[Sidenote: Physiology and psychology of marriage.]
It is the consensus of opinion of numerous physicians, ministers, and
lawyers that a very large proportion of matrimonial disharmonies have
their foundation in the common misunderstanding of the physiology and
especially of the psychology of sex. In the opinion of many students of
sexual problems, this is the strongest reason for sex-instruction. It
is certainly a line in which limited spread of information has already
given some definite and satisfactory results. Many of my friends and
former students have helped me accumulate a long list of cases in which
scientific knowledge regarding sex has prevented and corrected
matrimonial disagreements; and having easily found so much definite
influence of sex-science upon marriage, I am forced to believe that
sex-instruction specially organized for people of marriageable age is
already giving results of tremendous importance to very many
individuals. Large numbers of young people are already awake to the
need of scientific guidance in marriage, and there is a great demand
for helpful information.
Advanced sex-instruction with reference to the problems of marriage
need not wait for general establishment of elementary instruction for
children of school ages. Lectures and books are already reaching large
numbers of adults. Such enlightenment will help in two ways, by the
influence on marriage and by preparing adults to teach children.
[Sidenote: Other knowledge needed.]
There is another side to the problem of marriage that points to need of
the larger sex-education. Physiology and psychology of sex are
fundamental; but they alone are not sufficient to complete that mutual
adjustment and understanding which marriage at the full development of
its possibilities involves. Matrimonial harmony cannot be entirely a
problem of applied science, as some superficial devotees of science
seem to think; for science can never analyze those subtle and
ever-varying qualities that go to make up what we call personality, and
marriage in its largest outlook is the intimate blending of two
personalities. Psychological and physiological knowledge will
undoubtedly help the two married individuals in their progress towards
the harmonious adjustment of their individualities; but there are many
little, but often serious, problems that the physiology and psychology
of sex cannot solve. They are problems that involve mutual affection,
comradeship, sympathy, unselfishness, cooperation, kindliness, and
devotion of husband and wife. Obviously, these can never be developed
by any formal instruction.
[Sidenote: Helpful literature.]
Probably there is no better way to help young people realize the
possibilities of matrimonial harmony than by suggesting wholesome
literature. Some of this is a part of the world's general treasure of
books that in prose and poetry, in history and romance, hold up a high
ideal of love with marriage. There is much such literature that gives
young people inspiration, but too much of it, like college life, ends
with a commencement. "And then they were married and lived happily ever
after"--is the familiar closing as the novelist rings down the curtain
after reciting only the prologue in the life drama of his two lovers.
We need more literature that does not end with the wedding march, but
which gives young people the successful solution of the problems after
marriage. Some such is available in history and biography; some in
essays. As I write there come to my mind several books that have
impressed me: Professor Palmer's "Life of Alice Freeman Palmer";
Leonard Huxley's "Life and Letters of T.H. Huxley," which gives many
intimate glimpses of the ideal home life which the great biologist
centered around Mrs. Huxley; William George Jordan's "Little Problems
of Married Life"; Orrin Cock's "Engagement and Marriage"; and that much
misunderstood[11] but helpful book "Love and Marriage" by Ellen Key.
Many of the stories by Virginia Terhune Van de Water, published in the
magazines and collected in a book entitled "Why I Left my Husband"
(Moffatt, Yard), deal with real problems of married life.
[Sidenote: Similar education of the sexes.]
The problems of co-education and coordinate education have not a little
bearing on the adjustment of the two sexes in marriage. In these days
when vocational education is fashionable in theory and is attracting
attention in practice, we are told that co-education and coordinate
education are mistakes because they provide the same training for both
sexes. We are told that girls must be educated for their vocation of
home-making, while boys must be educated for business, trades, or
professions. Everywhere in this current movement for vocational
education we find the emphasis placed on making education for the two
sexes just as dissimilar as possible. Fortunately for the educational
adjustments of the two sexes to each other, much of the present-day
discussion that demands extensive sex specialization of education
cannot be made practical and the training of the two sexes will
inevitably continue to be quite similar, with at most a limited amount
of time spent on application of certain knowledge to practical ends
that are chiefly of interest to one sex only. By far the greater part
of education from kindergarten through the university is in the nature
of the fundamentals of knowledge and will continue to be essentially
similar for both sexes. For illustration, the writer happens to be
connected with a college which offers a four-year course and graduate
work specially arranged with reference to household arts. Surely here
is an opportunity for education far different from that of the typical
college for men. As a matter of fact, there is great similarity. The
greater part of the four years is filled with general courses in
English, modern languages, chemistry, biology, physics, sociology,
economics, and fine arts, while a minor part of the curriculum consists
of courses in cookery, clothing, and household administration. The
general courses are in essentials not different from courses in
colleges for men. Here and there instructors select materials and in
other ways relate the general courses to household arts, but after all
a girl who completes these courses has acquired the same educational
fundamentals that her brother gets in Columbia College or in any other
standard college for men. It is only, then, in the cookery, clothing,
and administration that there is sex-differentiated education, and even
in these the practice necessary to acquire proficiency in technique is
the chief peculiarity. So far as fundamental knowledge is concerned;
cookery is chiefly an application of chemistry, physics, and physiology
that could easily be made clear to one who had completed courses in
these sciences in a college for men; dress design is an application of
fine arts and its construction is a mechanical problem. The mental
problems involved in dress design and making cannot be far different
from house design and construction which are supposed to be primarily
adapted to men.
[Sidenote: Little differentiation.]
On the whole, then, there is really little possibility of
sex-differentiated education. This, I insist, is a fortunate fact of
vast importance in the mutual adjustment of the two sexes in marriage.
There could be no adjustment on an intelligent basis if education could
be utterly dissimilar. There can be perfect adjustment only when the
two individuals are adjusted harmoniously, and that means similar
outlooks on life's problems.
[Sidenote: Need of sex-education for feminism.]
Many of the problems of the modern feministic movement are such as to
demand rational education of both women and men with reference to sex
and marriage. Let me quote C. Gasquoine Hartley, whose suggestive
Chapters VIII and IX in her "Truth About Woman" (Dodd, Mead) deserve to
live long after the readable but unscientifically applied earlier
chapters are consigned to oblivion:
"To hear many women talk it would appear that the new ideal is a
one-sexed world. A great army of women have espoused the task of
raising their sex out of subjection. For such a duty the strength
and energy of passion is required. Can this task be performed if
the woman to any extent indulges in sex--otherwise subjection to
man? Sexuality debases, even reproduction and birth are regarded
as 'nauseating.' Woman is not free, only because she has been the
slave to the primitive cycle of emotions which belong to physical
love. The renunciation, the conquest of sex--it is this that must
be gained. As for man, he has been shown up, women have found him
out; his long-worn garments of authority and his mystery and
glamour have been torn into shreds--woman will have none of him.
"Now obviously these are over-statements, yet they are the logical
outcome of much of the talk that one hears. It is the visible sign
of our incoherence and error, and in the measure of these follies
we are sent back to seek the truth. Women need a robuster courage
in the face of love, a greater faith in their womanhood, and in
the scheme of Life. Nothing can be gained from the child's folly
in breaking the toys that have momentarily ceased to please. The
misogamist type of woman cannot fail to prove as futile as the
misogamist man. Not 'Free _from_ man' is the watch-cry of women's
emancipation that surely is to be, but 'Free _with_ man.'"
[Sidenote: Sex and intellectualism.]
And further on the same author, considering the problem of the women of
the common type that are classified as a "third sex," that of
temperamental neuter, says:
"Economic conditions are compelling women to enter with men into
the fierce competition of our disordered social state. Partly due
to this reason, though much more, as I think, to the strong
stirring in woman of her newly-discovered self, there has arisen
what I should like to call an over-emphasized Intellectualism.
Where sex is ignored there is bound to lurk danger. Every one
recognizes the significance of the advance in particular cases of
women towards a higher intellectual individuation, and the social
utility of those women who have been truly the pioneers of the new
freedom; but this does not lessen at all the disastrous influence
of an ideal which holds up the renunciation of the natural rights
of love and activities of women, and thus involves an irreparable
loss to the race by the barrenness of many of its finest types.
The significance of such Intellectuals must be limited, because
for them the possibility of transmission by inheritance of their
valuable qualities is cut off, and hence the way is closed to a
further progress. And, thus, we are brought back to that simple
truth from which we started; there are two sexes, the female and
the male, on their specific differences and resemblances blended
together in union every true advance in progress depends--on the
perfected woman and the perfected man."
[Sidenote: Young women misled by sexual pessimists.]
One who studies carefully the various aspects of the extreme feministic
movement must admit that there are many signs of the dangers which the
above quotations point out so clearly. Of course, we cannot believe in
the sincerity of all of the numerous women of thirty-five to fifty
years who pretend to ignore sex completely. Probably most of them have
discovered that they have misunderstood themselves; but it is also
probable that they have discovered too late for making a readjustment
in their own lives. However, it matters little whether such women have
really succeeded in ignoring sex. The real problem for educational
attack lies in the fact that such women often succeed in proselyting
young women under twenty-five, and these in turn may not come to see
the real truth about sex and life until ten or fifteen years later.
Clearly, organized education must protect young women against such
influences.
[Sidenote: The greatest good in sex-education.]
The greatest good which may come from the sex-education movement is not
prevention or elimination of social diseases, it is not improved
health, it is not general acceptance of the moral law of sex, it is not
one or all these that are devoutly to be hoped for; but far greater
than such possible results from sex-education, it will bring to many a
man and woman a deeper, nobler, and purer knowledge of what sex means
for the coming race and of what it means now to each individual who
realizes life's fullest possibilities in conjugal affection which
culminates in new life and new motives for more affection. Such an
understanding of sex in relation to home life will help this old world
more than anything else which sex-education may accomplish.
[Sidenote: The greatest sex problem.]
The problems of sex and marriage deserve far more attention than can be
given in this lecture. I am convinced that knowledge of sex in its
physical, psychical, social, and aesthetic aspects is the only sure
foundation for harmonious marriage under modern conditions. Therefore,
I believe this to be the greatest sex problem open to educational
attack.