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MARIA SHRIVER AND CAROLINE MAKING THEIR OWN MARKS

The nature of the relations between the Kennedy boys and girls was made sharper by the pounding the family took from outside forces. John F. Kennedy`s assassination in 1963 was the first blow, and it was followed by a chain of events that added to the strain between the already competitive boys but helped draw the girls together.

The president`s death compelled his widow, Jackie, to move Caroline and John to New York to get away from the stresses and tourists in Washington, D.C. It also fortified her sense that her greatest mission in life was to be a sheltering mother, keeping her children away from the most fearsome intrusions from the public and at some distance from the center of Kennedy life. Both children, especially Caroline, were very close to their mother and from her got a kind of courtly civility and sense of purpose about life that, in the words of one of her longtime friends, ”kept them from straying too far.”

Adds the friend: ”Jackie ran a tight ship. Those kids weren`t namby-pambys, but they weren`t hell-raisers either. Jackie made sure they didn`t overdose on the Kennedy stuff.”

Caroline Kennedy, 27, works in the special projects and film office at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She has dabbled in several kinds of news media–as a reporter, photographer and toiler for a television camera crew–so this is nothing new to her. The difference now, and what attracted Caroline to the work, is that in the warren of offices at the museum she can be almost a faceless recluse if she chooses. At the same time she can make discreet public appearances in tightly controlled circumstances, as she did last winter when she unveiled videotapes designed to make the treasures of the museum available to more people.

For several years she has steadily dated Edwin Schlossberg, a 40-year-old cultural historian with eclectic interests ranging from art to the history of science. It is a romance that baffles some in the family–and did Jackie at first–but makes perfect sense to at least one friend. ”Ed is very, very bright and very sure of himself,” says the friend. ”He is a strong character, not at all bowled over by who she is. He is also serious enough about his own interests not to get swept up in a lot of `Kennedy stuff.`

” Their age and religious differences–he is Jewish–have added spice to the relationship. ”Ed is the anti-Kennedy, nothing at all like any man in the family,” notes another old friend of Caroline.

If there was one standard-setter in the family it was Eunice Kennedy Shriver who embodied all the family`s most notable traits–Jack`s intellectual iconoclasm, Bobby`s doggedness and Ted`s geniality. When members of the next Kennedy generation are asked about the family figures who have influenced them, they often cite the special contributions of the Kennedy men to the nation. The discussion, however, inevitably turns to Eunice and the unique stature she has as a role model.

”Eunice gives us all something to strive for,” observes her nephew Bobby Kennedy Jr. ”She has lived a life that touched thousands of other lives and made them better (referring to her founding of the Special Olympics for the retarded). She has a deeply conceived moral code that gives her life a kind of noble meaning. To her, everything fits together. All of her beliefs are linked, and she has thought through every moral issue to its core.”

”If you asked Maria who she wanted to be like when she grew up, she would have said her mother,” recalls Maria Shriver`s childhood chum Theo Hayes. ”They are best friends and Maria is very much like her in her spiritual and social life–very seriously moral.”

In the Shriver home, says Maria, there was no mincing on any front in her upbringing despite the fact that she was a lone female among four boys. ”My parents were completely egalitarian,” she asserts. ”They wanted me to succeed or fail in equal measure with the boys. I never had the sense that anything was ruled out for me or that I couldn`t take on anything because I was a girl.”

Indeed, Maria is as tough as any of the males. And she has put the knowledge she gained while holding her ground against them to good use, contending in the highly competitive broadcast industry. She is now a correspondent for CBS-TV news.

Maria is the star of her generation. She is a celebrity in her own right, and she travels easily in the Hollywood scene. She began working in television directly out of college. She climbed the ladder from producer to broadcaster for Westinghouse Broadcasting Corp., largely on her conviction that television was the place to be. In preparation for this, she took extensive voice coaching and lost a considerable amount of weight.

The weight loss came under the watchful eye of bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has been the only man in Maria`s life for more than six years. ”You should have seen the looks on her brothers` faces when she brought Arnold home,” says Hayes. ”The Kennedy men are macho in their way, but here was Arnold, the most macho figure of all.”

Hayes and others add quickly though, that it is Arnold`s intelligence, wit and strong Austrian streak of independence that make him attractive to Maria. ”Maria is very, very tough,” says her brother Bobby. ”The only man she could love is someone as tough or tougher, and the only one I`ve ever met who`s close to that is Arnold.”

Kara Kennedy (daughter of Joan and Edward) and Victoria Lawford (daughter of Patricia Kennedy Lawford and Peter Lawford) have followed Maria`s footsteps into television, though they are both in the breaking-in phase. The television connection also stretches to Courtney (daughter of Robert and Ethel) who is married to ABC-Sports producer Jeff Ruhe, a protege of Roone Arledge, president of ABC Sports, Inc. Courtney, who is most like Ethel, is a contented housewife.

In addition to their lives having been formed by the extraordinary circumstances of growing up in the Kennedy family, the women in this generation have also been markedly influenced by the vast social changes of their time. Their lifestyles mark a significant departure from the kind their mothers were contemplating as young adults.

”I wanted to get married and have a family. Now look–Kara got a job before I did,” joked Joan Kennedy to one friend. And Caroline entered the work force at just about the same time her mother re-entered it and for much the same reason: It became difficult in the 1970s for any woman except those busy rearing small children to justify a life that did not include work or some serious avocation.

The remarkably graceful survival of the Kennedy women of this generation under the most harrowing circumstances is a testament to sturdy family life and the mystery of family love. Their growth has also laid out a new path for women in the nation`s most famous patriarchal family. Kennedy women have progressed from hostessing the teas that helped their menfolk win elections to plotting actual political strategy behind the scenes (as Eunice and Jean Kennedy Smith have done for their brother Ted) to becoming, in this generation, out-front campaign operatives themselves.

The final step, naturally, is for the women to take their place alongside the men in the family and actually run for office. Then the Kennedy revolution would really be complete.