THE MARRIAGE RELATION
As several of you expect to be married soon I think it would be well to
talk briefly about the cause of so much unhappiness in marriage.
It has been estimated that only about five per cent. of all marriages
are successful. Is this true, and if true, why? If five per cent. made a
success of marriage, why could not the other ninety-five? Marriage is a
science to be studied by the prospective bride and groom in order that
they may be ranked with the five per cent. and not make a failure of
their married life. Few would enter the marriage relation if convinced
that it would be a failure. The prospective bride looks around among her
acquaintances and sees the lack of true happiness, thinks that her case
will be an exception, that her marriage will turn out all right and then
goes blindly ahead into the new life without any preparation.
A large percentage of the unhappiness among married couples comes
through a misunderstanding of the marital relations. A great deal of
this is due to ignorance on the part of the bride and thoughtlessness on
the part of the husband. This is partly due to defective education
during childhood in regard to the sexes. The training of boys and girls
in this matter is very different. Knowledge pertaining to the sexual
life is talked over very freely among boys, so that by the time the boy
is of a marriageable age he is pretty well posted. With girls it is
quite different. It would be considered very immodest for a girl to
discuss such matters. She does not feel free even to talk with her
mother or other adviser, and so she goes to the altar ignorant of many
things she should know. Then during the first few days of married life
this knowledge so overwhelms her and often gives her such a severe shock
that it leaves a lasting impression. She has no way of knowing that her
husband is just like other men. She is liable to regard him as a brute
and resent his attentions.
Such a condition of affairs is altogether wrong, but the girl is not to
be blamed. Had she been taught what to expect, much of the unhappiness
of married life might have been avoided. If taught correctly, the girl
should regard the sexual act as the culmination of true love. It should
be regarded as something sacred, something that makes her and her
husband as one. Fortunate indeed is the girl whose husband realizes this
lack of knowledge and gently leads her to desire the fulfillment of
love. Unfortunate is the girl whose husband regards this act only as the
gratification of animal passions--something it is a wife's duty to
endure as such.
Passion or sex sense is a sign of maturity. It is the calling for a
mate. All animals have this sense and nearly all animals have a mating
season. The billing and cooing of the birds in the springtime is an
expression of this sense--the love sense. It is possessed by every
little insect. Only by knowing their habits do we see the expression of
it. This sense is nothing of which one should be ashamed. It was
God-given for a divine purpose.
In the study of plants we learn that the pollen or male element must
unite with the ovum or female element in order to produce the seed that
will develop into the new plant. The same fact is true of the human
race. Before pregnancy can take place there must be a meeting and fusion
of the vital elements of the two sexes. This fertilization of the ovum
or joining of the male and female elements is called conception. It is
brought about by coitus, by means of which the semen of the male is
deposited in the vagina of the female. This act is called insemination,
although conception does not follow unless the ovum and spermatozoon
(life-giving element of the semen) come together and unite. When this
occurs the woman conceives and enters upon a period of pregnancy. The
time at which conception is least likely to occur is from the
seventeenth to the twenty-third day after menstruation ceases.
During the first year of married life couples are liable to abuse the
love sense by over-indulgence and thereby use up too much of their
energy. This affects their health, especially that of the young wife,
who finds herself always being tired and is unable to account for it.
Her daily tasks become a drudgery, for she is too exhausted to have the
strength to perform them. After the tasks finally are finished, she is
too tired to don the afternoon dress, and so easily falls into untidy
habits. This brings its train of results. The young husband, on his
return from work, fails to find his wife the bright, attractive girl he
married and gradually grows indifferent.
The relation of intercourse to conception is a problem that each husband
and wife must settle for themselves. Some educators claim that only for
the one is the other allowable, that the bearing and raising of children
is the sole aim of married life. Naturally this is the fundamental end
of the sex instinct. But in the present-day, practical married life it
would be impossible to convince the majority that the impulse of sex
gratification was given to them for this one purpose only.
The sense of well being and the increased capacity for work, that
follows a moderate exercise of this function, tends to convince us that
it has a beneficial effect upon the entire system if exercised
moderately. As to what constitutes moderation or temperance depends upon
the individual. What would be moderation to some would be excess to
others. It may be taken as a general rule that the after-effects will
indicate the amount. If the after-effects are irritability, extreme
lassitude or a diminution of the love or respect for the other then
there has been excess. If the after-effect is a sense of well-being so
that the next day one feels more inclined to take up the duties of life,
then it may be considered that moderation has been practiced. A certain
amount of energy is consumed in any act and, as in our present age we
need a great deal of energy to carry on our everyday business, in the
majority of cases fresh vitality cannot be spared for an expenditure
under several days or a week. Excess in anything tends to bring on
premature old age, for the nervous force is expended faster than it is
manufactured.
Frequently women seem to be endowed with an excess of energy which
manifests itself in various forms. Besides this, the woman does not seem
to have control of her nervous energy but wastes it in numerous ways.
With many a woman the regularity and moderation attendant on a happy
married life seems to have a regulating effect upon her whole nervous
system, so that she becomes more calm and has greater control over her
energies.
Wrong training or lack of training in matters pertaining to the
relationship of the sexes and to the management of a home may be given
as the cause of the majority of unhappy marriages.
There must be something wrong with our system of education when the aim
of this education seems to be to prepare the girl for a temporary
position in an office or store or for a gay social life; and when there
is no preparation for the important work of home-making and the rearing
of children. A girl would not be expected to run a complicated and
delicate piece of machinery without having adequate instruction
concerning the necessary care of it. But the girl is allowed to go
blindly into marriage and is expected to manage her home and care for
her children with practically no preparation. Nowadays we require
experts for every position except that of motherhood, but we apparently
do not consider that of enough importance to waste any time preparing
for it. A man requires his gardener or office assistant to be trained,
but the mother of his children need know nothing regarding the
preparation for their coming. Too often her only preparation is that of
making numerous clothes. She takes no measures to insure a healthy
child.
If girls would make a study of home-making and motherhood and enter into
marriage with a more definite realization of its obligations we would
have fewer unhappy marriages and fewer divorce cases. Some women, owing
to false education, wish to have all the advantages of marriage without
assuming its cares. Such a woman expects a man to be willing to provide
her with all the gifts of the gods, with all the luxuries of life, but
in return is not willing to become the mother of his children nor to
exert herself to make their mutual habitation a home and not merely a
house--a place in which to eat and sleep.
A large part of the average woman's life is devoted to home-making and
the rearing of children. Usually she is poorly prepared for this work.
The early years of a girl's life are spent in the acquisition of a store
of general knowledge, especially that derived from books and related to
subjects generally considered necessary to "culture." During this
period, her time is so occupied with her studies that her mother thinks
it would be an imposition to ask her to do any housework, so the girl
grows up without much knowledge of the care of a home. True, she often
is enabled to do a few things. She learns to make cake and several
varieties of candy and perhaps can fashion a collar that is the envy of
her schoolmates. Sometimes she even helps her mother with the dishes or
the dusting, but it is easier for the mother to take the responsibility
of the housekeeping than it is to teach her daughter to do so, and
besides her daughter always is so busy with school affairs. She has no
time in which to learn the science of housekeeping.
After the completion of her course in the common or high school, a few
months, sometimes, are devoted to the preparation for a certain line of
work which is to occupy her time for a few years. Very few girls, except
those who enter the professions, expect to continue their work after
marriage and nearly all look forward to marriage. If we place a girl at
a new occupation, for instance lace-making, and let her work out her own
salvation, we would not be surprised if she disliked her work and was
unable to accomplish any good results. But that is what we do in regard
to home-making. A girl upon marriage is expected to know by instinct
how to keep house, cook, and do the numerous other household duties; she
is expected to know how to care for herself before the birth of her baby
and how to care for the baby when it comes. Fortunately for the future
generation this fact has come to the realization of many of our
educators. During the last few years many schools have introduced into
their curriculum, courses in domestic science, including the purchasing,
preparation and serving of food. Very recently some of the more
progressive schools have introduced courses in nursing and the care of
young babies. Perhaps in a few years motherhood will take its proper
place as the most important of all sciences.