THE change in the U.S. attitude toward sex mores has been developing gradually over a period of years. It made its appearance in books, theater, cinema, magazines, newspapers, television, the courts, on the campus--and even in the pulpit. Months ago, the editors of TIME decided that this development in U.S. life should be dealt with, fully and frankly, in a cover story.

All TIME bureaus in the U.S., as well as many part-time correspondents and the Paris and London staffs, were called on to contribute to the story. They interviewed hundreds of people--sociologists, psychologists, historians, educators, clergymen, judges, law-enforcement officers, physicians, grandparents, parents and teenagers. They found almost everyone --from the most knowing experts to sometimes bewildered parents--interested in discussing the subject and conscious, in one way or another, of the trend. The correspondents' reports, plus a wealth of existing research, provided an imposing collection of material for the story. The researcher in charge is a mother, the writer a father, and the editor a grandfather. Their greatest task, they felt, was extracting general conclusions that would be fair to all.

THE cover painting was selected after a long search through existing works of art, particularly contemporary American painting and sculpture. It is Siesta, painted in 1962 by John Koch, 54, a noted Manhattan artist who has done one previous cover for TIME, Britain's Princess Margaret (Nov. 7, 1955). The room is the Kochs' bedroom at their country home on Long Island; the models were an art gallery director who is a friend of the Kochs', and a maid in their employ. Painter Koch (pronounced coke), whose wife is Dora Zaslavsky, a teacher of concert pianists, is perhaps best known for his portraiture, but he has dealt sensitively and often with what he calls "the man-woman theme."

Siesta is in the collection of Dr. and Mrs. James H. Semans of Durham, N.C., who first saw it in 1962 when they visited the Kraushaar Galleries in Manhattan. Later, Dr. Semans decided to buy the painting as a Christmas present for his wife, a daughter of the late U.S. Diplomat A. J. Drexel Biddle Jr. "Our first impulse was to hang it in the bedroom or the upstairs hall," said Dr. Semans, "but the painting was so lovely that we decided it should go in the living room."

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