[Sidenote: Reasons not same as for men.]
In the preceding lecture to the parents and teachers of young men I
emphasized the importance of developing the young man's ideals of love
and marriage primarily because such ideals have so often helped men
morally in character-formation and character-protection. I feel sure
that this is not the chief reason why the ideals of young women should
be developed along parallel lines. On the contrary, it seems to me that
those representative women are right who think that the first reason
why ideals of young women should be influenced is that there is need of
a radical change in the attitude of a very common type of young women
who are flippant and disrespectful concerning love and marriage, and
whose influence on the morals of men is decidedly bad because they
often give unguided young men their first and strongest impressions
concerning women. A second reason, which is equally applicable to both
sexes, is that advance understanding of the relations of love and
marriage is likely to lead to happy and satisfactory adjustment in
marriage.
[Sidenote: Men naturally lead in love.]
Perhaps the flippant and disrespectful attitude concerning affairs of
the heart develops in many young women because they do not consciously
feel in advance of experience the demand for affection which comes so
naturally and spontaneously to many, possibly to all, normal young men
whose views of life have not been artificially twisted. I fully realize
the treacherous nature of the ground on which walks one who tries to
compare the two sexes concerning their relative attitudes towards love,
but certain it is that the novelist's descriptions of men as the
leaders and aggressors in love is not fiction but the common fact of
real life. Man's tendency towards leadership in love is not
scientifically explained by any superficial assumption that established
social conventions have repressed an original spontaneity of women. On
the contrary, there are the best of physiological and psychological
reasons for believing that the social conventions have arisen as an
expression of masculine aggressiveness and natural tendency towards
leadership in affairs of the heart. The accepted fact is that many
young women have no understanding of or demand for affection until
experience has taught them its place in life. In the records of real
life, as well as in fiction, many a young woman's possibilities of
happiness have been lost because she did not understand herself when
love came into her experience.
[Sidenote: Affection in marriage.]
Another side to the problem of the young woman's relation to love and
marriage is brought to our attention by the lamentable fact that many
wives lose interest in devoted husbands when the children come. This is
probably true in at least half the families; and many matrimonial
disharmonies are the result. This is really one of the greatest
problems of marriage which cultured women should consider seriously;
for even more than in most other sex problems, it is one for the
solution of which women are in a position to take the leading part.
This problem is especially important in these days when the household
inefficiency, personal extravagance, and desire for social position of
numerous young women of eighteen to thirty are having an enormous
influence in advancing the age of marriage because many of the best
types of young men pause and consider seriously the impossibility of
adjusting a small salary to the ideas of their women friends as to what
is the minimum of a family budget. Add to such facts a growing
pessimism of young men regarding inconstant affections of wives with
children, and the need of special educational attack is evident.
[Sidenote: The duty of parents.]
From whatever side we look at the question whether the larger
sex-education should somehow try to mold the ideals of young women
with regard to love and marriage, we see reasons why parents should
encourage their maturing daughters to get some advance understanding of
such relation. If parents are themselves unable to help their daughters
to this understanding, they can at least exert great influence by their
own attitude, and they can approve the reading of books, and perhaps
there may be opportunity for hearing lectures by women who understand
life.
[Sidenote: Books.]
With regard to good literature that will help in this line, there are
chapters in many of the books mentioned at the end of this lecture, and
in more or less indirect form in the general literature suggested in
the preceding lectures concerning young men, and in Sec. 12 which deals
with the general educational problem of marriage.