[Sidenote: Women should have ideals.]
Among those who agree heartily with the proposition that by education
the young man's attitude towards womanhood (Sec. 30) should be cultivated
I find, to my surprise, many who object to any parallel attempt to
influence young woman's ideals of manhood. I say that I am surprised
because it has long seemed to me that many of the faults of men are
largely traceable to the fact that women as a sex have not been able to
hold a high standard for manhood; and, therefore, I wonder when some
thinking women question the desirability of trying to influence young
women by organized instruction. Of course, we must not forget that
before the coming of the economic and social freedom of women there
were very few of them who were able to maintain a stand for their
ideals of manhood; but this is no longer true in a great and rapidly
increasing group of the individualized and educated classes. Therefore,
it seems clear that if the better groups of women want a higher type of
manhood capable of better adjustment in marriage, it is important that
they consider ways and means of molding the minds of young women with
reference to ideal manhood.
[Sidenote: Ideals and disappointment.]
Occasionally I have met a strange view of life in some men and women
who have grown pessimistic from revelations concerning the
sexual-social problems and who think that true manhood is so rare that
emphasizing it with young women will lead to ideals that can rarely be
realized in actual life; and therefore, for women so influenced there
will be increasing discontent and disappointment in marriage or
deliberate celibacy. No doubt this is in part true, as witness the many
highly educated women who have written or said that there seem to be
few attractive marriageable men of their own age. However, it is rare
indeed that such women say that life would have meant more without the
higher education and its resulting ideals that have stood in the way of
marriage such as might be happy for uneducated women. This is in line
with the fact that many cultivated men and women find that education
has given unattained ideals and unsatisfied ambitions and strenuous
life and disappointments, but it is rare that they long for the
care-free and animal-like happiness of the tropical savage. We must
remember that education gives us keener feeling for life's pains, but
it also compensates by giving soul-satisfying appreciation of its joys.
So it seems reasonable to believe that while educating young women to
believe in and demand a higher ideal of manhood in its natural
relations to womanhood will certainly make disappointments more
heart-pressing for some, it will just as surely make realization the
supreme happiness of others. And as adjustment of manhood and womanhood
through the larger sex-education becomes more and more abundant and
more and more perfected, the sum total of human happiness will
increase.
Looking thus towards the ultimate good, I must refuse to accept the
hopeless and depressing view that all young women should be kept
ignorant of their relation to men and life in order that the absence of
ideals of manhood may protect some women against possible
disappointment by men.