead them to question their insular attitudes in ways that little else in their lives may do. (p. 42)

"Search for Tomorrow" evolved a long romantic plot line featuring a mysterious character who was deaf and unable to speak…. When the suds settled, viewers had learned a good deal of sign language; they were also exposed in considerable depth to the ways in which families, schools, communities, and society at large discriminate against the handicapped….

"Search for Tomorrow," still doing business with the same old characters at the same old stand for 23 years, has somehow become the most forthrightly feminist soap on the air….

When I asked Agnes Nixon, queen of the soap writers, how she—and others—got off the nonstop, pro-marriage, baby-boom go-round...