CHAPTER XIV_Vocational Guidance for Girls

MARRIAGE

Marriage may, or may not, in these days, be the opening door into the

homemaker's career. Many a young woman is a homemaker before she

marries. On the other hand, women sometimes marry without any thought

of making a home.

But, after all, it is safe to assume that marriage and homemaking do

go hand in hand. The great majority of wives become managers of homes

of one sort or another. Shall we then frankly educate our girls for

marriage--"dangle a wedding ring ever before their eyes"? Or shall we

regard marriages as "made in heaven" and keep our hands off the whole

matter?

The proportion of marriages in the United States which terminate in

divorce was in 1910 one in twelve. Divorce in this country is now

three times as common as forty years ago. The success or failure of

marriages cannot, however, be measured merely by the divorce test. We

cannot avoid the knowledge that many other unhappy unions are endured

until release comes with death. When we say unhappy marriages, we mean

not only those which become unendurable, but all those in which

marriage impedes the development and hence the efficiency of either

party to the contract. Unhappy marriages include not only the

mismated, but also those whose unhappiness in married life is due to

their own or their mate's misconception of what marriage really means.

It is obviously impossible even to estimate the number of marriages

which are happy or unhappy; but we are safe in saying that the

processes of adjustment in many cases are far harder than they ought

to be, and that many marriages which seemingly ought to bring

happiness fail of real success.

In view of the fact that so many marriages fall short of what they

might be, it would seem that some sort of assistance to the girl in

choosing a husband and to the young man in choosing a wife would be

wise, such as the instruction we give boys and girls to enable them to

be successful in the industrial world. In short, it is not enough to

prepare girls for homemaking by making all our references to marriage

indirect. Young men and women are entitled to more knowledge of

marriage, its rights, privileges, and duties; they need to realize

that in these days of complex living marriage is a difficult relation

which requires their best energies and wisest thought.

The modern marriage differs from the marriage of earlier centuries in

direct proportion as the status of woman has changed. The ancient

marriage, and indeed the medieval one, and the marriage of our own

grandmother's time began with submission and usually ended with

subjection. But the modern marriage at its best is a spiritual and

material partnership. It is the modern marriage at its best and

otherwise with which we have to do.

Half a century ago girls married at eighteen or even earlier, took

charge of their households, were mothers of good-sized families at

twenty-eight or thirty, and were frequently grandmothers at forty.

Nowadays early marriage is the exception. For years the marriage age

has been steadily rising, until some students profess to be alarmed at

a prospect of marriage disappearing, the maternal instinct becoming

lost by disuse, and the race finally becoming extinct. However, the

maximum marriage age, at least for the present, seems to have been

reached, and statistics show a slight dropping within the last two or

three years.

The forces operating to fix the marriage age are exceedingly complex.

The higher education of girls has undoubtedly been a large factor in

the postponement of marriage. Its effect has been wrought in a variety

of ways. The increasing years in schoolroom and lecture hall have been

directly responsible in many cases. The ambitions aroused account for

many more. The increased ability of girls to earn their own living and

public acceptance of their doing so have practically removed "marriage

as a trade" from the consideration of girls and their parents. Girls

no longer need to marry in order to transfer the burden of their

support from father to husband. Instead they may "go to work." And

once at work they are often reluctant to give up a personal income for

the uncertainties of sharing what a husband earns. Then, too, the

broadening effect of education makes marriage in the abstract a less

absorbing, momentous subject for the girl's thoughts. Also the rebound

toward selfishness coincident with woman's "emancipation" leads girls

to put off what they are sometimes led to consider a sacrifice of

themselves. The tragedies of the divorce courts are directly

responsible for many a girlish determination not to marry, a

determination which is broken only when the first zest of mature life

has passed and when the woman begins to long for the home ties she has

resolved to deny herself and decides to take the risk. The increased

cost of living and the ever-increasing responsibilities of rearing,

educating, and launching a family of children lead many young people

to postpone marriage until they can command a larger income. The

strain of modern industrial life, with its fierce competitions and its

early discard of the elderly and unfit, finds many girls who would

otherwise marry burdened with the care of parents who can ill spare

the daughter's help.

[Illustration: The Halliday Historic Photograph Co.

LOUISA M. ALCOTT

Miss Alcott's lifelong devotion to the interests of her family is a

well-known story. She made a happy home for them, and at the same time

attained marked success in the literary field.]

If all these obstacles to early marriage could be overcome, the

question of the wisest time for marrying might be approached fairly

and squarely on its merits.

Too early marriage means immaturity in choice, with the possibility

always of unfortunate mistakes and sad awakening. Too late marriage,

on the other hand, means settled convictions which often result in

that incompatibility which seeks relief in divorce. The plasticity of

youth at least _promises_ adaptability. The mature judgment of later

years ought to afford a wise choice. Between extreme youth then and a

too settled maturity is the wise time.

In order to approach the ideal in the marriage relation, the time of

marriage should be so placed that the girl is (1) physically fit, (2)

fully educated, (3) broadened by some experience with the world.

She must not be too old to bear children safely, or to rear them

sympathetically as they approach the difficult years. She must not be

physically worn by excessive industrial service, nor with enthusiasms

burned out by the same cause. Probably between twenty-two and

twenty-five the girl reaches the height of physical fitness. She may

also by that time have completed a liberal education, and she may even

have done that and also have put her training to useful service. It

would be better if girls completed their college courses earlier than

most do. However, since the great majority of girls do not have a

college education, the generally increased age of marriage cannot

rightfully be laid, as many seem to lay it, at the doors of the

college women. Schemes of education in the future will undoubtedly try

to remedy the defect of present systems in this respect. If most girls

could finish their training in college or professional school at

twenty, as some do now, the world would be rewarded by earlier

marriages and probably more of them. There would be more children,

reared by younger and more enthusiastic mothers. The more difficult

professions, which could not be successfully undertaken by the girl of

twenty, would then be reserved, as they generally are now, for the

women whose ambition is unusually strong and absorbing. Attempts are

frequently made to show that ambition is becoming an inordinately

prominent quality in all women, but there are few facts to support so

wide a contention.

[Illustration: Photograph by Paul Thompson

RUTH MCENERY STUART

Mrs. Stuart was one of those in whom the talent for homemaking and

the talent for creative literary work existed side by side. On her

husband's plantation in Arkansas she found many of the types for the

characters in her stories]

The girl graduate of twenty, reinforced by from two to five years of

work in the vocation she has chosen, is usually fit, physically and

mentally, for marriage. More than that, she may by that age, usually,

be trusted to know what she wants, even in a husband, if she is ever

going to know.

In the day when girls married nearly always "in their teens," wise

choice of a husband called for selection of a man considerably older

than the girl herself. This disparity is less common in these days,

and is really less desirable than it once was. The girl of the earlier

time reached maturity of mind earlier than the girl of to-day with her

prolonged education, and much earlier than the boy of her day did. He

was still being educated in school or as an apprentice, and was hardly

ready to undertake the responsibility of a family at an age when the

girl's scanty education was long since completed and it was considered

high time that her support was laid upon a husband's shoulders.

It used to be said, "Men keep their youth better than women," so that

any disparity in age at the time of marriage was soon lost. This is no

longer true as it was once. The early marriage, with early and

excessive childbearing, overwork, and the numerous restrictions that

custom laid upon her, were responsible for woman's loss of youth.

These conditions no longer exist. The woman of forty or fifty can now

usually hold her own with the man of her own age in point of youth.

[Illustration: LOUISE HOMER AND HER FAMILY

Madame Homer's great success in the difficult art of operatic singing

has by no means interfered with her career as a homemaker.]

Another consideration in favor of more nearly equal age lies in the

fact that formerly men did not look for wives who were their mental

equals. They did not really desire mental equals as wives. To-day they

do, or, if there still lingers in the minds of some of them the old

notion that wives must be clinging vines, the lingering notion will

soon be gone. The marriage of equality possesses too many advantages

for both parties to be thrown aside. The wife who can think, who is

mature enough to be capable of real partnership, is the wife surely of

to-morrow, if not of to-day.

Among the forces that control marriage may be mentioned (1) physical

attraction, (2) continued social relationships, (3) dissimilarity, (4)

affection, (5) barter.

It is usually difficult to say of any marriage that any one of these

forces alone caused the mating. It may have been physical attraction

together with everyday companionship; or physical attraction and

dissimilarity or strangeness, resulting in what we know as love at

first sight. Or it may have been affection of slow growth, or

affection with an element of appreciation of worldly advantage, or it

may have been a little physical attraction with a great deal of desire

for social position or wealth, or, ugliest of all, it may have been

pure barter, without personal attraction of any sort. For these worldy

advantages you offer, I will sell you my body and my soul.

To secure the finest marriages for girls we must insure three

conditions: (1) high ideals of marriage among our adolescents, (2)

better knowledge of men, and (3) wise companionships during the years

from fourteen to twenty-five.

[Illustration: MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON

The South is justly proud of this poet of no mean rank who gave

herself unstintedly to her home duties and responsibilities]

Physical attraction on one or both sides is undoubtedly the greatest

force in marriage selection. It is only when physical attraction

exerts its influence upon a girl whose ideal of a husband is low or

vague or incorrect that the danger is great. Physical attraction is

not love, but it may be--often it is--the basis of love when it exists

between two who are suited to a life together.

Generally speaking, girls will find married life easier, and their

husbands will find life more satisfactory, when the two have been

reared with approximately the same ideals. The girl who falls in love

with a man largely because he is "different" from the boys among whom

she has grown up often finds that very difference a stumbling block to

domestic happiness. Marriages across such chasms where there should be

common ground are more hazardous than between those whose education,

social training, friends, and beliefs are of the same type. When they

do succeed, they undoubtedly are the richer for the variety of

experience husband and wife have to give each other; and, too, they

show an adaptability on the part of one or both which argues well for

continued happiness. Commonly, however, they do not succeed.

There are, also, deeper matters than these to be considered. Is this

man or this woman worthy of lifelong devotion? Is the love he offers

or she offers in return for the love you offer, the love that gives or

the love that merely takes? Has he been a success at something,

anything, that counts? Has he a sense of responsibility in marriage

and the burdens it brings? Does he desire a home? Do his views as to

children reflect man's natural desire to found a family or merely the

selfish desire for the freedom and luxury which the absence of

children may make possible? Has he a right to approach fatherhood--is

his body physically and morally clean?

[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood

COLONEL AND MRS. ROOSEVELT WITH MEMBERS OF THEIR FAMILY

Colonel Roosevelt's own family was preëminently one in which the

father shared with the mother a keen sense of the responsibilities of

marriage and the highest ideals of home life]

These are serious questions with which to weight the wings of a young

man's or a young woman's fancy. But the attraction which cannot stand

before them is not safe as a basis for marriage. Many a young man or

woman has willfully turned closed eyes to the selfishness or the

irresponsibility which will later wreck a home, because attraction

blinded common sense.

Barter, the lowest form of marriage, exists and has always existed

whenever the material benefits that either husband or wife expects to

derive from the connection are the impelling forces in the union. The

woman desires wealth, social position, a title--or perhaps nothing

more than security from poverty or the necessity of work outside the

home, or perhaps no more than the mere security of a home itself. The

man in other cases desires wealth, or social position, or a wife who

will grace his fine home, or some business connection which the

marriage will afford. And upon these things men and women build, or

attempt to build, the foundations of home life.

It is not true of course that every girl of moderate means, or without

means, who marries a man of wealth does so because of his money. Nor

is it always true when the cases are reversed. Love may be as real

between those two as between any others. But when it is true that the

marriage is an exchange of commodities, it is no different from

prostitution under other circumstances. In fact, it is prostitution

under cover, without acceptance of the stigma which for centuries has

been the portion of voluntary selling of the body to him who cares to

buy.

[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood

JULIA WARD HOWE AND HER GRANDDAUGHTER

In the life of Mrs. Howe was exemplified the identity of ideals of

husband and wife. They worked side by side in the literary field and

in their philanthropic and reform work]

Eugenics, a modern science which aims at race regeneration, lays down

many laws and restrictions for those who are selecting their mates. By

the following of these laws and restrictions in the selection of

husbands and wives, undesirable traits in the offspring are to be

weeded out and desirable; ones are to be fostered and increased.

That these laws should be studied with the care used by breeders of

plants and animals goes without saying. That if they are followed

strictly the number of marriages would be materially reduced, at least

for a considerable time, is doubtless true. That marriages in which

eugenics has played the major part in selection will present new

problems is probably equally true. If marriages were mere temporary

unions, for the purpose of obtaining offspring, eugenic principles

could not be too exactly nor too coldly applied to the selection of

mates. But since marriage implies living together and becoming, or

continuing to be, worthy members of the community, and since the

offspring are fashioned no less by the conditions of their upbringing

than by heredity, selection of mates must involve more than looking

for eugenically perfect fathers and mothers for the generations yet

unborn. Eugenics, however, is in infancy as a science, and, like the

human infants it would protect, must react to the environment in which

it finds itself and must feel the chastening hand of time before its

value can be known. Agitation in the direction of allowing posterity

to be "well born" can never be out of place. What being well born is

and how it shall be attained is a worthy subject of research. As a

cold, exact science, however, eugenics can never hope for application

without some consideration of the personal equation which makes

marriage at its best not a mating merely, but a joining of souls.

Choosing a husband or a wife is, after all, merely the beginning of

the marriage problem. Good husbands are not discovered, but made, from

originally good or perhaps indifferent or in rare cases from even poor

material, by the reaction of married life upon what was previously

mere "man." Even so with wives.

[Illustration: CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE

Mrs. Crane, an expert on sanitation, has successfully applied the

principles of good housekeeping to civic affairs in many cities, and

has thus made women more of a factor in the community at large]

The successful marriage presupposes unselfishness, even carried if

necessary to the point of sacrifice, but it must be unselfishness for

two, not for one alone. Neither the "child wife" who must be carried

as a burden, nor the complacent husband who forms the center of a

smoothly revolving little world patiently turned by a silent wife, has

any part in the marriage of equality--the only marriage worthy of the

name.

The successful marriage calls also for freedom--again for two. Women

sometimes hesitate to marry because the old idea of marriage involved

loss of individuality, and they have little faith in men's readiness

to accept any other idea. Men, on the other hand, fear to marry

because the "new woman" demands so much for herself--development, a

career, a chance to work out her own ideals of life. The man sees

little in this for himself but the "second fiddle" which woman for

centuries played to his first. Ideal marriages, however, do take place

in which there is no sacrifice of personality--in which, indeed, each

lives a fuller life than would have been possible without the

marriage. For this to be realized, there must be full recognition of

the responsibility of each for his or her own deeds, and a standing

aside while each works out his destiny. This does not mean a

separation of interests nor an abandonment of common counsel. It means

merely that in individual matters each must have the freedom enjoyed

before marriage took place. It must mean for women some sort of

economic independence, and in addition a spiritual independence such

as men enjoy. When this freedom is cheerfully given, and in return the

wife gives a like liberty to the husband, the great incentive to

concealments and deceptions or to nagging and controversy is removed.

The petty annoyances of the day are lessened, trust is increased,

and both man and woman find their strength increased rather than

depleted by the relation.

[Illustration: Courtesy of George Herbert Palmer

ALICE FREEMAN PALMER

Mrs. Palmer's was one of the ideal marriages in which husband and

wife each lived a fuller life than would have been possible without

the marriage. Happy in her home life, Mrs. Palmer yet had time to

achieve a brilliant success in administrative educational work]

Common interests are an almost certain safeguard in most marriages.

Common duties are more often than not a source of difficulty. An

untold number of matrimonial ventures fail because of inadequate

responsibility in adjustment of expenses to income. Many more are

rendered inharmonious by failure of parents to agree as to the

management of children. In both these directions increased knowledge

will do much to secure harmonious action. Family traditions are more

than likely to clash when they are adopted as principles of family

discipline. "Children must mind," says the father, in memory and

emulation of his father's method with him. "Children must not be

coerced," says the mother, who has been reared by a different method.

Clearly a course in child psychology would have been of value to these

parents in determining a common procedure. There is probably no

subject upon which either father or mother finds it so hard to yield

to the other's way as upon this. Each feels, and rightly, that the

material to be trained is so precious, and that failure, if it comes,

will be so stupendous, that neither dares do what seems wrong to his

own mind. Nothing but common knowledge and a predetermined policy can

solve this problem so near to the root of success or failure in

marriage itself.

Girls are commonly taught too little of the duties of married women to

their husbands. They look for a lifetime of unalloyed bliss. If they

fail to realize their impossible dream, they turn their faces toward

the divorce court. Many girls have had too smooth a pathway, too

little of responsibility, and too little of disappointment, before

undertaking the serious duty of establishing and maintaining a

lifelong partnership. There has been little in their lives to

prepare them for long-continued relations of any sort. On the other

hand, the same girls have equally little idea of what they have a

right to expect of marriage for themselves. Much of the necessary

adjustment is left to chance.

[Illustration: Photograph by Paul Thompson

AMELIA E. BARR

Far from interfering with her career, Mrs. Barr's home interests were

the inspiration for it. Thrown on her own resources by the death of

her husband, who sacrificed himself in a yellow fever epidemic in

Texas, Mrs. Barr took up writing to make a living for her children]

Scarcely any phase of woman's part in marriage is arousing more

attention at present than the question of childbearing. Women, and

especially educated women, are accused of sterility or of

intentionally avoiding motherhood. They are said to believe that

children interfere with their careers, that they can render greater

service to the world in public work than in childbearing. They "prefer

idleness and luxury to the care of a family." The "maternal instinct

is fading." They threaten us with "race suicide," the "extinction of

mankind," a silent world given over to dumb beasts who have not yet

learned the principles of "birth control" and "family limitation."

Thus on the one hand.

On the other: "The world is better served by the small family well

reared than by the large one necessarily less well cared for." "Women

are not merely the instruments of nature for multiplying mankind. They

have a right to some time for living their own lives." "The maternal

instinct has not faded, but merely come under control of a wisdom

which directs that it shall not bring forth what it cannot care for."

And so on, with added arguments for either side.

In all these discussions of birth control the fathers or the husbands

who desire not to be fathers are usually left in the background. As a

matter of fact, however, men as well as women desire luxury and

freedom from the care of a family. It is a general sign of the times,

not a characteristic of one sex alone. Men as well as women fear for

their ability to care for and educate large families. With the

demands of our present complex existence bearing heavily upon them,

one can scarcely wonder at the hesitation of either man or woman to

add again and again to their already pressing cares. There is but one

remedy--not to cut off education for women, as some suggest, but to

learn the joys of a simpler life which will afford people time and

strength and means to bear and rear their young. To this end let us

teach our girls and our boys something of the essentials of a useful

and a happy life, and teach them how to eliminate the non-essentials

which waste their time and spirit.

Who can best instruct the girl in what we may call the ethics of

marriage? Her mother? Usually the mother's viewpoint is too personal.

Her teacher? Most of her teachers are unmarried and know little more

about the subject than she does herself. A specially selected married

teacher? Perhaps, but only if she is a deep student of human nature

and of marriage from a scientific standpoint.

An ideal course for every girl somewhere before her education can be

considered complete would cover "woman's life" as (1) industrial

worker, (2) wife, (3) mother, (4) citizen, (5) civic force.

Here, without undue "dangling of the wedding ring," girls might study

marriage as an important phase of woman's life. Such a course,

simplified or elaborated to suit the circumstances of the girls who

participate, might well be given in all girls' schools and colleges,

in continuation schools, in settlement-house clubs and classes, in

rural clubs and neighborhood centers. For, reduced to its simplest

terms, marriage in the tenement rests upon the same principles as

marriage in the mansion.

Happily married, or happy unmarried, with her life work stretching

before her, the girl enters upon her heritage of work. We have

trained her to be a homemaker, but we need feel no regret in regard to

her training if she finds her life work in an office or a schoolroom

or a hospital. She may never "keep house," although we hope that she

will some time help to make a home. But, whether she becomes a

homemaker or not, a true understanding and appreciation of the value

of the home and a knowledge of the principles underlying its

maintenance will make her a broader woman and a better worker than she

could otherwise be. In the home, or wherever she may be, she cannot

fail to show the girls who are growing up about her what home means to

her and what it means to the race. And in her hands we may safely

leave the future of the home.