In times past, a man's home was his castle wherein he could lord it over wife and offspring. In America today the good family man governs his household only with the advice and consent of the governed---and usually gets more advice than consent! Such a family man is Charles Burnett in whose "parlor" this story takes place. Burnett is an ex-newspaperman, now head of the journalism school of a western university. He comes home for a quiet evening, but before bedtime his loving but free-thinking wife and daughters have drawn him into a political deal with the Governor of the State, a soul-shaking debate with one daughter's boyfriend on love and marriage, a heated squabble with the loving wife, an altercation with the state policemen and finally a head-on collision with a powerful political fixer. 

It's pandemonium when Marian, the mother of a normal American family, armed with a big psychology book, sets out to make everybody happy. It is because of this that dignified Father, president of the state university, is paraded down the street and drawn into a clash with the local political boss; daughters Chris and Katy almost lose their boyfriends, and Marian disrupts her happy home, but all ends happily in this family drama.