Project Gutenberg's The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book, by Various
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Title: The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book
Author: Various
Editor: William F. Bigelow
Release Date: March 15, 2007 [EBook #20830]
Language: English
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THE
_Good Housekeeping_
MARRIAGE BOOK
THE CONTRIBUTORS
_Ernest R. Groves_
_James L. McConaughy_
_Ellsworth Huntington_
_Eleanor Roosevelt_
_Gladys Hoagland Groves_
_Elizabeth Bussing_
_Jessie Marshall_
_Hornell Hart_
_Frances Bruce Strain_
_William Lyon Phelps_
_Stanley G. Dickinson_
THE
_Good Housekeeping_
MARRIAGE BOOK7
_Twelve Steps to a Happy Marriage_
EDITED BY
_William F. Bigelow_
FORMER EDITOR _Good Housekeeping_ MAGAZINE
FOREWORD
_by Helen Judy Bond_
GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO., INC.
_Garden City, New York_
Garden City Publishing Co. REPRINT EDITION, 1949, by special
arrangement with Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Copyright, 1938, by
PRENTICE-HALL, INC.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED
IN ANY FORM, BY MIMEOGRAPH OR ANY OTHER
MEANS, WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHERS.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
_William F. Bigelow_
_Introduction_
The articles that are printed in this book made what was in my opinion
the most important, the most constructive, series on a single subject
that _Good Housekeeping_ has published in the quarter century and more
that I was its editor. And they might so easily never have been
written--just a little item in a newspaper missed, or its significance
overlooked, and these sincere and helpful articles would still be locked
up in the minds and hearts of the men and women who wrote them. For it
all happened just like that. Students in one of the larger California
universities asked that a course in marriage relations be given--and a
New York newspaper heralded it with a stick of type over about page 10.
Somehow the item impressed me deeply. Here were thousands of students of
both sexes, thinking of marriage, physically impelled toward marriage,
admitting that they wanted more information about marriage before
undertaking it. Add to these students the hundreds of thousands in other
colleges and to them the millions of young men and young women outside
of college--and there was Youth itself, visioning marriage as the Great
Adventure, which no one should miss, but about which there were grave
reports.
I have heard lots about Youth in recent years--its lackadaisical
attitude toward all serious things, its tendency to look the moral code
straight in the eye and smash it, its belief that chastity isn't worth
its cost or success in marriage worth working for. And I had disbelieved
much that I had heard, it having been my privilege to work with and for
young people in high school and college over a long period of years. I
knew that Youth is looking for something better than it is being given
in either precept or example. And so this request of a group of college
young people seemed to me to be both a challenge and an opportunity.
I accepted the challenge. The next step was to find out how best to meet
it. It seemed to me that to offer our young people anything less than
the best that I could get would be letting them down. So I turned for
advice to several college men who had made a long study of the problems
involved in marriage, and from the various lists of subjects and authors
suggested--adding a few of my own--selected the group now presented in
permanent form in this book. If these articles make success in marriage
seem something that must constantly be worked for, they at the same time
show that success, plus the happiness that goes with it, can be
achieved. Which is all, I think, that any man or woman has a right to
ask for.
WILLIAM F. BIGELOW
Helen Judy Bond
Foreword
If by some strange chance, not a vestige of us descended to the
remote future save a pile of our schoolbooks or some examination
papers, we may imagine how puzzled an antiquarian of the period
would be on finding in them no indication that the learners were
ever likely to be parents. "This must have been the curriculum for
their celibates," we may fancy him concluding. "I perceive here an
elaborate preparation for many things; especially for reading the
books of extinct nations and of coexisting nations (from which,
indeed, it seems clear that these people had very little worth
reading in their own tongue); but I find no reference whatever to
the bringing up of children. They could not have been so absurd as
to omit all training for this gravest of responsibilities.
Evidently, then, this was the school course of one of their
monastic orders."
HERBERT SPENCER
This quotation from the pen of Herbert Spencer arrested our attention
this winter when we were reading a number of books dealing with various
epoch-making periods in the development of educational method and
theory.
We closed the book and pondered over the inferences made by this leader
and we began to speculate on what an antiquarian of the present period
might say of our textbooks, our curricula, and our examination papers.
We hope in his search that it might be his good fortune to unearth the
syllabi of some of our courses on Education for Marriage and Family
Life, some of the worthwhile literature which is being written on the
subject, even perhaps the _Good Housekeeping Marriage Book_. If these
happened to be the only remaining record of the period, we might fancy
him concluding, "Ah, what an enlightened people there must have been in
the twentieth century. I perceive here preparation for real life
problems. This must have been a school course for all the Youth of that
generation."
This volume represents a definite step in the advancement of this ideal.
We wish to express to Dr. William F. Bigelow, former Editor of _Good
Housekeeping_, our sincere appreciation for the kindly way in which he
received the idea of publishing these valuable articles in permanent
form and his readiness to help in every way possible in carrying this
idea through to completion.
To each author we wish to express our gratitude for the important
contribution he has made, not only in giving new interpretation and new
meaning to the institution of marriage, but also for rendering valuable
assistance in the solution of many of the problems which confront the
Youth of today as they approach this most challenging, most demanding,
most satisfying and most rewarding of Life's experiences.
H. J. B.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
Introduction--Dr. William F. Bigelow v
Foreword--Helen Judy Bond vii
I. When He Comes A-Courting--Dr. Ernest R. Groves 1
II. Now That You Are Engaged--Dr. James L. McConaughy 13
III. Ought I to Marry?--Dr. Ellsworth Huntington 27
IV. Should Wives Work?--Eleanor Roosevelt 43
V. Learning to Live Together--Gladys Hoagland Groves 54
VI. Marriage Makes the Money Go--Elizabeth Bussing 66
VII. Children? Of Course!--Jessie Marshall, M. D 80
VIII. Detour Around Reno--Dr. Hornell Hart 97
IX. Sex Instruction in the Home--Frances Bruce Strain 111
X. Religion in the Home--William Lyon Phelps 126
XI. It Pays to be Happily Married--Stanley G. Dickinson 140
XII. The Case for Monogamy--Dr. Ernest R. Groves and Gladys H. Groves 154
_Dr. Ernest R. Groves_
CHAPTER ONE
_When He Comes A-Courting_
Never were American young people more conscious of the challenge of
marriage. They are not willing to accept the idea they have often heard
expressed by their elders that marriage is a lottery. Neither do they
believe that when they marry, they are given a blank check which permits
them to draw from the bank of happiness as they please. Instead, even
though they do not know how to go about it, they feel more and more that
there is something they need to do to give themselves a fair chance of
achieving success. A mere acquiescent waiting for Fate to come and lead
them into paradise is contrary to their spirit. They seek as best they
know how some way of finding their proper mate and some means of
becoming equal to the testing that even the most reckless of them in
their better moments realize that marriage is sure to bring.
This fact-facing of the marriage problem shows, more fully than anything
else could, how much our youth today are expecting from marriage. Even
those marriages that peter out and sink to a barren drabness started
out with high hopes, and, although the victims may not know what brought
about their mishap, they generally feel there was blundering somewhere
and that this need not have happened.
Some young people grow cynical because they are so familiar with
matrimonial failures; but most of them, even when they have noticed that
many of their friends are unhappily married, become more determined to
find, if they can, the secret of success. This leads them to ask for
help, for insight, and to become fact-seeking with a frankness that
seems to be their most marked characteristic. They have not been led
into this attitude by any influence from their elders; they have
acquired it from their own realistic approach to the marriage problem,
which they clearly see has more emotional meaning than anything else
that is likely to come to them through choice during their lifetime.
This request for help by young people in courtship, in engagement, in
their first years of marriage, and when they plan to assume parenthood,
cannot be met merely by words of caution. They do not welcome just being
told what they should not do. What they seek is positive assistance.
They do not want advice, but they want information and insight. They
have become convinced that there are facts about marriage that people
have learned through experience, especially through the searching of the
scientists, and they ask that they be given the advantage of this
knowledge.
These young men and women do not take kindly to a marriage program which
merely lists the qualities that one ought to find in one's mate. Even
from a very little courtship experience they come to realize that one
does not desire to marry abstract virtues, however desirable, but a
flesh-and-blood person whom one desperately wants. What they seek is a
guidance which will keep them from wanting the kind of person they
should not marry. They expect to fall in love, but hope to escape
immature, untrustworthy emotions. They want to make a grown-up choice or
at least to pick a mate in whose fellowship they can develop the
character they know they need to achieve happiness.
First of all they ask for information that will help them make good use
of their courtship opportunity. They rightly feel that if they blunder
in this period, there is little hope of their making their goal later.
They have grown suspicious of a strong feeling of attachment, because
they have been forced to see in the experiences of many of their friends
that this has not guaranteed later happiness. They expect to have sooner
or later an overwhelming impulse to join their life to that of another
human being, and they ask:
"How can I protect myself from giving my affection to the wrong person?
How can I learn when it is safe to trust my own strong emotions? I know
I shall be just as others are, unable to hold back, blind to the other's
faults, but surely before this happens I can do something that will keep
me from growing fond of a person whom I ought not to marry! People who
study marriage and become familiar with its emotional demands must have
learned some facts that offer guidance in choosing a life mate."
Indeed, there are such, and here are some that prove useful during
courtship, the destiny-deciding period in most people's matrimonial
career:
_1. Don't let yourself fall in love with the first person who comes
along; meet as many young people of the opposite sex as you can._
The young man or young woman should seek to know as many agreeable,
companionable persons of the opposite sex as possible without the
strain of attempting to establish a reputation for popularity. These
acquaintances, as much as possible, should have a background essentially
similar to one's own, and they should be sought as friends rather than
as lovers. It is obvious that one's affection must turn to some one whom
one knows, and before the awakening of strong feeling there should be as
wide an experience--the man with women, and the woman with men--as
possible. He or she who fails to go about with young people, as
opportunity comes, loses the only way there is to gain the knowledge
that is necessary later to make a wise choice of husband or wife.
_2. Don't judge by party manners and dress; everyday life is different._
In this association with members of the opposite sex, the young man or
woman should seek to know, in as many and as everyday situations as
possible, those who prove attractive. The party and the dance need not
be neglected. Anyone who proves interesting at such occasions must,
however, also be known in other more usual and commonplace
circumstances. The mere being with members of the opposite sex will not
in itself bring insight. One must learn to observe the reactions, the
attitudes, the emotional characteristics of anyone whom one likes.
Effort must be made to explore the other's personality, not in a
cold-blooded, analytical way, but naturally and yet with open eyes, so
that there may be genuine understanding of the characteristics of those
who seem to be good candidates for matrimony.
_3. Study your own emotional reactions as you go along; your mate should
bring out the best that is in you._
This association should also help the young man or woman to become
better acquainted with himself or herself. Marriage happiness cannot be
achieved merely by asking that the other give. There must also be one's
own offering in the fellowship. Nothing helps clear up one's own
motives, desires, and preferences so much as contact with others. We
find ourselves liking some people better than others. We learn to
understand ourselves through our own choices. This teaches us that
self-acquaintance which measurably helps in choosing the right mate. It
is particularly important that we see the effect that others have upon
us. What we ourselves possess we are most apt to draw out from others.
The kind of mate we need for happiness is one who stirs up the best in
us, and not merely the most entertaining or the most physically
stimulating of our acquaintances. Matrimony is not a short, hilarious
excursion, but a serious lifetime undertaking.
* * * * *
Another thing we want to learn before we choose our mate is the wearing
character of any courtship candidate.
_4. Does he, or she, wear well? If you are bored now, think of what you
may have to endure later._
Wearing qualities are not so easy to find out as some other things; but,
if we are alert, we can notice whether a friend who has attracted us
holds his own as we go about with him or there is a tendency on our part
toward a letting down of interest. Many of those who lose matrimonial
zest and merely have a tolerable relationship in marriage blunder at
this point. Usually they have not thought of the need of finding out
during courtship whether the friendship that started with promise keeps
its pace; they have been unconscious of the drift toward a less
meaningful relationship, or have assumed that that was an inevitable
result of being together constantly. It is true that the emotions do
somewhat settle themselves, but they do not become weaker because they
are more stable and less violent in expression. Much association with
the right sort of person in courtship should increase rather than
decrease the emotional ties that hold the two young people together.
_5. Will he, or she, grow with you--in mind and in character? If not,
your own growth will make you unhappy._
Another of the more difficult tasks that must be assumed in a wise
courtship program is discovering whether there are in the person one is
beginning to like incentives toward growth. There is one certain thing
in any marriage: it is impossible for those who enter such an alliance
to remain stationary; either they grow in character or they lose ground.
The mere possession of ambition is not evidence of the desire to grow up
emotionally. One has to probe the ideals of the other person. The
question is, "Does he or she have the character-vitality to develop
emotional maturity?" If this is lacking, successful marriage is seldom
achieved, and for one who has gained this trait to be tied to a spouse
who cannot attain it is tragic for the well-matured person.
_6. Will he, or she, put father or mother ahead of wife or husband? Look
out for apron strings._
There is something that the psychiatrist warns us about that we cannot
wisely forget in our courtships. We must free ourselves from
entanglements in our emotional make-up that may have had their beginning
in childhood, and we must especially avoid marrying anyone who has such
liabilities and makes no effort to be rid of them. An example is father
fixation or mother fixation. We all know from experience persons who
cannot grow up from their childhood dependency, and they make very
trying husbands or wives. They are easily spotted if one is only keen in
noticing what takes place, because they are constantly showing their
childishness, and we can be sure that they will continue both to reveal
and to nurse their weakness throughout life in such a way as to be
discouraging and irritating in marriage and parenthood relationships.
_7. Can he, or she, "take it"? You know what they call it in the army._
Although there are many virtues that one would like to find in any
candidate for matrimony, there is one that we must look for seriously;
if it is absent, turn away from an alliance that is almost certain to
fail. That is pluck. Marriage, like life itself, puts upon persons
demands that can be met only by courage. The fair-weather type of person
is certain to be disappointing in the critical, character-revealing
experiences that are bound to arise in marriage and in parenthood. It is
difficult not to grow bitter if one finds himself or herself married to
a mate who does not have the pluck to meet the disappointments, the
hardships, the testing of ideals, that must appear in every husband-wife
relationship.
* * * * *
It would be much easier for young people, we often think, if courtship
did not make its start at the same time that the young man or woman is
feeling in full force the body changes, the nervous readjustments, and
the impulses to escape childhood dependency that come with puberty. The
fact is, however, that our type of courtship largely results from using
the energy of this adolescent upheaval. There is a redirecting of the
forces that mark the awakening of puberty and then start flowing through
the entire personality. Courtship becomes a sublimation, as the
scientist says, a reshaping of this energy so that later there may be a
higher, more mature satisfaction of the desires that follow along with
this influx of new vitality, this strange, unexpected interest in
members of the other sex.
Undoubtedly modern youth face in this experience a greater ordeal than
did their parents. This comes about from changes in our way of living
and the effect they have had upon marriage, particularly upon our
expectations when we enter matrimony. In times past the economic
advantages of being married were so great and, as a rule, the struggle
of life was so hard, that there was no opportunity to overload marriage
with expectations and make its successes and its failures so exclusively
the satisfying or denying of emotions.
Of course our tendency is to ask too much of marriage. We demand that it
fulfill every purpose of the heart; thus some disappointment, once one
enters upon the career of marriage, is inescapable. The young man and
woman who have entered marriage expect to grasp much too soon the
happiness which their emotions demand. The imagination has such a free
range while romance runs at full tide that it would be strange indeed if
the imagination did not go far beyond the possibilities of any human
relationship.
This readjustment of expectation is what we mean by matrimonial
maturity. The young person who refuses to play the game of marriage,
just as soon as it appears that complete fulfillment of youthful wishes
is not to be had, cannot grow up and never comes to see that the greater
satisfactions must come out of self-discipline, emotional restraint, and
a love of response that does not ask what is beyond human achievement.
Not through a bringing to life of his rosy dreams of contentment, but in
a fellowship that deepens through the maturing of emotional life, must
one find the values of either marriage or family life.
* * * * *
Although the wise use of courtship is the most important preparation for
marriage happiness, it is not the only way we clarify and mature the
emotions in our efforts to be happily married. Engagement brings its
peculiar challenge, and again demands are made that surge with emotions
and need to be dealt with consciously and practically. One of these has
to do with sex, and in a very definite way. The modern young man and
woman are familiar with the fact that wholesome marriage requires good
marital adjustment. They think of this as the sex side of marriage. In
recent years they have heard much concerning the need of adequate sex
technique in marriage. Not only do they wish information that will
prepare them to handle this problem, but often they also need to get rid
of their worry that they may fail in this relationship. This anxiety is
more common than one might expect, both in men and in women. Even those
who are exceedingly sophisticated frequently have such fears. They
wonder if they have in some way made their adjustment difficult.
The last days of engagement frequently stir up feelings of doubt. These,
born of the thought of the seriousness of the marriage near at hand,
easily become allied with the anxious thoughts regarding sex adjustment
in marriage. There is every reason for giving young people at this time
the information they need to enter marriage as easily and satisfactorily
as possible. To give them a fair start we also have to take away the
nervous dread that may become their chief difficulty. This must be done
not by attempting to extract the emotion as we pull a tooth but by
destroying the fear by building up its opposite, security. This is the
way we always get rid of hazardous emotions: we destroy them as we
alkalize acids.
The reason why so much is made of sex technique as a preparation for
marriage is partly that in the past we have utterly neglected this side
of marriage and also that it is the easiest problem to handle. Needed
information can be clearly and definitely given, and there are a number
of excellent books, widely read, that provide this preparation for young
people about to be married. Such literature needs to be read calmly so
as to avoid exaggeration and not in the spirit of panic that sometimes
leaves young people worse off rather than better prepared for their
marriage relationships.
Since sex is so highly emotional and its difficulties as they appear in
marriage are almost always psychic in character--that is, born of brain
experience as a result of earlier suggestions and happenings--it is
fortunate that we have something besides a book to offer young people
that they may be sure they are well prepared to deal with the sex side
of marriage. Doctors have developed a counseling service designed to
give young men and young women before they marry the assurance that they
need. This is the premarital examination so popular among college people
about to be married and becoming more and more a part of their routine
of matrimonial preparation.
The young man and young woman, and especially the latter, either
together or separately go to a physician who is interested in presenting
the sex problems of marriage and is familiar with the technique of the
premarital examination and can give young people a clear understanding
of the meaning of marital adjustment. This examination includes finding
out whether there are any structural or nervous obstacles to marital
happiness, the giving of specific information regarding any worry,
doubt, or ignorance felt by the person being examined, the giving of
counsel that will help make successful adjustment easier to achieve,
and, if this is requested, the giving of sound birth-control
instruction.
The premarriage examination does so much to lessen the tension before
marriage and to prevent temporary discouragements or ungrounded fears
after marriage that it is no wonder that it has been accepted rapidly by
young people who have come to know its value. Soon it will become a
commonplace preparedness sought by all thoughtful, sincere young people
who are about to marry. It is best obtained at least two weeks before
the wedding. Since there are sometimes mild physical conditions that
need treatment and that can be cleared up if there is sufficient time,
many doctors prefer that the examination be made at least a month before
the marriage. It is true that not every physician is prepared to give
this assistance, but the number of those who can is rapidly growing as
doctors become conscious of their responsibility for this new type of
preparation for marriage.
* * * * *
Generally a most useful part of this service is the opportunity it gives
the doctor and the patient to talk together frankly and clearly about
sex adjustment so as to take away the emotional handicaps that are the
chief cause of maladjustment. These difficulties, when they are deeply
rooted, and especially when they are unrecognized, play havoc in marital
adjustment. Most often they are the result of some sort of suggestion or
happening far back in the earliest days of childhood that led to fear,
shame, or guilt, the three chief enemies of happy sex life in marriage.
The mere opportunity to talk over anything related to sex adjustment
about which they are anxious brings to many young people a wonderful
relief. The best way to get the full value of this service is to read
first, as young people are so anxious to do, some sensible, honest, and
reliable book that at least in part treats the problems of sex
adjustment in marriage, and then to gather up the questions that are
personally troublesome or that come because something is not quite clear
and take them to the physician at the time of the premarital
examination.
Young people should realize also that beyond the value of this
examination in itself, it is helpful in that it encourages an
intelligent attitude toward all later problems that may arise in
marriage. It emphasizes the fact that the best way of dealing with any
difficulty is to face it frankly, try to understand it, and then seek
the best possible help.
Young people are so conscious of the help they need for the carrying on
of their marriage and family career that in every part of the United
States we have petitions from students asking college administrators for
courses in preparation for marriage. But if every college were giving
this instruction, we could not expect that it would reach all American
youth. Other institutions and organizations must carry on in the same
way, so that other groups than college young people may get their chance
to have a modern entrance into marriage. The need of emotional
preparedness for marriage must be stressed. The opportunity to start
marriage right by bringing the resources of experience and of science
should be the birthright of all American youth. These young people seek
specific, practical information that will give them insight. They are
eager to keep to the pathway leading not only to a satisfying marriage
but to a marriage whose meaning goes forward along with our advancing
civilization.
_Dr. James L. McConaughy_
CHAPTER TWO
_Now That You Are Engaged_
"Love is blind," says the adage. "Love should be open-eyed and wise,"
say the modern engaged couple.
A successful marriage depends upon two factors--emotions and brains; no
marriage succeeds unless these are combined. "Falling in love" is
essential, but one can fall out of love as well. Falling in love is the
business of the emotions; staying there, holding your lover's affection,
requires brains.
A lifetime of happy intimacy between two individuals as different as a
young man and a young women can be attained if the mind is used. It is
only the old fogy who thinks modern young people "know too much."
Psychology teaches us that all emotions deserve study; if they are
wisely utilized, happiness results; if they are thoughtlessly spent or
thwarted, we may pay the price in unsatisfied lives, broken hopes,
sometimes in psychiatric disturbances.
The engagement period--if it is approached intelligently--can be a time
not only of supreme happiness, but of wise growth in understanding and
preparation for marriage. Unfortunately, modern young people sometimes
resent the idea that any one else can help them solve their problems.
Advice may seem to them interference. "We are going to live our own
lives. Why should any one else care what we do? Why should outsiders
feel that they have a right to tell us 'do' or 'don't'?" Such an
attitude is understandable, but it is unfortunate, and the young people
are the ones who suffer. Perhaps it is true that the older generation
feels that it must advise youth, even attempting to control it; but it
is also true that we, nearer the end of the road, should be qualified to
furnish a map of the way to those about to start out upon it. Thanks to
modern scientific methods, the map is now much more accurate than the
one handed over to us. There are certain well-charted highroads where
there were once only brambled trails.
Among the scientific methods are the statistical studies of marriage;
these show certain interesting conclusions. College people have a higher
percentage of successful marriages--at least, they show a lower divorce
ratio. Apparently college graduates use their minds in picking a mate
and in preparing for marriage. Marriages between those who have gone to
coeducational colleges appear to have a still higher chance of success.
This is probably the result of close association between the sexes in
such institutions. But the use of one's mind is what is important;
marriage _can_ be fully as successful for those who are not
college-trained.
According to statistical studies, overdominance by parents decreases the
chance of successful marriage. Apron strings never aid engaged couples.
A good rule for families is to let the young people avail themselves of
parental suggestion, not to force dictates upon them.
Statistically, more marriages succeed if each partner has had an
earlier love affair. It is, say the experts, an asset to have had boy or
girl friends with whom you thought for a time you were in love. Of
course all of us know completely happy marriages of boy and girl
sweethearts; most of us also know unhappy couples who first became
engaged during their teens, one of whom has entirely outgrown the other,
with mismating as a result.
Such mismating is not at first apparent--may not be for several years.
The man usually, by the nature of his occupation, meets more people than
does the woman. He finds himself in more varied and interesting
situations, and may become a more colorful, a bigger person than his
wife. Occasionally the converse may be true. At any rate, it is a tragic
thing when either husband or wife so far outgrows the other that they
have no common interest, no mutual pleasures.
The engagement period is the time to prove the quality of love. Are
you--the girl--capable of growth? Can you, harassed by household tasks,
keep up with your husband as he develops in the world of men? Are
you--the man--so congenial with this girl whom you wish to marry that
you will want to share your experiences with her, in situations very
different from those of courtship and engagement days?
The engagement period itself is not altogether an easy time. Wise young
people can make it one of fuller acquaintance and of growth in
thoughtfulness and courtesy. On the other hand, most engaged couples
will discover small faults in each other, even when they are deeply in
love. Details that had been invisible before may now loom large.
Carelessness in personal habits, manners, speech, and attitude may
become irritants that jeopardize romance. A trait that may have been a
source of amusement before now becomes irritating and exasperating. If
the trait is a fundamental one, marriage should be even more
searchingly questioned, although the wedding date may be only a few
weeks off. Much has been written about the girl who marries a man to
reform him; if the reformation is not completed during the engagement,
the chances of success after marriage are small.
Yes, this new intimacy of the engagement period may indeed be trying.
Tact is required to avoid fault-finding, nagging, and jealousy. A few
"lovers' quarrels" do not matter--they give flavor to a romance--but
scolding and criticism do. Romance dies when thoughtless quarreling
enters. An engaged man should be even more of a gentleman than the
courting swain; the girl with a ring on the third finger of her left
hand should strive to be even more charming and feminine than the
heart-free lass.
Besides the problems of personality adjustment that propinquity
presents, there are such questions as these to look into: Is one
standard of moral conduct after marriage to apply to both? How free is
each partner to be? What opportunity is the girl to have to be herself,
have her own interests and friends and money? How soon is the first
child wanted? Further--and just as important--the problems of the
financial outlook can be worked on during the engagement period.
The wise couple discuss thoroughly their financial setup, draw up a
budget, and use their present resources to acquire equipment for the new
home. They decide questions which are to form the basis of the marriage
and largely influence its success: Is the wife to have her own share of
the family income, her own checking account? Must she ask her husband
for money for each household expense, or will she have an allowance on
which to run the home? In addition, is she to have money for her own
personal uses, with no more accounting required than is expected of the
husband's expenditures for tobacco and other personal whims?
While such matters are being talked over and decided with mutual
consideration, training for marriage itself is under way. The engaged
couple may well learn to put into practice two simple yet very helpful
suggestions for married people: never both lose your temper at the same
time; make the other laugh once daily. They may also acquire an art
which contributes definitely to happiness in marriage: playing together.
I think this is sound advice for brides-to-be: If he is a golfer, try to
learn enough about the game at least to respond to his enthusiasm. If he
fishes, encourage him and try to learn why such a simple sport thrills
him. If baseball is his game, do not disdain his choice for an
afternoon's relaxation; if he wants you to join him, go and learn enough
to enjoy the game with him; if he wants to go with men friends,
encourage him, and do not fear this means his love is cooling! (Romance
thrives on occasional separations, even occasional vacations from
marriage.) Be interested in his doings, but do not be a nuisance.
* * * * *
Grooms-to-be: If she likes bridge, improve your game and avoid
embarrassing her by dumb bids and play. If she enjoys art and finds an
art exhibit worth while, do not be the dumb male and say that this means
nothing to you; let her teach you what pictures can mean--and to real he
men, too. If she enjoys good music--going to concerts or listening to
the radio--try to share her pleasure and discover what it is that really
gives her such satisfaction. In other words, if either has a favorite
sport or a hobby, the other should try to join in--at least in the
evident satisfaction it gives. Just going to the movies, or sitting on
the sidelines watching others play, is not the ideal joint use of
leisure; young couples should actually _do_ something _together_.
Exercise--active sports--helps keep every one up to par physically;
good health is one of the surest foundations for a happy marriage.
Divorce thrives among those below par; mental health, serenity, poise,
and mutual consideration are all aided by good physical condition.
And remember that mental energy needs an outlet, too. The stimulation of
good conversation in mixed groups has a favorable effect on the
emotional life of women as well as men. American husbands often err in
not drawing out their womenfolk; contempt for their ideas is too
frequent.
Those who are wisest about successful marriages advise against long
engagements. A hasty marriage and a short engagement are not the same
thing. An engaged couple who are sure of their hearts and minds should
be helped to marry as soon as the plans for the marriage can be wisely
worked out. This usually involves finances--"How soon can we afford it?"
Wise parents today cooperate so that the young couple do not have to
wait too long. In many cases the older generation, if it can afford it,
may give a small allowance to the recently married son or daughter.
Money thus given on a definite monthly basis for a previously determined
period means much more than a small bequest when the father dies. Or the
parents may agree, on a plan carefully thought out, to help if
unexpected financial problems beset the young couple. Father may say
that if illness overtakes either, or if the first baby arrives earlier
than planned, or if a sudden decrease in salary comes, he will gladly
help--not with a loan or as a grudging charity but as an interested
party to the success of the marriage.
If the man possibly can, he should take out some insurance, seeking
unprejudiced advice before choosing between the many kinds of policies
each company writes. Even if the policy is small, it is at least a back
log if tragedy comes; furthermore, meeting the insurance premiums is a
fine first step toward regular saving.
Marrying when either is in debt is to be avoided; such a weight hanging
over two young married people all too frequently mars the chances of
happiness. And if it is humanly possible, no man should marry while
others are dependent upon him.
One comment to engaged students: Unless the circumstances are
exceptional, do not marry until your professional training is done. If
the girl has her own income or an assured job, perhaps so; if parents
will help if an emergency arises, perhaps so; otherwise wait until you
are through professional school. Hospitals dislike to appoint married
men as internes; they are required to live in the hospital, which means
no home life. Law school and marriage do not usually mix well--nor
engineering school, nor any other form of post-graduate training. The
engaged man who is preparing for college teaching is usually wise if he
asks the girl to wait. Many of us know of graduate students who married
with only a fellowship or the wages of a wife as income, whose marriages
have been almost wrecked by sudden illness or a baby, with resulting
financial worries which have aged both the man and woman prematurely.
Late marriage for professionally trained men is, apparently, one of the
unfortunate results of the long period of preparation for a calling.
* * * * *
The case for postponement is just as strong when one or both are
under-graduates in college, with no professional training planned.
College marriages are not so wise as marriage after college work is
finished. There are exceptions, however; one knows of cases where
marriage and return to college to finish was wise. It is unfortunate
that some colleges have rules debarring students who marry during the
course; secret marriages often result--and these are always to be
deplored.
Sometimes parental opposition, or other factors, seem to the young
couple to be sufficient justification for a secret marriage. The
circumstances which can make this a wise decision are very, very rare.
Marriage is a public matter; it should not be hidden. The couple may
feel that only their own lives are involved, but they are all too often
wrong. Even the best methods of birth control are far from 100 percent
dependable; if a baby is coming, the couple face announcements and
explanations and recriminations just at a time when serenity and freedom
from emotional strain are desirable, particularly for the bride. Secrecy
usually means hypocrisy; often it means deceit. Figures show that secret
marriages often produce marital unhappiness and an abnormal number of
divorces.
The wedding date is chosen by the bride; the honeymoon arrangements are
the responsibility of the groom. A wedding is fatiguing, particularly to
the girl; the thoughtful man will not plan a long train or motor trip or
tiring sightseeing or visits to new relatives; new in-laws can be
visited more wisely at a later time. These days should be a period of
intimate companionship; a summer camp, perhaps lent by a friend, is
ideal. Here, surrounded by nature and not mankind, relaxed honeymooners
will find the rest and privacy which should be theirs.
Where to live after the wedding? Obviously where the husband's job is.
No need to wait until his chance in the big city comes; the small town
is a better place to begin marriage. Friendships come easier, life is
simpler and usually cheaper. The divorce rate is much higher in the
cities than in small towns or rural regions. Fortunate that couple who
start their married life in a town small enough so that neighbors are
interested and helpful. The city apartment house is the most impersonal
form of dwelling mankind has devised. If the first home does not have
all the modern improvements, it is no great tragedy. More marriages are
wrecked by too much free time than by too many home tasks to perform.
Our grandparents married in the days of covered wagons and sodhouses and
drought; a dash of their spirit is a good ingredient in a modern
marriage.
* * * * *
Above all else, the engaged couple should plan to have a home of their
own, even if it is only two rooms. If economic considerations make them
consider moving in with the in-laws, let some one warn them that the
adjustment of two personalities which marriage involves demands some
privacy beyond that of a bedroom. Parents, no matter how loving and
wise, help the newly married most when they do not live under the same
roof with them. Loving interference, irritation, nervous tension,
usually go with "living with the folks."
If they have to live with the older folks, the young people should
arrange to have two or three rooms of their own, with their own
privacies, where they can entertain their own friends and be themselves.
If they live thus under the parental roof, they can keep their
self-respect by paying something a month as rent, no matter how small.
Furthermore, they should own their furniture--at least some of it; it
should represent their own joint taste; the possession of some lares and
penates is a very good basis for a lifetime partnership. The joint
possession of material things is almost an essential to successful
marriage.
Should the girl hold her job after she marries? Some authorities say
that a bride is better off, emotionally more serene, if she has some
work--not too fatiguing--outside the home.
Modern young people do not marry until they know that each brings to
the marriage bodily fitness. A medical examination, with blood tests, is
required in many progressive states before a marriage license can be
secured. A doctor's certificate of bodily fitness for marriage is fully
as essential as a marriage license. Such an examination gives a feeling
of security to each individual and forwards the well being of society.
To many modern engaged couples the most disturbing question is, "Shall
we wait until marriage for physical union?" No question, I think, comes
up more often in college courses and conferences on engagement and
marriage. "We love each other devotedly; why should we wait for a mere
license and a public ceremony?" That testimony which trained doctors,
sociologists, and psychiatrists give is entirely in favor of postponing
all such relations until after the marriage ceremony. Furthermore,
statistics show that marriages in which the engaged couple do not "go
all the way" seem to have a higher chance of success.
Modern life has made this a keener difficulty for young people than it
was for most of us older ones. Inhibitions have largely gone, young
people are allowed to work out their own problems; the automobile,
tourist cabin, and hotels with careless standards for their guests allow
any engaged couple plenty of opportunity, which we largely lacked. If,
even though an engaged couple are passionately in love, the temptation
does not present itself at all, they are fortunate; there have been
millions of happy marriages before in which this has taken care of
itself naturally. On the other hand, if they have to face this situation
frankly, and decided to wait, they need have no fear that this indicates
a lack of sex feeling or that after marriage this relationship may fail
because it has not been indulged in earlier.
But let us all realize frankly how often this problem troubles the
majority of engaged couples--no matter how fine their principles may be.
Understanding and love are more helpful in such situations than general
advice and "don't." Assisting the young couple to marry soon is usually
the best help we can give.
* * * * *
If an engaged couple are willing to think this matter over as
unemotionally as possible, the following points may be considered:
Postponement of marriage because of economic conditions has been a
problem almost as old as the race; they are not the first couple to face
this difficulty. Revolt against the standards of home, church, and
society is almost always an expensive decision; secret actions are to be
deplored; worry about "what may happen" may destroy the serenity in love
which should ideally characterize the engagement period. They should be
glad that they do have "sex hunger," but should recognize that each
person owes just a little to the preservation of morality and social
standards; even if they feel that the conditions which beset them are
hard, they should think twice before placing themselves "outside the
pale of social sanction."
The engaged young man may well do some special thinking of his own. No
birth-control methods are sure; the testimony of medical groups rates
various procedures as from 20 percent to 90 percent safe; no man who
really loves his fiancée would take the chance of "getting her in
trouble." More of the responsibility of this decision rests on the man
than on the girl. She may seem to be entirely willing, but the normal
girl worries, even if only over what her parents would think if they
knew. More than one marriage has been wrecked because of the psychiatric
effect upon the girl of such practices during her engagement.
Furthermore, many engaged couples do not finally marry; memories of
forbidden intimacies are not going to make it easier for either to give
himself or herself fully to the right person later on; premarital
relations with another may prove a real handicap to the full
realization, later, of an ideal romance and marriage. The complete
realization of sex after marriage is never so fully accomplished,
emotionally and lovingly, if the two have refused to wait. Even the most
sophisticated young people have somewhere inside them hesitations about
the wisdom of defying social standards. There is a spiritual side to
marriage; practices in secret, unapproved by others, detract definitely
from this important phase of marriage.
Even if the young man can convince himself that not waiting is right, in
spite of what his fiancée may say, she is unlikely to agree in her
heart. Very few men who rationalize themselves into believing that such
a course of action is wise would be as willing to have their sister
or--some day--their daughter do likewise.
Remember these truths: In married life itself there are many difficult
decisions, many things you would like to do, which wisely you do not.
You are definitely preparing yourself for marriage in strengthening your
character by saying "no" now.
If you have decided not to, do not allow yourselves to be in situations
which make it unduly difficult to carry out your decision. Drink
stimulates the sex urge; few decent people would enjoy remembering that
their first sex experience came when they were stimulated by liquor. If
you drink, avoid emotional situations in secret thereafter, until this
stimulus has worn off. If you harass your serenity and loving contacts
by reopening the decision every time you meet, try to do things together
in which this sex element does not present itself as a perpetual
problem. One couple beset each time they were together with the
difficulty of carrying out their decision not to, deliberately decided
to visit art museums together instead of merely "petting"; this new
interest minimized the other problem and gave them something most worth
while to discuss, and it is now one of the many fine things in their
married life.
Margaret Culkin Banning, in _The Reader's Digest_ for August, 1937,
summarizes "The Case for Chastity." For the engaged couple, the
following of her points apply: the girl who is unchaste with her fiancé
often hesitates to get competent medical advice; venereal disease is a
danger; abortions are dangerous physically and emotionally; fear should
never accompany sex; sex experience before marriage may harm sex later
on; one's "moral code" is violated; some discoveries should be saved for
marriage itself; premarital relations stimulate jealousy after marriage;
early marriage is a better solution.
* * * * *
From the sociological standpoint we should take great satisfaction in
the increasingly wise way in which young Americans are approaching
marriage. Fifteen years ago the subject was entirely neglected in our
colleges; today at least 100,000 college boys and girls have the
opportunity to enroll in college courses or to attend discussion
conferences on marriage. Wise men and women have studied the basis for
successful marriage and have written about it. Laws have been changed so
that such books--written by American sociologists, doctors, and
psychiatrists--are generally available in college libraries today.
However, even the best books do not answer all the normal questions
which arise. In many progressive communities marriage clinics have been
established, where both engaged and married persons may secure advice
from wise, trained authorities.
The ideal consultant is a wise family doctor--especially if he has known
both young people from childhood--to whom they can go together for a
personal conference. Sometimes the family minister is wise enough to
give help.
Appropriate knowledge about sex is necessary for the engaged. Sexual
experience is not. Certainly it can now be said--as it could not five
years ago--that no modern marriage need be wrecked because the young
couple did not know where to turn for helpful advice.
_Dr. Ellsworth Huntington_
CHAPTER THREE
_Ought I To Marry?_
"Ought I to marry?" is not a simple question. Its answer is full of a
thousand complications. For the great majority of people it is one of
the three most important questions that are ever answered or left
unanswered in a whole lifetime. The other two are "What is my main
purpose in life?" and "What is to be my occupation?" They are old
questions, but "Ought I to marry?" is new. In the old days everyone was
married as a matter of course. Perhaps in the future the main question
will be, "Am I fit to be married?"
"Ought I to marry?" is really three questions in one. First, "Have I a
right to marry?" Second, "Is it wise for me to marry?" Third, "Is it my
duty to marry?"
You say, perhaps, that these questions are your own business and nobody
else's, but you are wrong. They _are_ somebody else's business, and the
somebodies else are a good deal more numerous than you think. The first
somebody is the man or girl whom you want to marry. Will it be good for
him or her to marry _you?_ The next somebodies are the children whom
you and your mate may have. They have a right to be born with a good
inheritance, to be reared in good health, and to be well trained in a
happy home. Your children's children, too, will have a right to bless
you or curse you, according to your way of answering the question,
"Ought I to marry?"
But even your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are not
all the somebodies who are vitally concerned with your answer. Hundreds
of people will be helped or hindered by your home, by the kind of person
you become under its influence, and by the kind of children who go out
from it. You and "he," or you and "she," are certainly the ones most
immediately concerned in the question "Ought I to marry?" but your
children's stake in the matter is even greater than yours.
Now for the three questions which are implied when you ask, "Ought I to
marry?" First, "Have I a right to marry?" Every young person should ask
this question. Fitness includes several aspects, among which the first
is physical. The most inexcusable unfitness is venereal disease. There
is no meaner crime than for a young man to acquire venereal disease by
reason of weakness of will, and then pass it on to an innocent girl and
perhaps to unborn children. Physicians say that in spite of so-called
modern prophylaxis and supposed cures, syphilis is still alarmingly
common, and other venereal diseases are rampant. A person having any of
these diseases has absolutely no right to marry. Even if he is
pronounced cured, he ought not to marry until a physician pronounces him
cured _beyond danger of recurrence_.
For this reason the strictest premarital examination by a competent
physician should be required. Marriage should be contracted only after
such a physician has given both man and woman a clean bill of health.
This is desirable as a means not only of creating a public opinion
which will express itself in laws, but of giving both parties a feeling
of security. No matter how completely they may trust each other, it is
well to have a physician verify the trust.
Another reason for a complete physical examination before marriage is to
determine whether it is possible for both parties to have children.
Sometimes expert medical advice and treatment make all the difference
between a childless home and one that has the happiness of a
well-rounded family. In every marriage children should be an essential
feature--the most essential feature in the long run. In many countries
sterility is sufficient grounds for divorce. In an ideal civilization
probably no marriage would be permitted between a person who appears to
be sterile and one who appears normal. The sterile would marry the
sterile, and the fertile the fertile. Even in our civilization what
right has anyone to doom his partner to a childless marriage? The
overwhelming majority of people want children. Only the highly
exceptional and pitiable woman is without this desire. The normal man
feels it almost as strongly as the woman when once the little hand of
his own child clasps his finger. Of course unforeseen conditions may
unexpectedly make one partner to a marriage sterile, but that is another
matter and by no means prevents a happy marriage. In certain cases, too,
it may be allowable for a fertile partner to marry one who is known to
be sterile. That should never happen, however, without the fullest
knowledge on the part of both, and without full time to think the matter
over quietly and in complete freedom from the emotional strain caused by
the loved one's frequent presence.
Many childless marriages are rendered not only happy but very useful to
society by the adoption of children. It should always be remembered that
from the standpoint not only of family life but of old age and of
society in general, children are the most important result of marriage.
The worst forms of unfitness for marriage are hereditary, but some
hereditary defects are mild, some terrible. There is much doubt as to
whether many defects are hereditary or are the result of unfavorable
conditions during pregnancy and early infancy. Far too much emphasis is
placed upon external and easily visible defects in comparison with
internal ones which cannot be so readily detected. Such minor hereditary
defects as hare lip or misshaped fingers do not necessarily indicate
unfitness for marriage. They are far less dangerous than hereditary
susceptibility to diseases such as diabetes or weakness of the heart,
which lead to unhappy marriages by reason of frequent illness or early
death. A hereditary tendency toward short-sightedness or defective
teeth, on the contrary, may permit the longest and happiest of
marriages. All inherited defects are regrettable, but practically no one
is free from them in some minor form.
The sensible attitude toward minor hereditary defects is to balance
their real importance against both the good and the bad qualities shown
not only by the individual but by his brothers, sisters, parents, and
other relatives. Conscientious sufferers from visible defects of any
kind are apt to overestimate their importance. Moreover, many supposedly
hereditary defects may equally well be the result of an unfavorable
environment like that which caused similar defects in the parents. Under
ideal conditions they might never appear at all. In such matters, too,
the best course is to consult a good physician. Often, perhaps usually,
the best thing is merely to avoid marriage with a person showing defects
like one's own, and then strive to give your children so good an
environment that only the best in them will have a chance to develop.
Fortunately the vast majority of people inherit a fairly good
assemblage of traits which balance in such a way as to produce normal
human beings.
One type of deficiency, however, renders people genuinely unfit for
marriage. It takes various forms. One form, easily recognized, is what
is commonly called "mental deficiency." By this we mean not merely the
kind of mind found in idiots and imbeciles, but that which appears in
morons and other "high grade" mental weaklings. Such mental weakness, or
feeble-mindedness, is especially dangerous to society because it often
afflicts people who are physically strong and attractive, and who are
eager to marry. When such persons marry, they exercise little
self-control and are likely to have large families. In this respect they
are unlike mental defectives of lower types, who rarely have many
children and whose children are likely to die young. "High grade" mental
defectives tend to marry one another. The result is bad in two ways.
First, if the mental deficiency of one or both parents is hereditary, as
is often the case, children with defective mental capacity are sure to
be born, and will in turn produce other defectives. Second, even if the
defects of the parents are due to accident or disease, the children are
almost sure to be badly brought up.
The chief type of mental weakness is emotional in nature. Here is a
young fellow who as a boy was always a cry-baby and mamma's darling. He
is afraid to stand up for himself, afraid of athletics, afraid of girls;
and, because of all this, he is lonely, morose, and secretive. Here is a
girl of great ability and charm but subject to fits of deep depression.
Another young man loses his temper very easily and cherishes resentment
for a long time over trivial matters. The girl whom he is interested in
is extremely self-conscious and thinks that she is being purposely
slighted unless she is the center of everything. Others, both boys and
girls, are excessively irritable, very suspicious, inordinately
selfish, hysterical, vainglorious, or in other ways show lack of
self-control and emotional stability. Later in life such conditions may
lead to intense misery. Nevertheless traits of this sort are often
combined with very fine qualities in other respects. This renders it
extremely hard to decide whether such persons are fit for marriage.
It is extremely difficult to determine whether emotional instability,
selfishness, and other undesirable traits are due to heredity or
environment. At this point we enter a field of great difficulty because
a trait may be inborn, but not hereditary. A child may be born with
serious handicaps because some ailment due to unfavorable environment
prevented its mother from nourishing it properly before it was born.
Such weakness is not truly hereditary. It will not appear in later
generations unless the mothers of those generations also suffer from
environmental conditions similar to those which prevented the first
mother from nourishing her child. It often happens that such conditions
are repeated from generation to generation. If this happens very early
in the pre-natal life of the child, the results are very likely to be
misinterpreted as hereditary.
In the last few decades the study of heredity has been so fascinating
and fruitful that biologists have given comparatively little attention
to early environmental influences. Recent work, however, suggests that
such influences are far from negligible. My own studies of season of
birth illustrate the matter. They suggest that the effect of physical
environment upon the health of the parents before a child is conceived
has an important effect upon the child's future health and achievement.
Only a hint of the chain of evidence leading to this conclusion is here
possible. Many investigations of deaths, fatigue, work, and disease, as
well as numerous carefully controlled laboratory experiments, indicate
that people feel most comfortable and vigorous, and have the best
health, when the average temperature for night and day together is about
63°. Nothing is more pleasant than a day of this optimum kind in May or
June. At midday the thermometer rises to 70° more or less; at night it
falls low enough so that people sleep soundly and restfully.
A study of season of birth in many countries indicates that children who
are conceived when optimum weather of this kind arrives in the spring
have stronger constitutions and greater powers of application than do
those conceived at any other season. Evidence of constitutional vigor is
found in length of life. In four large groups of Americans and in one of
Italians it has been found that those born in March, and therefore
conceived in June at the time of optimum weather, live longer than those
born at other seasons. Among 39,000 people who were born in the eastern
United States and who lived beyond the age of two years I found that on
an average those born in March lived 3.8 years longer than those born
from July to September.
Other evidence, into which we cannot go, suggests that man, like other
animals, inherits a definite seasonal cycle of reproduction. As the
temperature rises toward the optimum in the spring the functions of the
body change in such a way that not only is there a pronounced feeling of
well-being, but the children conceived at that time have more than the
average vigor, and hence correspondingly long life.
The evidence that these children have greater powers of application, or
at least that some of them do, lies in the birthdays of eminent people
in countries as diverse as India, Spain, Russia, England, France,
Germany, Sweden, and the United States. In all these countries the
percentage of eminent people conceived when the optimum weather prevails
rises much higher than does the corresponding percentage among ordinary
people. Moreover, the greater the degree of eminence, the more marked
is the contrast with people as a whole.
The reason for this condition must be that the vigor which gives to many
people long life gives to highly gifted people a sort of power of steady
application and hard work--an emotional stability--which enables them to
use their faculties to the best advantage. Thus they achieve fame in
greater measure than do equally well-endowed persons with less vigor.
There is not the slightest reason to suppose that children conceived at
one season of the year inherit any better minds than do their brothers
and sisters conceived at other seasons. There is equally little reason
to believe that the average inheritance of mental ability declines as
the period of conception approaches midwinter, the low point in the
seasonal cycle of reproduction. On the other hand, length of life
furnishes evidence that physical vigor varies according to the degree to
which the mothers at least, at the time of a child's conception, have
been under the influence of environmental conditions which assist the
germ cells in developing into vigorous babies. Many studies of eminent
people show that they are uncommonly long-lived. When deaths in war and
by accident are omitted, the average length of life of 11,000 people in
the British _Dictionary of National Biography_ was 71 years. Eminence
and the kind of constitutional vigor that leads to long life go
together.
This brings us back to the problem of fitness for marriage. If the
effect of the weather on the vigor of parents can have such an influence
on health, longevity and achievement, such conditions as diet and mode
of life may produce similar effects. This possibility adds still greater
interest to the two-edged bearing of what we have just been saying upon
the problem of fitness for marriage. In the first place it appears that
an unexpected number of weaknesses which are sometimes considered
hereditary are environmental. Nevertheless, they are also inborn and
cannot easily be eradicated by education. Therefore the chance that
ordinary normal people carry a dangerous heredity is reduced, but the
responsibility of parents to see that their children are properly born
is increased. In the second place, it becomes more evident than ever
that fitness for marriage implies intelligent willingness and
persistence in acting upon the discoveries of science in whatever way
may be best for the unborn child. We have long insisted upon the right
environment for the expectant mother during pregnancy. The new
discoveries suggest that we must insist equally upon the right
environment and manner of life before pregnancy begins.
This brings up a very interesting question upon which biologists are not
agreed. Does what has just been said about the period before pregnancy
apply to the father as well as the mother? Many biologists doubt whether
we have any proof that environmental influence can weaken the sperm
cells of the male in such a way that the offspring are thereby weakened.
Other biologists, such as Professor Pearl, of Johns Hopkins University,
and Professor C. A. Mills, of Cincinnati, have made some interesting
experiments which lead them to believe that sperm cells weakened by
environmental conditions may affect the vitality of the developing
offspring. In short, at the present time there is no agreement among
competent scientific men that the health and mode of life of the father,
as well as of the mother, influence the physical well-being of the
developing child, and thereby affect its emotional stability and other
qualities. Until this question is scientifically settled it is obvious
that the men best fitted for marriage and parenthood are those who act
in such a way that they cannot harm their children no matter which view
is correct.
Let us return once more to the problem of deciding how far the mental
and social characteristics of ourselves and of the persons we are
interested in are due to inheritance and how far to pre-natal and
postnatal environment. In the present state of knowledge no exact
decision is possible. Nevertheless, in some families an undesirable
trait is exhibited by a parent, brothers or sisters, and perhaps by more
distant relatives. In such cases, it is probably inherited, or at least
due to an inherited deficiency or tendency of some sort, and there is a
chance that it may be handed down to the next generation. On the other
hand, many persons who suffer from some form of emotional instability
come from families in which the parents and near relatives appear normal
in this respect. In such cases it is probable that the trait is not
hereditary, but due to some influence in pre-natal life or childhood.
Until the sciences of human genetics and eugenics have made more
progress, the safest way to judge in such matters is by the qualities of
a family as a whole.
Whether you have any doubt about this or not, a thorough examination by
a good physician who is also a psychiatrist and a man of fine character
will be a great help. The physician must frame his judgments for the
good not only of the individual who consults him, but of the prospective
partner, and of the children who may be born to such a couple. Even the
best physician is often unable to decide whether a given defect is
hereditary. He can merely frame an opinion based on the _whole family_.
Young people find it hard to believe that they marry into families, but
they do. As the old Jewish saying puts it, "It is not good to marry a
maid who is the only good maid in her family." The responsibility that
thus rests on physicians is tremendous. That of the young people who
wish to be married is also great, but very different. Theirs is to
submit themselves fully and frankly to the physician's examination and
advice. He may decide that it is safe to marry a person of stable
temperament, but not one who is nervously unstable.
It must always be remembered that even if the physician has given you a
clean bill of health, you are still unfit for marriage unless you are
willing to go more than halfway in adjusting your life to "his" or
"hers." Lovers generally feel sure that they can do this, but have you
proved it in your treatment of parents, brothers, sisters, and friends?
If you are free from transmissible disease and innate defects, and if
you are capable of having children, it is still unwise for you to marry
unless you display good evidence of the qualities which make a happy
home and insure the right training of children. Darwin once said that
the trouble with mankind is not lack of ability, but failure to use the
abilities that we possess. Even if it is not wise for you to marry now,
perhaps you can take yourself by the scruff of the neck and make
yourself fit.
If you are fit, the next question is, "Is it wise for me to marry?" For
the vast majority of people the answer is emphatically "Yes" both for
your own sake and that of society as a whole. For most people the
married state is happier and more useful than the unmarried state.
Biologically the two sexes are meant to live together. Long experience
has proved that the only permanently happy way of living together is as
husband and wife. If the marriage is of the right kind, both the man and
the woman become happier, healthier, more adaptable, more interested in
the community, and, in many cases, better workers. Marriage is
unquestionably one of the best schools and one of the best health
resorts. It often has a wonderful effect in steadying people's nerves,
provided the partner is wise as well as loving.
The probability that any given marriage is wise is greatly increased
where the two young people have reasonably similar ideals and habits
and are sufficiently intelligent so that each can enjoy the interests of
the other. It is increased still more when both the man and the woman
realize that marriage is a comparatively hollow affair unless entered
into with the purpose of having a family. Few experiences have greater
value than the sacrifices which parents must make if they are to create
a real home. The making of such a home brings out the best that is in
people. Hence from the purely personal standpoint marriage is a
priceless advantage.
There is a social as well as a personal side to marriage. The unstable
conditions of the present century have made some people believe that the
family is a thing of the past, but this is a mistake. The family life of
the future will be different from that of the past, but the finest
traits in it will still be the same. Loyalty of each to all and all to
each is one of the greatest assets in this tumultuous, changing world.
In times of distress, whether it is financial or mental, the most
pitiable person is the one without family ties. A family of children may
be a handicap at such times, but often it is the very thing that keeps
people from failure. Moreover, in adversity and old age a family group
of loyal brothers and sisters, even if each has several children, gets
along much better than does the man or woman who fends only for himself.
It pays to be married and to be married into a large family.
Let us turn back again to the question of whether family life is going
to die out. In the old days of unrestricted families children just came
because it couldn't be helped. Today, regardless of race or religion,
intelligent people limit their families. Abundant statistics make it
clear that the size of families has dropped greatly among all except two
groups. One is a large group of less intelligent, isolated, shiftless,
or incompetent people, among whom families of eight to fifteen children
may still be found. The other is a small group of intelligent,
high-minded, well-established, well-to-do families with many relatives
and with a very assured position. Their children usually number from
four to eight. Most of us belong to a huge intervening group in which
the average number of children, including those who die young, is less
than three, instead of seven, as was the case a century or two ago. This
great middle group is the one that will determine what kind of people
live in this country in the future.
Well, then, from what part of this middle group will most of the
children of the future be derived? A little arithmetic will help us.
Suppose we have two sets of parents, numbering a thousand each and
having children old enough to be married. In one set each pair of
parents has two children; in the other five. The children of each set
behave like their parents in this respect. In both sets 15 percent of
the children die before reaching the age of marriage, and 10 percent of
those who grow up fail to marry. These are normal percentages. Among
those who marry, however, 20 percent of the two-child group, and only 10
percent of the other set, fail to have children. How many parents will
there be in each group at the end of three generations? If we make no
allowance for the fact that more boys than girls are born, there would
be 136 parents in the two-child group a century hence, and they would
have 136 children. On the other hand, there would be 8744 parents and
21,860 children in the five-child group. Over a hundred and sixty times
as many!
Now that we have done the arithmetic, what does it mean? Of course in
actual life the two-child and the five-child groups will intermarry. And
even if each marries its own kind, the number of children will
fluctuate. Nevertheless, there is plenty of evidence of three great
tendencies. First, certain kinds of families tend to be small or large
as the case may be. Second, each kind tends to marry into its own kind
more often than into the other. And finally, people who grew up in large
families generally like large families and want to have them. Hence the
result of the present limitation of families must be to make large
families and family life in general more popular in the future than at
present.
This is the way it works in the great middle group to which most of us
belong. Families of four to six children are found mainly among people
who love children and are willing to make sacrifices in order to provide
homes for them. So as long as our present limitation of families
continues, the children of each successive generation will tend in
larger and larger numbers to be the descendants of people who believe in
family life and are willing to make sacrifices for it. A few of them are
disappointed because their children do not turn out well, but the great
majority feel well rewarded. Ask parents of three or more children how
they feel about it. Nine out of ten will say that nothing in their lives
has been worth more than their children. So long as people of that kind
have children, and those of the other kind fail to have children, family
life will not die out. It will become more and more the great center of
society. It will change, but the change will be growth, not decay.
Now for the third question, "Is it my duty to marry?" Future generations
may say that the better your physique, the greater your beauty and
strength, the finer your mind, the more lovable your temperament, and
the more highly you are endowed by nature and training, the more
certainly it is your duty to marry and have a family. At present,
however, the answer to "Is it my duty to marry?" is very much like the
answer to a question which you might ask if you were a guest at a
delightful summer resort. "Is it my duty to go swimming, play tennis,
go yachting, and have a good time?" Assuming that you are physically
fit, it certainly is your duty if your presence will cause your hosts
and the rest to enjoy themselves. But why ask such a silly question? You
will do all those things just because you want to. You would be an awful
fool to pass up the chance of having all sorts of fun when everything is
just right for it. And you would be an awful fool to give up marriage if
the conditions for that were equally favorable.
Of course there is a very important personal element in all this. Some
minor crudity in him or her, some ideal diverse from yours, some
unfortunate habit or tendency, may be more than you can adjust yourself
to. You alone can decide that. All that we can do here is point out what
the marriages and families of thoughtful, conscientious people mean to
the world.
The essence of the whole matter, as has been said a thousand times, is
the extremely rapid fall of the birthrate, especially among intelligent,
farsighted, industrious, progressive people whose ideals of family life
are high. The majority of the young people who read this article
probably belong to this class. Therefore you represent a type of family
whose loss or diminution is a very serious matter. Unless your type of
family averages more than three children, the country suffers two great
losses. It suffers these losses because under the present conditions it
takes more than three children per family on an average to provide two
who become parents and thus replace their father and mother. So unless
your grandparents have at least ten grandchildren, your family stock is
dying out, and the country is suffering two great losses. One loss is
your good biological inheritance. This does not mean that you are
anything wonderful. It simply means that you belong to a group which on
the whole inherits more than the average capacity. Therefore, unless you
have more than three children, the biological inheritance of America
will be lowered.
The second great loss is cultural. It is all very well to talk about
sending every competent boy and girl to college, and giving every one
the fullest chance to develop, but this does not solve the problem. No
other institution comes anywhere near the home as a place in which to
establish the ideals and habits that determine whether our lives shall
be a mere flash in the pan or a fire that warms and cheers. The finer
things of life wither and die if there are not enough children in the
families of people who know how to make real _homes_. If you came from
such a home, and especially if your relatives also have such homes, you
can make one yourself. Few things are more needed in America today than
just such homes.
Ought I to marry? I wish that every reader could answer in the
affirmative.
_Eleanor Roosevelt_
CHAPTER FOUR
_Should Wives Work?_
Is it possible for a woman to marry and still have a career? This
question has been asked of me so many times that I am glad at last to
sit down and write some of the things which always come to my mind.
To begin with, the question is foolishly worded, for there are very few
women who have careers. Those with real careers are a little group by
themselves needing separate consideration. Most women marry and work,
and the work will not be a "career." The question put this way also
seems to imply that marriage in itself is not a career. Anyone who
believes that has no real understanding of marriage.
There is no general answer which any one individual can give to this
question, no matter how it is worded, for it is one of those questions
that depends for its answer largely upon the individuals involved, both
men and women.
The question should really be phrased in this way: Are you able to
carry on two full-time jobs? Have you the physical strength and the
mental vigor to do this day in and day out--particularly when you are
young, first married, adjusting yourself to a stranger's personality,
and perhaps bearing children, which is an added physical strain?
I can hear you ask, "Why do you say, 'adjusting yourself to a stranger's
personality'?" The answer is quite simple: no two people really know
each other until they have been married for some time, and one of the
most exacting duties of family life is the adjustment of the various
personalities that make up the family circle. The mother adjusts herself
not only to her husband, but to each of her children and to the other
near relatives, and she tries to explain and to adjust them to one
another. It is not always an easy task.
More and more households are being managed by the housewife alone,
particularly among the young people. That means pretty nearly constant
attention to household tasks, if a good job is to be done, in the same
way that it would be done in an office or wherever the woman might be
employed for pay. This housekeeping job can be as scientific and as
engrossing as any office job, or it may be a slipshod, haphazard affair
with everything at sixes and sevens. It all depends upon the woman
whether she makes this side of marriage a career or not.
There is another important aspect to this career. Any woman who means to
make marriage a successful career will study her husband, his
capabilities, his interests, even his peculiarities. She should know
about his business and about his pleasures. It is possible for her to be
a great factor in his success, not by thrusting herself forward as an
advisor, but by understanding so well his character and his career that
she can supplement his shortcomings, bring out the best that is in him,
and expand his interests by adding her own. Thus she can have a
vicarious career by virtue of what she has put into her husband's.
Perhaps the woman who does this is the happiest and most successful
woman, but she has to have the kind of temperament that can do it and do
it well, and in addition the circumstances of married life have to make
it possible. We might as well face the fact that today circumstances are
making it more and more difficult for a woman to lead what two
generations ago was considered the normal and natural life for any
woman. In those days even a woman who did not marry tried to find a
niche that she could fill in somebody's home. A maiden aunt or cousin
often took the place of a nurse or governess or even a hired servant and
was looked upon with pity, and expected to work early and late for her
room and board, and to be as devoted to the children of the family as
though they were her own.
Women today would not accept this situation so calmly, and the fact that
they can be and are largely self-supporting changes their economic
condition. It also changes their relationship to men and marriage.
The economic situation is such today that few young people can marry at
the age when their grandparents did. Many young people, rather than put
off their marriage indefinitely, get married with the realization that
both of them will have to continue working and that children are out of
the question until they have laid enough money aside or the man has had
enough increase in salary to take care of all the family expenses.
This is not a case of whether you prefer marriage or a career. It is a
case of marriage and work together, or no marriage and work alone. Work
must go on in either case. For most women there is something so
satisfying in creating a home that they do it frequently by themselves.
It seems to fulfill a deep inner need to do the little homely things of
everyday living, and I think that is one reason why so many young people
get married and set up homes of their own long before their financial
resources warrant it.
If they want to have children as soon as they are financially
established, they usually do so, but a craving for a home of her own is
the first stirring of maturity in a woman. To many women, however, a
home is not wholly satisfying unless she is making it for someone else,
and nature has made most women yearn for a man to mother.
I know one young couple who were married when the boy was getting
twenty-five dollars a week and the girl was getting the same as a
stenographer. Both of them went on working. Everything seemed to be
going very well, and she managed her two jobs quite successfully. The
most successful part of it was the fact that she induced her husband to
feel an equal responsibility for the house. I remember that when I dined
with them, he put on an apron after dinner and helped wash the dishes as
naturally as if that were the normal occupation for a man. When a
marriage works out this way, it is very successful, especially if the
man has a knack for doing things about the house, because it keeps him
busy when his wife is busy.
Children can be postponed if two young people have a home and a mate. If
a woman has to work to have a home and husband, she will do it happily,
but I do not think that always means that she longs to work. It is
unfortunate that so often she is forced to for material security.
Where circumstances verge on poverty, marriage is even more of a career,
for then more depends on the woman's ability to manage. Of course, when
it comes to the mothers of families who work in mills, factories, and
stores, we know quite well that there is no question of choice--poverty
drives them, and they work because they have to, and only a few would
hesitate if they were offered an opportunity to stay at home and look
after their home and their children.
I remember visiting a mill town once, and as the women came off the
night shift--for there were no laws at that time in that particular
state against women's working on night shifts--they met their husbands
going to work on the day shift. We followed one woman home. Tired from
the hours in the mill, she nevertheless had to set to work immediately
to get the children fed and off to school. Then she had her house to set
to rights, washing and ironing to do, and dinner to get for the children
and supper to be left for the man when he came back from work as she
went on. In the afternoon she snatched a few hours of sleep, and the
children who were not in school played unwatched and uncared for. She
knew that her home life was not satisfactory, and she did not work long
hours in the mill because she wanted to, but simply because there was
not enough food to go around unless her earnings supplemented those of
her husband.
There are women, however, who work for the love of working. They may
love their homes and their children and still crave the satisfaction of
doing a job themselves. Sometimes it is just because they love the kind
of work they do; sometimes it is because they must have the independence
which being able to earn money gives them.
I know one young woman who has managed to develop for herself work which
she can do in her own home. She feels that her children need her at
home, and yet she was very unhappy without some outside interests. She
had a musical talent which she shared with her husband, and together
they developed a unique project which involved research and execution,
giving them a joint interest and allowing her to earn a little extra
money.
Very occasionally it is possible for a man and a woman to work together
and to have an even closer tie than they would have if the woman
remained the man's helpmate only in the home.
The happiness of husband and wife is often wrecked by too little
dependence on each other, for to be happy two people must need each
other in everything they do. I could tell you many stories of young
people who have drifted apart partly because the man was too absorbed by
his business and the woman did not have enough to do. One story I
remember, however, is a little different, because it was a case in which
both the man and his wife had interests which were so divergent that
neither of them took any pleasure in being with the other or in hearing
about what the other was doing. The man wanted to lead a rather quiet
life, and the woman was young and pretty, active-minded, physically
energetic. She wanted to do something which would bring in money and
make it possible for her to have some of the luxuries and pleasures that
she coveted and to which her husband was completely indifferent. They
stuck to their own interests, and while they lived in the same house and
while they had children and while they were never separated in a formal
way, they could not have been further apart if they had lived at the two
poles. I question if the children ever knew what it was to feel a
community of interests in that home.
It would be well if men realized the need that some women have for a
little financial independence. Occasionally marriage is wrecked because
the woman feels that her work at home is as much a financial
contribution as is the man's work out in the world. She finds no
recognition of this in their relationship or in their environment and
becomes more and more restless and dissatisfied.
I remember one woman saying rather bitterly to me once that she made
more money by saving and good management than her husband did, but that
he seemed to think the generosity of giving was all on his side,
forgetting that she gave her strength and her time. The work which she
did she might have paid someone else to do; and her careful buying
actually put in the bank money which her husband could use in his
business.
As a rule, the woman spends the major part of the family income, but if
it is given her for the house and she has to resort to subterfuge to get
any personal pocket money out of it, it is not a happy arrangement. Of
course, when two people are planning together every penny of
expenditure, the case is different; but when a man has any money which
he calls his own, a woman should have some also in recognition of the
services she performs for the home. She is more apt to make her
housekeeping a good job and to be happy in her family relations.
In many cases a woman who holds a job feels that she is a better
companion for her husband because she has more individuality and comes
to him more full of different interests when they meet. She may not have
the kind of temperament which makes it possible for her to bring up her
children herself. She may find that even with less time to give them,
she can really do more for them. All these things are subjects for the
individuals to consider and decide together.
"Why do you work?" I once asked a friend of mine who seemed very weary.
She smiled and said: "I work because I found that when Stephen came home
at night, I had nothing to talk to him about. He is out in the world and
meets people and does things. I was in a little backwater and lost the
habit of thinking about the same things that are on his mind. I had to
go back to work to regain the same atmosphere and to be a companion."
"But," I said, "you have to pay some one to take care of the children.
"Wouldn't it be cheaper to do it yourself?"
"Far cheaper," she said, "but even the children are better off. Now,
when I come home, I am full of interests I can share with them, and I am
nowhere nearly so impatient as I used to be when I answered their
questions all day long and directed every minute of their lives. I do
not mind now saying, 'Johnny, wash your hands,' or, 'Sara, don't bite
when you fight.' I have to do it only between 6 and 8 P.M. But if I do
it from 6 A.M. until 8 P.M., many a harsh word is spoken, and
many a hasty gesture passes between us, much to my regret afterward."
One thing is certain: Any woman who decides to work after she is married
must have good health and be a fairly well-disciplined person, and her
life must be systematized so that one part does not interfere with the
other, and the man must understand and sympathize with her interests and
desires.
The man's temperament is as important as the woman's, for there are men
who deeply resent their wives' doing any work and who want to feel that
their home is entirely dependent on their own efforts. There are other
men who go even beyond that and want to feel that the woman whom they
have married is dependent upon them for all she has in a material way,
forgetting often that their mental and spiritual contacts count also in
any relationship. Then again there are men who, if their wives are
self-sufficient and capable, will do exactly what so many women are
accused of doing--become parasites and willingly allow themselves to be
taken care of in every way, even in a material way.
I knew one man whose wife mothered him until he completely lost his
initiative. He was sweet to her, but he really felt that life was made
by her and he had to make no effort. Suddenly he met a woman who was
weaker and more clinging than he was, and she awakened in him all his
dormant chivalrous instincts. He asked his wife for a divorce. He
married the weaker woman and became a strong man. The first wife remade
her life, which was not astonishing; but he remade his, which seemed
unbelievable.
All the things I have mentioned and one more enter into this question of
whether a woman who has the ability to do a job outside the home should
do it or not. In the last few years I have been getting many letters
from women whose husbands have fallen ill or died and left them alone or
with dependents. Those who have had no training are the most pathetic,
but those who once worked and then gave up altogether are in almost as
difficult a position.
I doubt that it is ever wise for a woman who has once had a skill to
allow herself to lose it entirely, for, granting that she makes of
marriage a career, there may come a time when she will need work, and
there will certainly come a time when her children are grown. If the
demands on her time are fewer and she is well, she may feel the
necessity of taking up some kind of regular work again, particularly if
in her youth she was trained to keep busy. This may not be a financial
necessity, but merely something to take the place of the duties which
were hers when marriage was her only job.
In my own experience I have found there is one other thing that may
happen to a woman. For some reason she may have to interest herself in
things that have seemed to be more directly her husband's interests and
in which she never expected to take any personal part. She may find she
becomes interested for a variety of reasons. This necessity of
developing interests of her own which take her out of her home will find
her better equipped if she has once done a job for pay and kept on doing
it now and then throughout her life so that she is able to maintain a
professional attitude toward all work, both in her home and out of it.
There are just a few women who have special gifts, who have established
careers before they meet the men they wish to marry. If they give up
these careers, they may find much of the savor of life is removed when
they are not doing something which requires independent thought and
initiative. These are the women who go to work because they are
conscious of a capacity within themselves which cannot be denied, and
they should marry only men who understand this and are willing to make
some compromises. It can be done very happily, but it depends on both
the man and the woman in each case. These "career" women do a job for
the love of it. They may be so gifted that they can cope successfully
with household affairs from the administrative point of view. They may
not be interested in doing any of the homely things of life. They may be
quite helpless at home and need someone else to cope with household
measures. For them it is probably impossible to settle down to a
homemaker's career and watch over somebody else's career and development
and achievement. They are fortunate if they marry the right men!
The women who I feel should undoubtedly have outside occupation,
however, are the women whose homes are taken care of by competent hands
and feet other than their own, who with ordinary capacity for management
can give the necessary orders in fifteen minutes every morning and have
the rest of the day in which to do nothing. These women might as well do
something even if they have no special gifts, for as idlers they
encumber the earth. They are not doing things at home that keep women
busy and happy.
I think any young couple is fortunate when the woman has to do
everything about the house and does it happily, but in view of all the
different angles that this problem presents, I would give no advice,
only urge young people to think over what they want out of life very
carefully when they are making the decision of how they will start their
life together.
_Gladys Hoagland Groves_
CHAPTER FIVE
_Learning to Live Together_
The wedding shuts one gate and opens another. The longings and dreamings
of courtship are at an end. The supreme intimacy of life begins.
As John and Mary move away from the altar, pronounced man and wife, they
know they are starting a great adventure. His beaming face masks a stiff
determination to keep his bride happy in spite of any worldly obstacles.
Her radiance hides a solemn inward vow to do everything humanly possible
to make smooth the way of their life together. They are right. Unless
they are very different from most people, this new joint enterprise is
going to mean more to each of them than anything else ever can.
Before them is a clear road. Not to happiness, as they may believe, but
to the opportunity for gaining happiness. The goal is not easily won,
but they can attain it without the aid of luck or rare gifts or
miracles--simply by practicing the common everyday virtues that bring
success in all human ventures.
A young couple's engagement period is like any other time of excited
anticipation, when one has received the promise of something greatly
desired, but must wait awhile before its delivery. The happiness of the
waiting period is characterized by the absence of a critical spirit, and
therefore is apt to be thought of as an experience of pure delight. But
the first days of marriage bring out a different set of feelings--those
that come when one has definitely obtained possession of anything that
before was only promised. At first the emotions seem to stand
still--this is the long-coveted moment! Then one begins to appraise. Is
the object of one's wishes as desirable as one had expected?
Because reality rarely measures up to imagination, the first answer is
almost bound to be, "No, this is not what I expected." And the first
emotion tends to be disappointment. If one accepts the fact that
discrepancy between imagination and reality is inevitable, he is better
able to go on to a more thorough examination of the situation, from the
fresh viewpoint of finding out just what he has received, regardless of
hazy but optimistic expectations; and the object possessed will more
than likely turn out to be better than, although different from, what
the imagination pictured.
Knowing that a fleeting sense of disappointment is not peculiar to one's
own marriage, but likely to occur in all, as in every other human
undertaking, takes away its power to hurt. Unworried by any fear of
calamity, each marriage partner can turn to account his or her powers of
discernment by learning to recognize the assets as well as the
liabilities of the partnership.
Roughly, both the helps and the hindrances to married happiness can be
lumped under one word--personalities. Temperament, mannerisms,
tastes--all that is implied in the distinct individuality of each
person--make up the chief source of the advantages and disadvantages
with which the couple enter marriage. These traits cannot be changed
overnight. Nor is it necessary, or at all wise, that they should be.
John attracts Mary, and she appeals to him, because the personality of
each one is what it is. Love has grown up between the two as a result of
this personality attraction. And love is the motive that will make both
try to keep open the pathway to marriage success.
But love is not a finished product that, once it comes, can forever
after be trusted to keep its strength. Like everything else that is
alive, it must be kept growing through exercise, or it wastes away.
Love gives the push that keeps a marriage moving, but it does not give
the direction. That comes from understanding and cooperation. Although
John and Mary love each other as feverishly as any other couple at
first, if their loved is self-centered and ingrown, it will eventually
turn to hate, or wear thin and give way to indifference. This is what
they must guard against. While love is still the moving force of their
lives, they must study the problems that are due to come. To wait until
they are beset by them is to beg for trouble.
In order to cope with their problems they must realize, first, that they
cannot stumble upon married happiness; that they must possess and
cultivate a positive will to succeed. Then they must understand that the
will is in itself not enough; it must be coupled with a willingness to
work, and work hard, for the happiness that can be the greatest blessing
of their lives. And finally, they must know what constitutes a happy
marriage--what to aim for in their day-to-day association.
What makes a successful marriage? Here are nine guideposts to help John
and Mary along their road:
_1. The first requirement is the building of a union that is just to
both._
The smaller issues on which this rests are the lively clashes of
opposite desires, inevitable in the coming together of any two persons,
intensified when those two persons are as different as a man and a
woman, and unavoidable for two committed to a lifetime together in the
close quarters of marriage.
_2. Compromise will lift these essentially petty decisions of precedence
above the level of selfishness._
Decisions must be made on the basis of what is good for both, not the
selfish or narrow wish of either. The choice that brings the larger
advantage to the two persons in their common role of marriage partners
is the one to be made. Human judgment being as faulty as it is, time may
show that any one decision has been an error, but there can be no ill
will about it if each feels that an honest effort was made to be fair.
For example, Mary wants to buy a car, just as John is reckoning that the
time has come to build a house. Or perhaps he wants to invest money in
professional or business advancement at the precise moment when she
realizes she wants a child. In either situation, the particular couple
involved have to weigh delicately the effect on their joint enterprise
of the conflicting courses of action. Much as Mary may crave a child or
a car, she might not be able to enjoy either if she got it, unless John
were ready to share in her delight. Nor could he, overruling her against
her will, find in his choice of home-owning or personal-career
investment the satisfaction he had expected. They two, and nobody else,
can make the decision to fit their marriage.
Readiness to try to imagine the partner's point of view has to be
supplemented by calmness in considering the probable effect of either
course on both persons. If each one is hurt at the other's inability to
join instantly in his, or her, plans, they will need to take pains not
to get sidetracked into making a personal contest of the affair. Trying
to win over your partner with a single eye to getting what you want,
regardless of its effect on the mate, is short-sighted in the extreme.
Even if you could care only for personal pleasure, that cannot long
outlast your spouse's displeasure.
Staging a contest or a succession of small contests, for the sake of
finding out who is boss builds up a habit of fighting that may lead to a
bitter end. It is useless to discover who can win in any particular
skirmish. What is important is to learn whether one of you is set on
being "head of the house." If your spouse craves that distinction, by
all means hand it over without delay. It is an empty honor, for the one
who bends but does not break will readily develop the fine art of
influencing the headstrong one.
Because it is part of the traditional feminine character to enjoy giving
in to the man, this tendency must be scrutinized when it appears. No man
can afford to be crippled for life by letting his wife swaddle him with
solicitude as some mothers spoil their children for their own
glorification. A woman's feeling that she will be emotionally gratified
by making a sacrifice does not prove that, aside from her momentary
pleasure, there is any value in it. The ease or difficulty with which
husband or wife makes an adjustment in no way measures the worth of that
adjustment for their partnership.
Because of women's recent growth in socially recognized independence,
any individual woman may waver between a craving for self-sacrifice and
a repugnance to the very thought of it. This changeableness can make her
feel resentful after she has given in to her husband. All this must be
taken into account in making decisions. Compromise, not submission,
should be the rule. If John forges ahead on one count, Mary must find
an acceptable outlet for herself on some other front.
_3. Respect for the other member of the marriage association is a
must-have. No demand should be laid upon the mate that requires a
drastic change of personality._
Nobody can suddenly change his personality at will, and the effort to do
so to please the partner is liable to result in a topheavy hypocrisy--a
superstructure calculated to impress the observer, but built on a shaky
foundation of chaos.
The changes a husband or wife makes in the partner's total personality
are in the nature of altered emphasis in the expression of traits
already present. These minor changes occur as by-products of active
response to the personality of the mate in many small daily contacts,
and not as a result of exhortation. Nor are they necessarily permanent.
A chameleon changes color easily to match its environment or temper of
the moment, but a human being's more lasting change is not so readily
made.
Each marriage partner must be proud of the other and let the other
continue to be proud of him or her. Therefore you have to respect
yourself and act as if you did, even at home. Too many couples exploit
the sense of let-down that marriage brings with it. After so long a
time, husband and wife cease to feel that they must exert themselves for
each other in little matters. Knowing themselves accepted, they
lounge--mentally, mannerly, and physically--when at home or elsewhere
alone together. Some of this relaxation is a good thing, but it is a
mistake to let home and spouse degenerate into nothing more than an
invitation to be lazy.
Using the mate for relief, as in nagging, whining, crying, or grumbling,
is taboo. If you are tired or irritable, you can rest or exercise for
restoration, as in the days before marriage. To pour out troubles or
act out annoyance without restraint before the mate is to wear out his
or her spontaneity and dry up the source of refreshment you are trying
to tap. Fatigue and nervousness, expressed, breed fatigue and
nervousness in a sympathetic audience.
_4. Too great concentration is to be avoided. Even the greatest love
stagnates if it is kept out of the main current of life. To care only
for each other is selfishness for two, only one step removed from
self-centered engrossment._
This is why the unique value of children is their service as an entering
wedge in the close-grown love of husband and wife, a wedge that widens
and holds forever wider the unity of love it has penetrated. Other
responsibilities, other interests, may serve a similar purpose, though
more easily dislodged and seldom striking so deep.
Friends, old and new, have a function in relieving the overclose concern
of one marriage partner with the other. If they are to play their full
part in preventing overconcentration, the friends must not be limited to
those who appeal equally to both the husband and the wife. Common
friends are fine, but for this purpose there is special need of friends
for either spouse who can call forth those sides of his or her nature
that are not aroused by the mate. A brilliant man may be bored by his
wife's slower-thinking women friends, but these may be just what she
needs as a relief from the high-pressure intellectual life she is
leading with him. A stylish woman may be appalled at the slouchy
appearance of some of her husband's cronies, who are a necessary balance
wheel for him in the strenuous gyrations he goes through to keep the
sartorial pace she sets.
The factor that underlies all the perplexities, and most of the
contentment, of marriage is its unique degree of concentrated intimacy.
Here the supreme testing always comes. Each means so much to the other,
each needs so much from the other, that there can be no halfway
satisfaction in being together. But there will come a first time when
John is too tired to go out with Mary, or vice versa. Do not think of it
as a blow; do not believe he or she is implying "I do not want to go out
with you because I am getting tired of you." You must realize that it is
important to have some privacy of time, if not of space. The wife may be
alone part of the day and profit by it. When John comes home at night,
he has not had that privilege. His need for privacy must be appreciated,
whether he wants to get it by staying at home alone in the evening, or
by going out without his wife, or by having his friends in when she is
not around.
_5. The general level of emotion is what counts, not the spectacular
scaling of peaks. Staking all on high moments is melodrama with no comic
relief._
Some husbands, some wives, are artists at achieving and momentarily
living up to romantic settings, but quickly flop down to the lower
levels of decent fairness between the high spots of their sentimental
flare-ups. Others cannot utter a poetic phrase, make a romantic gesture,
or let their eyes show the quick intensity of their tender emotions if
they must die for it. This difference is one of make-up and training,
not of marriage capacity.
The couple who are sure of each other's steady affection, regardless of
its expression in romantic interludes, are the ones who can afford to
smile at the anxiety of those newly married husbands and wives who are
terror-stricken at any lessening of the outward expressions of love.
Another terrible moment that is due to come may seem even more
frightening because it is you who are slipping. Soon or late you find
that some familiar mannerism of your spouse displeases you. It may be a
slight uncouthness at table, a peculiar back-country phrase or
pronunciation, some gesture of timidity or swaggering. Once you loved
it as a part of the individuality of the person you fell in love with.
Now it vexes you. And your vexation terrifies you. Does this mean that
you no longer love your mate as you did? You cannot help your change of
feeling. How, then, can you hope to keep your affection from
disappearing altogether if it has already begun to wane? You remember
other people you once thought you loved, and wonder, panic-stricken, how
you can keep this love from dying as those other loves did.
This is probably an almost universal experience, marking, not the
beginning of the end of love, but the passage from an adolescent type of
blind devotion to a more mature affection that persists in spite of
being able to admit the flaws it sees. For the very young a person must
register one hundred percent or be rejected. Maturity brings recognition
of human imperfections in the most heroic, but also develops the ability
to weigh big and little things and to love with more confidence because
unafraid of being disturbed by little imperfections.
Now that you can see your mate more clearly, you should also be able to
see more accurately his, or her, good points, which before were hidden
from you in the mist of your enthusiasm. Your love is now becoming less
self-centered and more helpful to your partner.
_6. There can be no holding on to the present nor seeking to bring back
the past. Each moment is new and good in itself._
The tale is never told. Always it is the unturned page the holds the
answer to the question, "How goes it with this marriage?" The present is
useful only as a foundation stone for the future, which is being built
up out of many fleeting present moments, each quickly lost in the past.
Trying to convince yourself that you still feel a kind of love you have
outlived prevents your growing into the more mature kind of love that
fits your present stature and prepares for the needs of the future.
Attempting to hold the partner to a similar static expression of love
hampers the growth in him or her of an expanding reality of love.
_7. There can be no narrowing of marriage to mere sex adjustment. What
is essential is life adjustment, of which sex is but a part._
To interpret the marriage association as little more than sex is to
throw away all chance of success, even in the realm of sex. The two
lives have to be adjusted to each other, and the two persons have to
work out a common life that means something to them over and above the
pleasure they may take in each other's company. As a continuing part of
this life adjustment, sex adjustment can develop into a permanent factor
of married happiness; but without the larger adjustment, the partial
adjustment cannot be made in any fundamental and enduring form.
In the sex life in marriage, as in other parts of the association, each
partner wins by considering the other before the self. Since marriage
grows by enveloping, rather than by being enveloped by, any one element,
every part of the married life must receive the same painstaking
attention. At no point can the domination of either partner over the
other take the place of adjustment.
_8. There must be no cultivation of sensitiveness, no looking for hurt,
but instead a complete trust in each other._
One who prides himself or herself on having to be handled with gloves
has a great deal of growing up to do in order to be able to be an active
partner in the marriage. Cry-babying is no more helpful in marriage than
in business or social life; it is only more easily indulged in, more
tempting because of the sympathetic response it is likely at first to
receive.
In the healthy marriage, this sympathetic response will soon give way to
anger, which in turn may have the effect of a dash of cold water in the
face of the oversensitive one, helping him or her to buck up and behave
like an adult. In the unhealthy marriage, sympathy will grow into pity,
which drives out the indispensable attitude of respect.
The person who has the backbone to try to play the part of a mature
being will realize that getting hurt in any human association is a
two-edged affair. Both get hurt, but the weak person does nothing but
squeal about it, while the robust ignores it except for trying to take
some constructive step to prevent future occasions for hurt. The
marriage partner who is mature will maintain trust in the other's good
intentions in the face of what might seem to be occasions for hurt
feelings.
A chief advantage of the married estate is its opportunity for
frankness. "Why doesn't his wife tell him of that unpleasant mannerism,
so he can correct it?" bears witness to the universal appreciation of
this function of married life. But if John nurses hurt feelings whenever
Mary punctures his vanity by suggesting that he presents to the world a
less than perfect front, Mary may soon lose courage and relinquish her
wifely job of husband improvement. Or the combination may be reversed.
Frankness must go clothed in tact. Stiff-minded people who are frank
only when angry lose their case before they present it. If the
expression of anger is to have its proper stimulative effect, it has to
be administered but rarely, and then in small doses. More has a
paralyzing effect on the recipient, producing a response in kind that
takes away the ability to think of anything except retaliation.
_9. Willingness to grow is the most necessary factor for success.
Marriage is a life program of going on together that requires
maturity; failure means that there is a holding on to childishness._
We are all immature at some points, but we can welcome opportunities for
growth, painful though they may be. The man and woman who find their
marriage yielding diminishing returns may be sure they are attempting to
hold it to an adolescent level. As this is an impossibility, they are
aware of increasing dissatisfaction. That does not mean they are
unadapted to each other. They are afraid to leave the known pleasures of
their first youth for the unguessed satisfactions of maturity, so they
try to stand still, hoping to keep their marriage, unchanged, in its
first stage of promise.
If both husband and wife accept maturing responsibilities as they come,
their marriage relationship will keep pace with their own development
and will therefore become increasingly satisfying to them. A truly
mature couple do not look back with longing to the early part of their
married life, but appreciate its value as a phase that led up to the
deeper content of each succeeding phase.
Having invested years, their youth and hopes, in their marriage, it
would be poor business for any couple to fail to follow up their initial
investment by putting in such small regular amounts of thought and
effort as will make a go of it. The difference between success and
failure is the hairline difference between caring and ceasing to care
for one's investment.
Married life is serious business, as living always is, but it is easier
and at the same time more rewarding than single life. To be human is to
be lonely. To be successfully married is to have an inner bulwark
against loneliness.
_Elizabeth Bussing_
CHAPTER SIX
_Marriage Makes the Money Go_
"And they lived happily ever after!"
The romance in the old storybook always ended blissfully in marriage.
The valiant Prince Charming slew dragons, vanquished giants, and worsted
sorcerers; but once he had attained the fair lady of his dreams, he left
all his worries behind him.
Today, however, Prince Charming, unless he is an incurable romanticist,
realizes that the real struggle begins only after marriage.
"Now that you have won the fair lady how are you going to support her?"
is the question he must solve satisfactorily before he can qualify as a
suitable husband. The answer is determined by two factors: "How much
money is earned?" "How can that sum be spent most efficiently?"
The first query is quickly disposed of. The second, however, requires
careful thought and planning. Its solution is up to both the husband
and the wife, for each couple must work out their individual problem. We
wish we could do it for them, but we can't. At best we can only give the
rules which we have evolved as the result of our own experience.
The first step in the art of orderly spending is the preparation of an
adequate budget. This is not so formidable as it seems, for the budget
is nothing more than an inventory of resources and a calculation of
needs that will help you develop a schedule of spending which should be
fair to both you and your partner. It will differ in detail for each
couple, because no matter how similar circumstances may seem to be,
senses of values will vary.
At the start, however, it is well to keep an itemized account of
expenditures to aid in adjusting your budget to actual needs and to
learn just how much you are spending for each item. You may find that
you have been paying more for some things than you thought you were.
Once you have settled on the approximate amount to be allotted to each
purpose, however, you probably will find that keeping a written record
of every purchase is more of a nuisance than a help.
It may help you to plan your budget if you study some of the model
estimates published from time to time by savings banks, life-insurance
companies, and other financial organizations. You who are just planning
to be married, however, will find that these statements are compiled
usually for families with two or three children. At best they will only
roughly approximate your special problems.
Let us consider the situation faced by a young couple just starting out
in married life. Generally speaking, if you live in a big city and your
income is about $100 a month, you will pay about $35 to the landlord.
Rents, unfortunately, are disproportionately high in the largest urban
centers, for persons of limited means. In smaller communities, you
undoubtedly will find quarters for somewhat less.
Your food, at the present price level, will cost at least $25 a month
for an adequate diet--and this assumes extremely intelligent and careful
buying.
Transportation to and from work for one person will cost not less than
$2.50 a month. Total transportation costs for both of you--if only one
works--will be between $3 and $4. Not more than $10 a month should be
spent for clothes, and at least $6 must be set aside for insurance and
savings. This leaves roughly $20 a month for all other expenses. It is
not easy for two to live on $100 a month--but it is being done.
While it is not true that two can live as cheaply as one, two persons
who are in love may live more happily if they marry and both continue to
work than if they undergo the strain of a long engagement. This problem,
however, must be worked out with reference to the particular case, for,
as pointed out in an earlier article in this series, it is more
difficult for a man to get a foothold in certain professions if he
marries before his apprenticeship is complete. It seems obvious that if
you are wed before the man finishes his professional preparation, you
will not wish to have children for the time being and that the wife will
continue to support herself. I have seen many complications caused by
the arrival of children before the husband had completed his
professional training.
One young couple I knew were getting along very smoothly while the wife
was working and her husband was spending his last year in medical
school. The arrival of a baby made it necessary for her to quit her job.
This, in turn, made it imperative for the man to earn a livelihood. He
took a position in a department store where today--ten years later--he
is still a junior employee. By now, in the ordinary course of events,
he might have been established in the profession for which he was
studying.
All young couples, fortunately, do not encounter such tragedies. If your
income is around $2000 a year, your financial position is relatively
more secure. You may find a suitable apartment in a large city for
between $50 and $60 a month--including heat and hot water. The rent in a
smaller community will be less, but remember that if you furnish your
own heat and hot water, you must add the cost of fuel. If, to save
money, you move beyond the public transportation system, you must
include the cost and upkeep of a car. But even considering the added
expense of an automobile (provided you take care of it partly yourself
and thus save some service charges) you may have better living
conditions and derive more enjoyment from life than if you lived closer
to town.
Your food budget now may be about $40 a month--enough for a liberal
diet. Your clothing allowance should be sufficient for average
needs--say, $15. Insurance and savings should be greater than those of
the couple in the $1200 group. At least 14 percent of your income now
should be set aside for these purposes.
If you plan to have children on an income of between $2000 and $3000 a
year, you still will be able to live comfortably, but you probably will
be happier if you move into a community made up of young people of your
own income group. This will enable the mothers to make various sorts of
cooperative arrangements for child care, which serve the threefold
purpose of giving the children desirable social experience, providing
the mother with more freedom, and keeping costs down. It also
contributes toward a congenial social life for the adults.
The proportions to be spent for the larger items hold true in general
for the family whose income is between $2000 and $3000 a year. Without
knowing your individual circumstances, however, no one can make a budget
for you in minute detail. The amounts you should allot to various items
are governed by many considerations.
For example, there are some types of employment that require more
expensive clothes than others, while some professions necessitate the
purchase of equipment. Again, the major proportions will change with the
needs of your dependents, whether these are children or older persons
who look to you for help. Moreover, a wife who confines her activities
to the home will do many money-saving chores and require fewer clothes
than she would if she, too, went to business. Notwithstanding these
individual variations, the foregoing rules of thumb will be helpful in
keeping you within safe bounds.
But the proportion of your income to be spent for various purposes is
only a small part of your problem. Don't be surprised if your budget
fails to balance. Probably 95 percent of those who attempt to budget
their family expenses have this experience. The primary reason is that
few persons really know what it costs to live. This is due, in part, to
the fact that we often confuse _total_ expenses with _day-to-day_
expenses. Most people think of living costs as the immediate outlay for
food, clothing, and shelter, disregarding the important item of
depreciation.
The average housewife understands depreciation as it applies to food in
a refrigerator, but gives very little thought to the same process as it
applies to furniture, appliances, motorcar, clothing, and the house she
lives in--if she and her husband own it. When replacement or repair of
these more durable goods becomes necessary, there often is no fund
available for the purpose. If replacement or repair is made, the budget
is thrown out of balance. If neither is undertaken, depreciation sets
in all the faster.
In order to catch up at this point, many couples take what seems at the
time to be the easiest way out--they borrow money. This may appear to
solve the problem, but actually the repayment of the loan throws the
budget farther out of balance. Not only that, but a substantial interest
charge must be met. To cover such obligations, you will have to curtail
your living expenses, and you will find this much harder to do than to
save for these emergencies in the first place.
One of the greatest financial difficulties encountered by young people
(and many older ones, too, for that matter) is that of making an
intelligent decision in the purchase of such important and costly items
as a house, mechanical home appliances, furniture, and life insurance.
The reason why it is difficult to select these things is that we buy
them too seldom to acquire much experience with reference to them.
Life insurance is a subject on which very few of us have specific
information. It is as important as it is trite to point out that the
amount and the type of insurance should be governed by the kind of
hazards against which you should provide. Yet it is necessary to realize
that the need of protection changes as life progresses. A father with
young, dependent children should carry considerably more insurance than
a man with no dependents other than his wife. Consequently, it is
desirable to carry two types of insurance: on the one hand, a straight
life contract, entered into preferably early in life when annual
premiums are lower, and, on the other hand, successive renewable
term-insurance policies which may be purchased when temporary
responsibilities, such as the rearing of children, are undertaken.
Protection for a childless wife might be limited to an amount equal to
two years of the husband's salary. Roughly, the same amount of term
insurance may be taken out for each child. The earlier in life such
policies are acquired, of course, the smaller the annual premiums.
Renewable term-insurance premiums are lower than straight life insurance
because in the former there is no cash surrender value. Term insurance,
like fire insurance, buys protection--and nothing else.
It is a mistake to look at life insurance as a primary form of saving
because, generally speaking, the more the life-insurance policy conforms
to a savings account, the less effectively and economically it affords
protection against the hazard of death. Buy the life insurance as life
insurance and put your savings into a savings account. It is well to
remember at this point, too, that if you can accumulate enough to pay
your insurance premiums yearly--rather than weekly or monthly--you will
pay a lower rate.
The purchase of a home is another difficult undertaking for the newly
married couple because the average person cannot tell the difference
between a well-built house and one which is poorly constructed. Unless
there is some understanding of this matter, it probably will be wiser to
defer the purchase of a house and live in rented quarters until one
acquires such knowledge. It must be remembered, also, that the upkeep of
a dwelling is likely to come to a substantial figure and that the budget
may be severely strained if one does not know in advance the actual
costs of owning real estate.
Not the least of these items to be investigated is the amount of
assessments which are or may be levied against the property. The
likelihood of such levies is seldom pointed out by the real-estate
salesman. Furthermore, if one's position is insecure or there is a
possibility of being transferred to another section of the country in
the course of one's employment, it would be wiser to live in rented
quarters.
It is a good general rule to pay no more than twice one year's salary
for a house; of this amount, not less than 10 percent will be required
generally as a "down payment." Then you will have to pay interest and
amortization on your mortgage, which, with taxes and upkeep, probably
will come to as much as the rent for a similar house. At the end of a
period of years, however, you own the house, which is a definite
advantage.
Perhaps you have decided, as many young couples do today, that you will
both work for wages. The arrival of a baby or possibly some other
unplanned event may force the wife to give up her job. If you would
avoid real difficulties, therefore, try from the outset to meet the big
items--rent, food, essential clothing, and the minimum of insurance and
savings--out of the husband's earnings. Let the wife's earnings cover
only those items which, though desirable, are less important to your
welfare, such as "luxury" clothes, recreation, and items of a similar
character.
Any couple who depend on the wife's earnings for such essentials as
food, clothing, and shelter should be prepared to adopt a lower scale of
expenditure for any of or all these purposes, for as a general rule her
contribution to the family income is likely to be less certain than that
of her husband. The time to take on additional expenses is after an
increase in the husband's wages--not before. Guard against the
assumption of obligations which you could not meet if your combined
income were reduced.
Simple as this rule would seem to be, I have seen it ignored time and
time again, usually with the same unhappy result. I have in mind the
case of a couple whom we shall call the Browns. Doris Brown supplemented
her husband's salary by giving piano lessons at home. They planned to
have a baby and could well have managed to do so with but a short
interruption to Doris' teaching activity. But--and this is what so many
couples contemplating children overlook--complications set in which made
it necessary for her to spend the last six months of pregnancy in a
hospital.
Not only did the family income decline by the amount she had earned, but
expenses increased greatly. Some of the deficit was made up by
borrowing, but there is a limit to the amount that can be obtained in
this manner. That limit was reached before the last $150 was paid on the
grand piano which Doris required for her work. As a result, the piano
was taken back by the dealer.
The Browns, fortunately, are persons who do not give in readily in the
face of adversity. They will work out their own problem and regain lost
ground. Indeed, they have already moved into cheaper living quarters,
not only to adapt themselves to a smaller income but also to work out of
debt and re-acquire a piano. Much of the heartache in this situation
might have been avoided if the couple had depended less on the wife's
income to meet essential expenses.
One of the greatest pitfalls in the path of any young couple is the
feeling that they must "keep up with the Joneses." We all think of
ourselves as belonging to a certain social group--whether we express it
in snobbish terms or not. But we need not on that account maintain a
standard comparable to that of a neighbor whom we admire if, in doing
so, we overextend ourselves. Intelligent persons are not impressed
favorably by pretense.
What impresses is training and ability. Since the best time to acquire
these is when we are young, it may be necessary for a while to practice
the very opposite of ostentation--self-sacrifice. If your husband is a
professional man and you have married early, he may still be working
for an advanced degree. This entails fees and--what is even more
exacting--time. It means sacrifice--giving up social engagements and
many comforts which you would be able to have on your husband's present
salary. There is no more basic part of the budget today than provision
for more vocational training.
Most of us waste money on nonessentials. We have glass curtains before
we can afford them, whereas no curtains often make our houses lighter
and more restful. We have fancy trays, knickknacks, and extra little
tables that we do not need. The most attractive houses are in many cases
those which show no evidence of overcrowding.
How many women, if they look into their bureau drawers, will not find
them cluttered with accessories which either are not used or, if worn,
spoil the elegance and tidy distinction of their costumes? Buying wisely
is an art, but it requires no special talent--only a willingness to
learn--and there are any number of books and magazine articles available
that will help you to be better buyers. There are a few general
recommendations, however, which may be made.
For example, don't buy without asking yourself in each instance: "Do I
need this?" and "Will it fit in with other things I now have, or will it
require further buying?" Thus a brown coat, no matter how cheap, is no
bargain if all your accessories are black.
Another important principle of good buying is: Be sure you know what you
want; then buy the best you can afford. The best is usually the cheapest
in the long run. It means fewer replacements, longer use, and better
appearance from the start. Analogous to wasting money on second-grade
goods is the purchase of imitations of articles you can't afford.
Don't buy things that require expensive upkeep. Washing is cheaper than
dry-cleaning, and if you have washable clothes and furnishings that can
be handled at home, you will not be stranded in a period when you have
to cut costs by doing the work yourself.
Buy from well-established merchants. Their reputation is valuable, to
you and to them alike. Avoid the fly-by-night shop and its vaunted
"bargains."
I have known brides who spent their meager food allowances on useless
trimmings. Such ignorance is inexcusable; no woman these days need go
without competent advice on food purchases. She has only to consult her
favorite magazine.
Most budgets allow something for the theatre, social affairs, weekends,
vacation, and travel for pleasure. The proportion of your income to be
spent on recreation is a matter about which we must not be dogmatic. You
must figure out what you want most. In the first place, recreation
requires the allotment of time and money to do things which you most
enjoy, and these will differ for every couple. We may easily
overemphasize the kind of recreation for which we pay money. It is true
that theatre tickets, phonograph records, and the like are expensive and
offer a passive form of entertainment, more appropriate for older
people. When you are young and trying to be happy on little money, it is
foolish to believe that you have to buy your fun. Whether or not you
have a good time depends not on how much money you spend but on whether
you and your husband are fundamentally good companions.
Have you the spirit of play and the ability to enjoy things together?
Then you have one of life's most precious gifts. Preserve it by
exercise. Wherever you live, there are inexpensive ways of getting into
the woods, picnicking together, walking, swimming, and enjoying all
sorts of outdoor sports at very little cost. Such recreation is good for
you physically, and great fun besides.
Many young couples spend so much emotional energy on their children that
they lose the invaluable habit of running off to play together. Wherever
you cut expenses, do not neglect to go off together frequently as you
did when you were engaged. No money is better spent than the small fee
for hiring a person to look after the children while husband and wife
take a picnic lunch together, a long walk, or do whatever it is they
most enjoy.
Too common today are people like Mary and Jim, who, in their eagerness
to do all that books and lectures recommend for little Peter, got so
involved in his welfare that they lost all their sense of fun. They are
today thoroughly dull people, no longer interesting socially. Jim has
failed to rise in his business, for he mislaid the spark of enthusiasm
which made him an asset to his employer. Most unhappy is poor Peter, who
has become a genuine problem child.
Entertaining may seem important to you, but young couples are not
expected to engage in any sort of formal social activity. Avoid
expensive dinner parties and substitute informal gatherings where both
the preparation and the cost of food will be slight. If you are original
and vivacious hosts, your guests will have a jolly time.
Your budget should provide something for medical service. Remember that
the largest dental bill comes after a period of neglect. You should not
have to spend much in fees for the family doctor. Select one with care
and talk over your circumstances with him in a friendly way. Don't be
afraid to ask him what his fee will be. It is a false kind of pride that
leads one to hesitate in discussing professional fees frankly and fully.
Investigate the three-cents-a-day hospital plan in your community.
No more serious question of expense will confront you than the cost of
children. The direct expense for hospital and medical care incidental to
the arrival of a baby varies in different parts of the country, but it
is safe to say that in cities it will be somewhere between $100 and $200
as a minimum.
However, you need not expect to enjoy the frills of a private room and
special nurses and think the doctor will take care of you for a nominal
fee; there is no reason why he should. Having a baby is not a disease,
and you will not need to have fussy care.
You should, however, put something aside for those extra expenses which
are almost certain to occur. During the baby's first year, regular
medical care should be provided. Your doctor may suggest a contract
under which you would pay him a specified amount to keep baby well and
receive his services whenever you need them during that period. Under
such a plan you may pay anywhere from $50 to $300 a year. If you prefer
to pay by the visit, you take the risk; it may cost more, or it may
amount to less in the course of a year than it would under the terms of
a definite contract.
It is easy to be extravagant in buying unnecessary clothes and toys for
the child. Remember that a baby is happiest in the simplest surroundings
and that the only two things you can give your child which are of
permanent value are good health and an acceptable social attitude. If
you have the sort of home which leads him to develop a friendly, happy
disposition and teaches him the necessity of living honestly and
sincerely with no attempt to conceal mistakes, you will give him as much
as any parent can give any child. It is for yourself and not for your
possessions that your children may "arise up, and call you blessed."
It is important to you both to keep up your appearance in order to be as
attractive physically and mentally as before you were married. But you
may have to be very ingenious in devising short cuts to this end when
the permanent wave you planned for or the new suit you hoped to buy is
deferred by the need to put some more money into your husband's
preparation for his business or profession or by any other emergency
which might arise. The pluck with which you meet these disappointments
is a measure of your fitness for marriage.
In my own observation, among the young business and professional group I
have seen less genuine lack of money than fretful stupidity which was
expressed in poor management. A lack of imagination and resourcefulness
often paves the way to tragedy. We are living in a fascinating age, but
under a complex economy that makes many demands on our spirit of
pioneering and adventure.
It was picturesque--daring, perhaps--to leave comfortable homes and
settled communities as our great-grandparents did, adventuring into new
country. It sounds romantic to live in a sodhouse and wrestle with
nature. The truth is that they pretty well had to do these things to
carve out a niche for themselves in their economic system.
We young married people may have to live in a walk-up in an
unfashionable part of town, but the same spirit of daring adventure and
the identical will to make a go of things animates us. If you have that
spirit, you can afford to get married, and I can assure you that the
rewards of facing your problems and seeing them through together are
high. Such a marriage is firmly rooted, and when its buoyant young love
matures, its flower is an enduring happiness that nothing else can
equal.
_Jessie Marshall, M.D._
CHAPTER SEVEN
_Children? Of Course!_
Nowadays we hear much about planning--town planning, city planning,
nation planning. The elder and younger statesmen are going to see to it
that we are well-housed, well-fed, suitably employed according to our
abilities, and provided for in our old age. Good. This, as I understand
it, has always been the American plan. I am sure that no American who is
willing to work deserves less than the fullness of the earth. And I
shall assume that this country is going to be well enough planned to
enable you to raise a family--with suitable planning. For family
planning is the most important planning. Indeed, the whole point of
national planning is to enable us in turn to plan the nation. The nation
rests on the family. Your family rests on you and your mate. What are
you planning to do about it? How, when, and why?
In our children we live over our own childhood and project ourselves
into the future. Until our own children come along we tend to forget
that the world, to which we are now so thoroughly and sometimes
wearisomely accustomed, once struck us as a thing of mysterious
glamour, promising an endless opening vista of keen excitement.
And yet, if life is to continue worth the living, we must continue to
hold onto that early attitude. We must continue to find ecstasy in
simple sources. And often it is our children--easily yet deeply pleased,
ceaselessly busy with their paints and blocks and animals, ready for
every new adventure, never jaded, never dull--who must remind us, their
elders, how to get the most out of life. In their love for flowers and
animals, paints and song, we may rediscover the submerged or forgotten
purpose of our own lives. Or our talent may be for building happy lives
from the ground up, in which case the children themselves are the answer
to our search for pure-hearted, never flagging excitement.
As for projecting ourselves into the future through our children,
reaching ahead through them in order to affect, if possible, generation
after generation of people yet unborn--this is a kind of immortality
snatched from death and a satisfaction, though composed entirely of
hope, that parents prize. Strong-souled people feel that their
personalities are worth perpetuating, especially in conjunction with
their beloveds'! In proportion to their love of life, to the strength of
their joy and the clarity of vision of even better things, people find
one lifetime all too short to fulfill the expanding urges within them.
In their children they see human beings who may carry on their work, or
at any rate transmit their traits to grandchildren and
great-grandchildren.
Just at present people who have found life good, the ideal parents, feel
the need of entrusting the future to people like themselves, the
desperate need to keep power from falling into the hands of morbid
madmen who, under the pretext of enlarging life, precipitate horrible
wars precisely because they themselves, starved, oppressed, or
humiliated from the cradle, have never found life good. Yes, our
children can make all the difference between a life full of hope for the
future of the race and one of pessimism and despair. It is this sense of
children as carrying something of ourselves, our tempers, our hopes,
into the future which is at the bottom of what we call the eugenic
urge--the desire, that is, to beget good stock and pass on only the best
in us.
About the obvious pleasures that children bring, the fascination of
seeing their characters unfold, the happiness of festivals like
Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter, which without children lose half
their charm, it is not necessary to speak.
For our purposes, however, the point is that there are literally dozens
of reasons why nearly all of us want children. The problem is when to
have them and in what numbers. For modern man likes to know what he is
about in this world and to direct and control his destiny in the light
of other knowledge and experience.
The time for the first baby is a question of readiness on the parents'
part. Are they ready physically, psychologically, economically? These
are not, of course, three separate ways of being ready; they are
interdependent ways, but they offer suitable heads under which to
discuss the subject.
Economic readiness is of utmost importance. Insecurity of employment,
insufficient means to provide the mother and baby with medical
supervision and good food, or looming debts are in themselves sufficient
to prevent prospective parents from attaining the other kinds of
readiness--physical and psychological. On the other hand, young people
with steady incomes should not postpone having children merely because
those incomes are not high. Three can live almost as cheaply as two,
especially in the child's first years. It is the expense of
hospitalization and doctor's care, during pregnancy and throughout the
first year or two following the birth, that sometimes threatens to
unbalance the family budget. This additional expense must be provided
for. It need not be great--a matter of a few hundred dollars, often less
in various parts of the country. The doctor's fee for pre-natal care and
delivery will correspond roughly, unless he is a senior specialist of
great reputation (by no means a necessity for healthy people), to the
expense for hospitalization. The latter can frequently be obtained for a
hundred dollars or less--though rarely, if ever, in a big city--making
the total cost of getting the baby about two hundred dollars. In many
parts of the country hospital schemes, into which you make a monthly or
yearly payment, make it possible to get two weeks' hospitalization for
mother and baby, with semi-private room, use of delivery room, and
nursing care, for about ten dollars. This effects an obvious saving, and
has done a great deal to bring children within the reach of all. During
the first year or so the mother needs to be quite free to call on her
doctor for service or advice whenever she wishes. Sometimes the doctor
will be glad to arrange a flat charge for a year's attention, say a
hundred dollars, or more or less, depending on the family income. Such
an arrangement often does the parents a great deal of good, putting
their minds at rest, for they feel they can call on the doctor in all
reasonable emergencies, ask him all necessary questions, expect periodic
visits to their baby, and receive all necessary vaccinations and
immunizations for a fee they can afford. The sum may be paid in monthly
or quarterly installments.
Money for the child may be saved out of monthly earnings. This
well-known phenomenon is called saving for children. Very often the
parents of the married couple are glad to help them with the extra
expense involved in having their first child. I do not mean by
loans--for it is not good for young people to be in debt, even to loving
creditors--but by actually undertaking to pay the hospital and the
physician. If people are ready for a baby in all other ways and only
money keeps them from parenthood, the prospective grandparents often
feel it their duty to help in this way. Dr. Josephine Hemenway Kenyon,
director of the Health and Happiness Club of _Good Housekeeping_, has
often made the wise suggestion that fathers give, in addition to any
other wedding present, a $500 or $1000 bond, called "The Baby Bond," to
be kept to meet the expenses of bringing the first baby into the world
and protecting its first year of life. This idea appealed so strongly to
some parents that Dr. Kenyon went even further, suggesting that young
parents who can afford it take out a ten-year endowment policy of $1000
for their thirteen-year-old children, to be available when these
children are twenty-three, if needed, to help them start their own
families.
The question of the right age for parenthood is naturally of importance.
But it depends on many factors, chief among which, after the economic
problem has been disposed of, are physical and psychological health.
Some time between twenty-three and twenty-eight seems to me to be a
satisfactory time for a woman to bear her first baby; but any time up to
thirty-five presents no difficulty, provided the physical and mental
conditions are healthy and propitious. Plenty of women of forty and over
have been known to go through first and subsequent pregnancies
successfully, but there is no reason for postponing children to this age
except failure to find the right mate earlier in life. People who have
their first child when over thirty-five are themselves over fifty when
the child goes through adolescence--an age which may make it difficult
to help the child meet its crucial problems in the tone of one good
friend to another. If you cannot have your children before thirty-five,
you must make every effort to remain young enough for spiritual
companionship with them. The best age for parenthood is to be
determined, not in terms of years, but of physical and psychological
health and happiness.
In marriage psychological health and happiness are largely dependent on
love. It is of the utmost importance that every child should be a love
child, in the best sense of the term. Love is a splendor that eludes
definition, but it is characterized by an inexhaustible desire for the
beloved's company and a steadily burning fire of enthusiasm and
admiration. So-called disillusion in love comes from the failure of
these emotions. Young lovers, through plenty of courting and
companionship, should try to make sure of the lasting quality of their
love. This is sometimes impossible, however, and for this reason and
others I think it is just as well for married people to wait a year or
even two before having their first child. In the happiest marriages
there are many adjustments, unforeseen before the wedding, to be made.
And it may very well be that only in the continued intimacy of marriage
can the strength of love be tested. Only there can love gutter out or
prove itself stronger than death--so much stronger indeed, that, as it
deepens and widens in fullness and power, it turns of its own accord
directly toward the creation of more life.
* * * * *
In other words, the best time to have children is when the lovers, sure
of themselves and of each other, feel an imperious need to stamp the
gold of life with each other's images. I feel no hesitancy in urging
married couples to take a year or so to make sure of their love, if only
for the children's sake. Economic conditions being adequate, there is no
reason to suppose that real lovers will put off having children until
it is too late to obtain the best eugenic results. To paraphrase the
poet, we may say that those who restrain their desire for children do so
because their desire is weak enough to be restrained. Such people will
probably not make good parents. True lovers will beget children after a
year or two, nor will they mind making a few so-called sacrifices, as of
parties and new automobiles, for the sake of having children. They
recognize the distinction between entertainment and joy. Man may be a
laughing animal, but he is more essentially a creative animal. His
deepest pleasures are simply the by-products of his activity. In
building a home around a family of children both men and women often
find the deepest of all possible pleasures. And when it is in this
spirit of vital affection that the child is begotten, we get, as the
eugenists say, a vital fertilization. The chances are that children so
begotten will themselves be capable of strong, sound, deep-seated
feelings. As Dr. Kugelmass says in _Growing Superior Children_, "The
degree of emotional devotion of one parent to another is reflected
dominantly in the transmission of the more vital elements in the
constitution of the progeny."
To the question of physical readiness for childbirth I come last, but
not because it is of least importance. Without physical health the
parents cannot expect to beget healthy children, nor indeed can they, in
many cases, manage even to bear them. As everyone knows, women afflicted
with tuberculosis, heart disease, and kidney changes should probably
refrain from bearing children. But this is a matter for the doctor to
decide. Such people, if their troubles are not severe, may safely bear
at least one child, sometimes two. They should put themselves in the
hands of a good physician and rely implicitly on his findings and
advice. Sufferers from venereal diseases should not attempt to beget
children till they have been given a clean bill of health. Nor should
children be begotten when the body is weakened by temporary disease or
during the stage of debilitating after-effects. For disease and fatigue
affect sex cells unfavorably. So do mental strain, depression and
overexcitement. Unhealthy physical and mental states in the parents lead
to debilitated or deficient offspring. They open the way to the
operation of undesirable hereditary factors which generations of
self-controlled parents have been driving into the background and
attenuating to the point of disappearance. It is possible for the
father, too, to weaken his vitality by excessive sexual activity. In
fine, the best time for conception to take place is when the lovers'
sense of well-being, physical as well as mental, is at its fullest.
Full-bodied passion, which we may think of as a kind of crisis of love
and health, will give us offspring to be proud of. One thing we cannot
plan, however, is the sex of the child to come. Nor should we, in
general, wish to. It was the limited sphere of feminine activities that
once tended to make girls a debit, boys a credit. Nowadays girls have
just as many opportunities of becoming interesting human beings as have
boys. It is a favorite theory of my husband's that they may, and often
do, become more interesting, because they can do not only everything
that boys can do but one thing more--they can bear children, a
humanizing experience of the greatest possible value.
Should you wish to know what are your chances of having twins, I must
remind you that the tendency to give birth to them is an inherited
trait, especially through the father. Twins are much more likely to be
girls than boys, and to be born later rather than earlier in the
mother's married life. Thus it is three times more likely that a woman
of thirty-eight will give birth to twins than that a woman of
twenty-four will do so. Should you fear that the unpredictable
appearance of twins will unbalance your baby budget, you can, for a
moderate sum, insure yourself against this chance with many of the
larger insurance companies. The insurance must be taken out before the
existence of twins in the uterus can be diagnosed--that is, in the first
two or three months of gestation. One twin birth occurs to about 90
single births, one triple to about 8000, and one quadruple to about
650,000. In all medical literature only about 30 cases of quintuplets
have been recorded. Multiple births are not only rare, but the babies
are often so delicate that they are extremely difficult to rear. We can
be well pleased if our first pregnancy eventuates in a single healthy
baby of either sex.
All the reasons for wanting the first child apply in the case of the
second, and to them are added more. What was in the first instance
simply a hope and a vague if powerful urge has now grown into a
conscious desire, based on the self-knowledge and experience gained from
loving and looking after the first child. We have had a real taste of
the joys of home and family building, and now nothing short of economic
catastrophe is likely to stop us from building higher. I assume, of
course, that the mother did not encounter any severe difficulties in
giving birth to her first child. If she was in good medical hands, she
probably did not, though certain unusual formations of the pelvis may
have made her labor longer than usual. I do not say more painful,
because medical science has found ways of minimizing the pains of
childbirth. Even if it was found necessary to deliver the first child by
Caesarean operation, a woman in normal health can without danger bear at
least two children by this method. And at the very least a family should
include two children.
Quite apart from the parents' natural desire to go on expressing their
mutual love by building a full-voiced home on the foundations laid by
the first child, it soon becomes apparent that this first child, for the
sake of its own social and moral development, needs a little brother or
sister. It needs companionship. It needs to share its toys and its
parents. Otherwise it will tend to grow self-centered. By being too much
with grown-ups it may become moody and negative.
After the question, "Can you afford it?"--and I sincerely hope you
can--the next question facing the mother who wants a second child is,
"When can I bear it with the maximum amount of benefit to it, to my
first child, and to myself?" Clearly, if it is to be a playmate for the
first child, you will want to have it as soon as possible. But, in
fairness to both the mother and the child-to-be, there should elapse a
period of about two years between the birth of the first and the
conception of the second offspring. Less time than that will seldom
allow the mother, who put so much of her best blood and bone into
building and nursing the first baby, to recover fully her maximal
physical health and strength. All authorities are agreed on this point.
There may be exceptions, of course, and there are always mothers who, by
reason of having married late, perhaps, are anxious to have as many
babies as quickly as possible. But most women neither can nor will nor
should produce children in this fashion. There is too much risk of
weakening the mother's body and of begetting poor stock.
Later children may be spaced to suit the desires of the parents, a
recovery period of two years or more always being allowed the mother.
But will there be any later children? Dr. Ellsworth Huntington in his
contribution to this volume has told us that most of us who are not
shiftless and incompetent, on one hand, or wealthy and well-established,
on the other, belong to a group in which the average number of
children, including those who die young, is fewer than three. Dr.
Huntington rightly deplores this "rapid fall of the birthrate,
especially among intelligent, far sighted, industrious, progressive
people whose ideals of family life are high." The trouble with a family
of fewer than three is that it cannot be counted on to project very far
into the future those sound souls, that good biological inheritance,
which the parents flatter themselves are so definitely worth preserving.
A family of two or even three children will not, on the average, produce
two who, by becoming parents, may be thought of as replacing their
father and mother. Thus a family of fewer than four children may be said
to be dying out. This is a sorry state of things for those parents who,
as I said above, like to think of themselves as affecting the destinies
of the race by transmitting their best characteristics from generation
to generation.
When intelligent people are forced to limit their families to one or two
children by lack of money, it is a great pity. There is a great
abundance of good things in America, but we do not seem to be able to
get these things distributed in such a way as to do the most good. We
are all working for a better world, but are we working hard enough? I
sometimes think that we are not working so hard as we might, because our
stake in that better scheme of things is not large enough. If we dared
to have three or four children, with all the sacrifices implied, I
wonder whether this fact would not sharpen our scent on the trail of the
better America.
Lord Bacon said that those who have children have given hostages to
fortune. But I am inclined to think that those who have made large and
important bargains with chance are just those who will move heaven and
earth to guard against mischance. One aspect of the better America,
proposed by the American Eugenic Society, will perhaps be the adoption
of a sliding-wage scale, characterized by a rise in pay upon marriage
and with the arrival of each successive child.
That thoughtful people of our time, whether rich or not, will soon
return to having families as large as our grandparents' is extremely
unlikely. To bear ten or fifteen children would probably kill most
modern women or so completely wear them out that the remnant of their
lives would not be worth living. And families of this size would
similarly exhaust even unusually large pocket-books, leaving most
fathers insolvent. Though it is probably true, as economists say, that
our land and its resources, if more equitably distributed and
scientifically exploited, are capable of supporting many more millions
of Americans than at present, there seems to be no good reason for
stepping up the modern middle-class family beyond four or five children.
The reader will notice that I have been going on the assumption that
people can have children, and fine specimens at that, to order--when and
as they please. This is to a large extent true. The key to the mystery
is the doctor. Modern medical schools and modern law have entrusted into
his hands not only the physical but the mental well-being of his
patients. The tight interlocking of the body and spirit has been
everywhere recognized, and the impossibility, in many illnesses, of
healing one without treating the other. Positive well-being in the body,
so important for the begetting of strong children, is practically
inconceivable apart from positive happiness in the mind.
Thus it has become a prime tenet of eugenics that babies must not be
conceived under conditions of excessive mental worry or strain. Children
begotten in deprivation or the fear that they are going to lower the
whole family's standard of living to a painful pinch are not going to
have much chance, even while in the womb, to turn out fit and strong.
Judicious limitation of birth for reasons of health, the _whole_ health
of the parents, in behalf of the best possible grade of offspring has
therefore become a routine part of the physician's service to his
patients. Every married couple should put themselves in the hands of a
physician whom they respect and admire, making him an indispensable
third partner to their family planning. This crucial role of the doctor
in eugenics is one of the few really deeply encouraging signs of our
times.
_The Woman Asks the Doctor_, by Dr. Emil Novak of Johns Hopkins, gives
some idea of the role the modern physician may play in helping parents
plan the vigorous citizenry of the future. When the married lovers are
ready to have their children, it is naturally with the woman that the
doctor is most concerned, correcting structural or functional deviations
or mild organic disease before the pregnancy has advanced too far,
seeing to it that the glandular mechanisms do their important work, that
nutritional intake is sufficient, that digestion is kept successfully
functioning, that metabolic processes are raised to more than ordinary
efficiency, and that the body is kept free from all toxins and
infections. After the birth of the child the doctor will not only look
after the child but also see to it that the mother suffers no adverse
after-effects and is restored to her maximal health and efficiency as
soon as possible, ready to bear her next healthy baby when the time
shall come.
Should a baby be conceived unexpectedly, the doctor is often the best
person to help the parents handle the untoward situation. He can give
the mother's physical condition that special attention which it will
probably need if she has borne another child quite recently. If the
objection to the child arises from economic or psychologic
unpreparedness, there is no one better fitted, possibly, than the modern
physician for changing negative fear to positive desire. By the force of
his own enthusiasm for new life, by his vision of the modern family, by
a skillful combination of his common sense and psychiatric training, and
by his ability to arrange fees within the range of his worried clients,
he can usually turn the unplanned conception into a happy accident.
It is often to the physician, too, that the father must look for
practical guidance and encouragement in those unforeseeable cases when
the mother perishes in connection with childbirth. It is he who is in
the best position to prevent the father from unconsciously attaching
blame to the unoffending child and harboring an undefined resentment
which may adversely affect both lives. The doctor can help the bereaved
father to cling to his dream of family life, can assist him in building
a happy home for his motherless child or children, or can advise him on
problems which may arise out of finding a new mother for them.
Another important function of the physician is to give aid to couples
who have difficulty in begetting children. The question of sterility
comes up frequently in our time, especially among cultivated and
intellectual people. Persistent failure to conceive we term _absolute_
sterility; persistent failure to carry pregnancy to a successful end, we
call _relative_ sterility. The latter is an obstetric problem and can
usually be dealt with successfully. So can the former in about forty
percent of the cases. We must remember the rule formulated by Matthews
Duncan, that the marriage of persons between twenty and thirty cannot be
regarded as sterile until at least four years of normal, happy sexual
intercourse have elapsed. I have known half a dozen instances in which a
child was born after five, six, ten, and, in one case, fifteen years of
complete failure to conceive. In these cases no special efforts were
made by the couple to bring about conception.
Couples who wish to make special efforts should have complete physical
examinations, both husband and wife, for though failure to conceive used
to be attributed solely to the wife, we now know that in about thirty
percent of cases it is the husband who is the cause. Many remediable
physical conditions may be responsible for sterility, and the doctor, by
correcting them, has a wonderful chance to contribute to human
happiness. Many families feel the tragedy of not having children, and
yet do not realize the need of finding out what the trouble is. They
just drift along, assuming that nothing can be done, and often they
could be made fertile. This subject is ably discussed in _Human
Sterility_ by Dr. Samuel R. Meaker of the Boston University School of
Medicine.
When the doctor decides that there is practically no chance of a
couple's having children of their own, their strong family urge may lead
them to adopt some. They can find useful information in E. G.
Gallagher's _The Adopted Child_. It often happens that people get as
much satisfaction out of adopted children as they could have got out of
their own, finding cause for pride, inspiration, and comfort in their
unfolding toward maturity.
The question of whether we should adopt children when infants or
later--at some age under six--is worth considering. It may seem at first
glance that only infants raised from the cradle can really take the
place of children of our own. While this is partly true, there are
drawbacks to be considered. To begin with, the supply of infants for
adoption is not by any means large enough to meet the demand. Second,
more than half the number of small babies available are illegitimate,
and one can often learn little about the parentage. Though various
child-placing agencies find it difficult to allocate those children who
do not become available for adoption till the age of three or four or
later, there are many things to be said in favor of taking an older
child. More often they are legitimate and more facts about their
parentage can be ascertained; also, it is possible to apply intelligence
tests which will disclose whether their intelligence is normal or above.
Often those parents who want to adopt children tend to be intellectual,
and will find greater happiness in--and give greater happiness to--a
child who is of normal or superior intelligence.
You may object to the older child's early environment, thinking that it
must have permanently injured even the fairest of capacities. But
psychologists tell us that this is not really the case, and that the
unhappy effects of poor environment during the first five years of a
child's life can be removed, and the child reconditioned without too
much trouble. Couples who are no longer young should, perhaps, adopt
older children in order that they may stand in the most helpful age
relation to them.
Children adopted as infants should always be told that they are not the
flesh-and-bone children of the foster parents. This information, which
is bound to come to them, will come with less shock from the parents
themselves. At the age of five or six, when they first begin to be
interested in where children come from, is a good time to tell them. It
is agreed that the foster parents should use the word "chosen" rather
than "adopted"--they chose their children out of all the thousands
available, just as the foster father chose his wife, and the wife her
husband.
This attitude toward the question makes for a feeling of family
solidarity and loyalty no less profound than that between other parents
and children. Everything must be done to prevent feelings of inferiority
from growing out of the adoptive relationship: the children must never
be reminded of the fact of adoption, the parents must not expect more
gratitude from them than they would from offspring of their own, and
they must never, never shout thanks to God, in a moment of anger, that
the children are not really theirs. To do so is not to play the game.
After all, under most state laws, children may be adopted on trial for a
year. If the children are kept after that date, the parents bind
themselves in law and in morality to bring them up exactly as if they
were their own. I keep using the plural throughout this paragraph
because I assume, of course, that you will adopt at least two children
if it becomes necessary for you to plan in this way your version of a
splendid American family--strong, loving, and creative of an ever finer
future.
_Dr. Hornell Hart_
CHAPTER EIGHT
_Detour Around Reno_
David and Ruth have been married four years. The first few months were
glorious: they had to make minor adjustments, of course, but they had
thrilling times together, and it was a wonderful thing to have someone
you belonged to, someone so comforting and lovable. Yet lately there
have been difficulties. David believes in saving money; Ruth thinks that
you live only once and that you ought to spend your money--wisely, of
course--for the nice things and the great experiences, especially since
there is no telling when the bank will fail or when the bottom will drop
out of the stock market and you will lose all you've invested. David
likes to get away from the house at night--to see friends, and keep up
with really good movies. Ruth prefers night clubs and gay parties. David
thinks Ruth ought to be more careful about those white lies and those
extremely décolleté dresses; Ruth thinks David is rather a prude and
mighty inconsiderate in the way he keeps picking on her. And then there
is Junior. Ruth believes in loving one's children wholeheartedly and
trusting that affection and understanding will bring them through all
right in the long run; David thinks that right from the cradle
youngsters need to build character and to learn that they have to obey.
Two days ago there was quite a quarrel, when Ruth ordered the new
electric stove without consulting David--and on the same day he
discovered that she had accidentally overdrawn the bank account! Neither
one has spoken it, but the word DIVORCE has been saying itself
behind those set lips and those coldly polite faces.
This falling out between David and Ruth represents one general type of
marital conflict. A man and a woman differing somewhat in
temperament--as any two people differ, more or less--find themselves
being hurt by the other's ways of acting. Each allows a sense of
antagonism to grow up. This makes them more ready to resent the next
difference in opinion or purpose. Once started, the feeling of enmity
can grow like a snowball until neither one is willing to believe in the
other's honesty, fairness, or decency. This road leads straight to Reno.
But there are many other ways of falling out in marriage. For example,
there is the experience of Henry and Mary. They had a queer sort of
engagement. They enjoyed each other's friends and had wonderful times
playing tennis and going to shows together. But when it came to
love-making, Henry always felt that he had made a clumsy fool of
himself, and Mary always felt a turmoil of baffled emotions. Their
honeymoon was a ghastly failure. Of course Mary knew that there was such
a thing as sex, but her parents had given her a feeling that the less
people had to do with such things, the better. Her marriage night left
her with a feeling of blind revulsion. She tried honestly to overcome it
through the months that followed, but she had to force herself to
respond to Henry's caresses, and he knew bitterly that she hated the
relation which for him was a deep and urgent need.
In the years that followed they had four children and loved them dearly.
They still enjoyed going out together, entertaining their many friends,
and taking part together in their church activities; but there was a
grim disappointment back of it all, and every now and then it broke out
in harsh words which both of them regretted.
Sexual frustration as experienced by Henry and Mary--or arising from
various other causes--is a factor in many marital conflicts.
Our next example illustrates another type of disharmony. Helen was
really the one who brought about her marriage to William. She was a
capable businesswoman, earning a good salary. He was the only son of a
divorced woman. His mother loved him dearly; he was her great source of
comfort in the loneliness and disappointment of her own wrecked
marriage. Helen saw the fine qualities in him and felt that he was being
shut away from normal life because his mother wrapped herself around
him. When the mother was laid up in the hospital for three months, Helen
set about a well-planned campaign. They were married shortly afterward.
His mother valiantly refrained from going with them on the
honeymoon--and arranged for them to live across the hall from her in the
same apartment building. William felt sincerely that he must not allow
his mother to be lonely, and he could not understand why his wife showed
irritation when the three of them were together four or five nights
every week and throughout the summer vacation. But when he realized that
it was not working out, they finally moved to the other side of town and
limited the evenings with his mother to two or three a week.
When they first married, William insisted that his wife give up her
work, and he also felt that he ought to manage the family finances--with
his mother's constant advice. Helen longed for children, and she
surrendered her business career in the hope that she might have a
family. But no children came, and at last Helen found a new position,
not so good as the one from which she had resigned.
She loves William passionately, but she feels that his mother has
spoiled their marriage. William loves Helen, but feels that she is
unaccountably hard and unfriendly toward his mother, and he is
distressed by her insistence upon earning her own income. The mother
wants both to be happy and is willing to retire into the background, but
she believes that Helen does not really appreciate William; as a mother
she does not propose to see her son's life ruined by any woman.
William's mother fixation is a somewhat extreme example of a fairly
frequent source of conflict. In some cases the bride suffers from father
fixation, and her husband suffers accordingly.
Our fourth case illustrates another widespread type of marriage problem.
Sam had had a gay and jolly life before he married. Mabel felt keen
pride when she finally captured him from the other girls. He really
meant to settle down and be loyal to her when they married. Their
passion for each other was absorbing and wonderful for a while. Twins
were born promptly, and a year later came another child. The babies kept
Mabel tied down rather closely to the home. Sam often found her with
wildly straying hair and a mussed dress when he came home, and her
temper was apt to be on wire edge after nights of being up with the
children. Sam always seemed to be sound asleep when the children needed
attention.
Mabel became careless about the cooking: the food was often burned,
cold, lumpy, and poorly seasoned. She noticed that Sam always
brightened up when a pretty girl was near.
He used to go out often "to play cards with the boys," and Mabel twice
found lipstick on his handkerchief.
A nice medical student who rooms next door has now taken to dropping in
to talk to Mabel. She wonders--since Sam is so free and easy--whether
she might not also pick up a little thrill on the side. And the
neighbors have recently overheard some violent arguments between Sam and
Mabel.
* * * * *
Four typical cases of unhappy marriage have been sketched: a man and
woman who are allowing differences of opinion to grow into intense
antagonism, a couple suffering from miscarriage of their sex life, a
vigorous woman married childlessly to a mother-absorbed man, and an
overworked and rather careless mother married to a man who is always
seeking fresh romance. By way of contrast let us look at a quite
different type of marriage.
Charles and Anna have been married twenty years. Loving each other has
been the great adventure of their lives--that and having their three
children. They always regarded marriage as a partnership--fifty-fifty,
they used to say. There have been times of stress, but they have always
been able to talk their problems out together. There have even been
outbursts now and then when they have got behind on their sleep, and
when each of them has been trying so hard to hold down the lid that it
has finally blown off. But always these storms have cleared the air, and
afterward they have come closer to each other than before. Marriage, for
them both, is the great central core of life--focus of love, faith, and
joy.
In spite of all that appears in the tabloid newspapers, the
Charles-and-Anna type of marriage is far more typical than the
experiences of the other four couples whose stories have just been
sketched. In almost every marriage there are rich values to be preserved
and possibilities of deeper and fuller joy than have ever been achieved.
Our purpose in this article is to point out some of the practical steps
which can be taken by couples who do have fallings out, to eliminate
friction, to keep love alive, and to discover the deeper and wider
happiness which might be theirs.
_Five Ways To Go_
No matter what crisis one confronts in life, there are the following
five possible ways of reacting:
_1. One may acquiesce ignobly._ That means to give in weakly, to "take
it lying down," as the boys say. If one is disappointed in one's wife or
one's husband, if one's sex life in marriage is a failure, if one's
in-laws intrude disastrously, if one's mate follows loves outside of
marriage, or if any other catastrophe overtakes one's home, one can give
way to hopeless lamentation and self-pity: "There's nothing I can do
about it. It's just a rotten world. Nobody ever gives me a decent
chance. I suppose I've got to live along and pretend I don't care. Poor
me!"
_2. One may evade cravenly._ That means to run away like a coward. Many
divorces are simply a blind and frantic attempt to escape from
suffering. Some divorces, of course, are the best possible solution of a
bad situation. But quite often the persons seeking the divorce are
really trying to run away from themselves. They have never learned how
to live in friendly happiness with other people. If they marry again,
they will promptly find themselves in new suffering because they have
never solved the basic problems of their own personalities. Sometimes
the cowardly evasion is mental instead of physical. The husband or wife
retires into a private world and puts up an icy barrier against the
partner. In any case this type of solution is a blind attempt to run
away from the problem instead of facing it bravely, trying to understand
it, and seeking the wisest and best solution possible.
_3. One may attack vindictively._ Most husbands and wives who are
skidding toward divorce have convinced themselves that their marriage
partners are villains. "This person I married is to blame. He is
selfish, heartless, cruel, disloyal, lazy, and nasty. He has hurt me
terribly, but I'll get even. I'm going to make him suffer the way he's
made me suffer. I'll show him that he can't do that to me!"
_4. One may grapple courageously._ This means to look the situation
squarely in the face, to study it calmly, open-mindedly, and thoroughly.
It means to discover the real causes for the disaster, to take an
inventory of all the possible resources, and then deliberately and
bravely to choose whatever line of action seems most likely to lead up
out of the swamp onto higher ground. In any problem which we face, some
of the conditions are almost completely beyond our control. One cannot
do much, for example, to change the kind of mother whom one's husband
has had, to reverse his inherited characteristics, or to cure the
economic depression against which he may have to struggle. But certain
other conditions one _can_ change. Especially, if one will, one can
alter one's own ways of acting, of talking, and even of thinking. The
courageous grappler accepts without despair the unchangeable factors in
his problem and sets about correcting the conditions which _are_ within
his control--especially his own patterns of living.
_5. One may cooperate creatively._ This means that one will still
grapple courageously, but not as a lone wolf. One will seek to
understand the other people who are involved: one's husband or wife,
one's children, one's relatives, one's rivals, and all the other people
who have any part or interest in the family problem. To understand
means to be able to see the situation sympathetically through their
eyes, but without losing perspective. Cooperating creatively means
teamwork. It means discovering what is the best solution for everybody
involved, and then working wholeheartedly toward that solution. The rest
of this article is devoted to outlining some practical steps toward
cooperating creatively when one has fallen out with one's marriage
partner.
If you yourself are confronting difficulties in your marriage, you may
find it helpful to note down each of the following steps on a sheet of
paper and then write in after each step the applications that fit your
own case. See whether you can transpose these suggestions into the terms
of _your_ problem. If you start thinking about what you face, in the
light of these steps, you will probably find new ideas and fresh
possibilities coming into your mind as you write. Those solutions which
spring up in your own thinking may prove to be just the aids which you
need to get a new grip and to start transforming your marriage into a
thing of new beauty, joy, and power.
_Ten Steps To Marital Adjustment_
_1. Abandon all feelings of resentment._ Emotional antagonism toward
one's mate, or toward other personalities in the problem, acts as an
effective barrier against finding the creative solution and against
putting it into effect. What you hate you cannot understand, because you
are ready to believe all evil of it, and unprepared to perceive its
good. Therefore surrender all grudges, jealousies, and feelings of
contempt. Emotions of enmity distort one's vision and impel one toward
actions and words that are not wise. When one person feels resentment
against another, the other is likely to feel resentment in return. This
intensifies the first resentment, and so the hatred grows. Someone has
to break the vicious cycle. Don't wait for your marriage mate to take
the first step if this joy-destroying process has started in your home.
Forgive and forget. Let good will take the place of antagonism in your
own consciousness, even though your mate continues to carry on the old
grudge for a while.
_2. Eliminate needless irritants and antagonizers._ Make a careful and
thorough study of the things that are hurting, distressing, or thwarting
your mate. Here is a check list which includes some of the most frequent
annoyers in married life.
Stop criticizing your mate--above all in the presence of other people,
but also in private.
Carefully avoid every action or situation which makes your mate feel
inferior, or which brings him unnecessary failures, even in small
things. Don't insist on playing bridge if he a poor player; don't
cultivate witty conversations with brilliant people if he feels like a
dub in such company; don't throw him into contrast with people who are
stronger, more successful, or better educated than he; avoid those
situations in which you demonstrate your own superiority over him.
Study to eliminate the topics of conversation which are annoying to him:
stop bringing up the subject of his shiftless relatives, the time he
went bankrupt, the occasion on which he made a fool of himself, or that
political or religious question on which you always quarrel.
Replace those items of household equipment which keep causing
unnecessary pain, labor, and irritation: that leaky faucet, that
worn-out washing machine, that broken light switch, that asthmatic
vacuum sweeper, that torn rug, that decrepit snow shovel, that
ready-to-be-junked lawn mower.
Avoid inflicting unnecessarily on your mate people or pastimes which
bore him. Don't drag him to teas or to concerts or to prize fights if
these events pain and torture him.
Form the habit of keeping all appointments with your mate on the
punctual minute. But (unjust as this may seem) do not demand that your
mate do likewise.
Never read at the table unless your mate also has something interesting
to read and agrees to the arrangement.
Bring your mate into contact with your relatives so infrequently and
under such favorable circumstances that their liking for each other will
flourish rather than perish.
Do not try that dangerous experiment of flirting with someone else in
order to keep your mate interested in you.
Never repulse your mate's sexual advances in a way which will seem
unloving, contemptuous, or irritated. If you cannot respond fully at the
moment, be sure that you express unmistakably your respect, your
affection, and your comradeship, and make it clear that the necessary
sexual denial is a mere postponement.
Watch to see whether you are needlessly violating your mate's ideals of
courtesy, decency, good sportmanship, generosity, or honor.
See whether you can discover any other way in which you have been
unnecessarily irritating or hurting your mate, and make a clean break
with that joy-destroying habit.
_3. Find ways to do new joyful things together_, even in seemingly
trivial ways. The long check list under item 2 is largely negative. Add
the positive side. Buy your mate little presents--from the ten-cent
store and occasionally from more expensive places. Make a private list
of the small things that please him most (yellow jonquils, Olivia de
Havilland, dipped caramels, picnics, chicken pie, Bill Smith, ice-box
snacks, Beethoven records, best-seller novels, theatre parties, grape
juice with ginger ale, odd china, or whatever they are) and make a habit
of springing small but delightful surprises. Cultivate the friendly
little family jokes that grow up wherever people enjoy each other
intimately.
_4. Have children together_ if you possibly can. Have them deliberately,
by mutual agreement. Have as many as your mate can wholeheartedly agree
to, and throw yourselves into the great adventure of giving them the
best possible start in life. Remember that the finest things you can
give your children are courage, self-respect, faith, understanding of
beauty, comradeship, and the eager desire to serve their fellowmen.
These great endowments can be given to one's sons and daughters even
though one has a severe struggle to give them good clothes and an
education. Often the financially hard-pressed give their young a far
richer heritage than do those who are wealthy but neglectful.
_5. Understand your mate._ Set about that job as though your life
depended on it. Your married life and its happiness _do_ depend on it.
Understanding one's wife or husband is far more important than earning a
college degree--and even more thrilling and absorbing, if one goes about
it in the right way. Spend time alone, quietly, affectionately, and
dispassionately thinking about your mate. What have been his great
emotional experiences in life? What are the main drives that determine
his ways of acting? What are his deepest aspirations and longings? What
are his unrealized possibilities? What are the things that have most
thwarted him and kept him from achieving what he has hoped to do?
Sometimes the process of understanding oneself and one's mate calls for
expert help. Skilled marriage counselors are available increasingly in
our larger cities (but be sure to go only to those who have demonstrated
their skill and training by helping other people whom you know and
helping them over a considerable period of time).
Sometimes magazine articles will help. Excellent books on marriage and
family life are available at public libraries.
_6. Discuss your vital family problems_ with your mate frankly, but do
not argue endlessly. If there are tensions in your married life, bring
them into the open, honestly and courageously. Don't try to convert your
mate to your point of view; try to understand his point of view. Try to
understand each other. But after you have cleared the air and shared
your ideas and your problems do not rehash and repeat and go back over
and over again until you are both weary and rebellious. Marriage is a
partnership, not a debating society.
_7. Discover areas of agreement_, and develop together joint programs of
action on which you can work together enthusiastically. The projects and
purposes of a husband and wife often conflict even when their desires
and motives are in harmony. Very well, go back of the purposes to the
underlying desires, and build new projects and purposes on which you can
unite. Suppose that one of you wants to go to the movie down on the
corner and the other just hates the idea. Very well; that is a conflict.
But if you search open-mindedly, you will probably find some underlying
agreement. Perhaps, though you disagree about this particular movie, you
both are craving to see _some_ good movie; and if you look up the
advertisements, you can find one that will delight you both. Or perhaps
the essential desires of each will be fulfilled best if you stay home
tonight to catch up on your sleep, and then go to a movie tomorrow
night. Or perhaps one of you dislikes the idea of any movie at all, but
both of you want to go out for the evening; then doubtless you can find
some other entertainment that will satisfy both.
Somewhere, back of the surface disagreement, lies a deeper agreement if
you will seek it patiently and lovingly. And this applies not only to a
little dispute over movies, but to all the greater controversies that
husband and wife confront. Where shall we move? How shall we get along
on the family income? What religious training shall we give the
children? Shall Mary be permitted to have that Jones boy come to the
house? No matter how perplexing the disagreement may be, there is a best
possible solution for all concerned if we will seek it understandingly
and in the spirit of love.
_8. Surrender nonessentials._ Many a marriage has gone to smash because
husband or wife or both clung as a matter of principle to a point which
could easily have been given up and forgotten if both had centered on
the great underlying essentials. Do not acquiesce ignobly on vital
matters. But do not wreck your own happiness and that of your mate over
some comparatively minor issue that was never worth the tears and the
agony which it caused.
_9. Agree to live and let live._ Cultivate freedom for your mate, your
children, and all the people involved in your family problems. To be
oneself is one of the most precious rights of a human being. We need it
for the fulfillment of our own life. Our loved ones need that same
freedom for the fulfillment of their lives. Now, freedom is not defiance
of law, but voluntary fulfillment of law. The better we understand each
other and the laws of life, the more likely we are to find that freedom
which brings the fullness of joy. By one of those strange paradoxes, we
never fully win the love of our dear ones until we cease demanding it.
_10. Put the welfare of your family first_, and stop fretting about
yourself. Although this rule comes last in our list, it really comes
first in the search for fulfillment of personality in family life. What
do you really want from your mate and your children? Are you after
comfort, security, affection for yourself? Or do you want, above all
things, that these loved comrades of yours shall find the road to the
abundant life--shall experience richly and grow fully, until they find
their true places in the master pattern of our world adventure?
Answer that question honestly. Live up to your real decision. And if
with all your heart you seek the joy of these others, your love will be
met with the high tide of love, and even out of anguish you will win
your way into the meaning and the glory of existence.
_Frances Bruce Strain_
CHAPTER NINE
_Sex Instruction in the Home_
A young woman who has won a place for herself as an artist tells the
story of her first nude drawing. She was of scarcely more than
kindergarten age when, one day before supper, her fancy produced a
sketch of her ten-year-old brother in nature's own attire. Pleased with
the result, she took it to the supper table and gave it to him--"A
picture I made of you."
Brother looked, glanced swiftly at Mother, and started to pocket the
sketch. Mother said, mother-fashion, "Let me see it," and then, after
seeing, also started to slip the picture out of sight. Father held out
his hand. "Let's have a look." Around the table the drawing passed from
hand to hand. No one praised, no one spoke, no one smiled. When one of
the younger children started to say something, he was abruptly told to
eat his supper. Heavy hung the weight of unexplained guilt over the
five-year-old artist. After the meal her mother took her quietly aside
and said, "When you draw a picture of a boy, you don't have to draw
everything!"
"It was years," the artist confessed, "before I could draw, comfortably,
a male nude."
Many of the young men and women among our readers, who are concerned
with love and marriage, have undoubtedly become aware of inner handicaps
of their own--handicaps of thought and feeling which they recognize as
their heritage from a generation of other-mindedness in regard to
matters of sex. There were silences that caused wonderings, punishments
that were not understood, prohibitions which built up timidities, over a
long zigzag trail of unrest and fear through childhood up to maturity.
We hear young people say because of their own experience, "I'll see to
it that my children don't go through what I went through." And they _do_
see to it. Mothers of school-age children, of kindergarten and
nursery-age children, mothers of babies, even mothers in their first
pregnancies, come with their questions in order that they may _start
right_.
At what age do you begin explaining life to children?
How much do you tell?
How much do you explain their own growing-up changes?
How do you keep them from talking to others?
Does telling lead to trying out things with each other?
My little girl doesn't ask questions--how make her healthily curious?
My little boy has a bad habit--how deal with it?
These are representative questions, and they strike deep into the heart
of education as we see it today, for sex education is no longer merely a
matter of biological instruction. Knowledge of human reproduction is an
essential in every instance, of course. It is the basic science back of
the whole sexual life. But just as the physical aspects of marriage are
for men and women today subordinate to the psychic and intellectual
aspects, so in a sex-education program, especially one in the home,
biological information is far from being the element of greatest
importance. More significant is the guidance and nurture of the
emotional life of your children--their emotional natures as a whole, and
especially those aspects of their emotional natures which have their
roots in the sexual impulse. Frustrations of childhood, failures, hurts,
jealousies, misinterpretations of childish love affairs, play episodes
for which society has such swift punishment, clandestine sex
knowledge--these are the experiences which leave their blight on the
later love responses. Life as a whole with its conventions and social
codes does not present an open highway to the goal of sexual maturity.
But forward-looking parents can, by granting knowledge, understanding,
and a sympathetic interpretation of the various phenomena of the sexual
life, prevent many of the hazards of the past and provide a better
assurance of happiness for their children.
Because the biological aspects of sex teaching are concrete, something
one can lay hold of in a tangible way, we shall consider them first.
There is no set age to begin sex education. There is no set place to
stop. There is a time to begin, and that time is indicated by any
expressed interest on the part of your young son or daughter--a
question, a comment, an observation, a wish. The time to stop is when
his interest stops. Don't run on ahead of him. Usually interest is
stimulated by some incident in the neighborhood or at school--a tank of
young guppies, a nest of baby mice in someone's cellar, a new baby home
from the hospital, a word in the newspaper. With many very young
children, concern about their own origin seems to arise spontaneously.
"Where did I come from, Mother?" It is a natural question, yet it has a
certain mystical quality, coming as it does from within and reaching
back into the unknown.
The greatest number of questions arise between the ages of four and six.
After school entrance, questions recede gradually until by the ninth,
tenth, or eleventh year children have reached what is called the
questionless age. This is not an indifferent age--quite the
opposite--but spontaneous questions are less frequent. Possibly they are
crowded out by other interests, possibly bits of desultory information
satisfy for the moment; and there is always the gradual adoption of
reticence which takes place as children grow older.
At adolescence there is a keen revival of interest but more resistance
to open family discussion than in the pre-adolescent age. Maturing
children are touchy, sensitive, self-conscious, modest, seclusive. They
run to cover at too intimate a topic, especially in the hands of adults
who are inclined to strike a wrong note; to be preachy and teachy and
inquisitive and, in terms of the young adolescents themselves, "too darn
sexy!"
No matter what the age, whether pre-school, elementary school, or high
school, if questions are asked or interest is shown, explanations are
given in accordance with the age, understanding, and general background
of the child.
The questions that children ask are as the sands of the sea, yet sifted
and analyzed, they reveal a fairly uniform structure on which one may
build. It is a foursquare structure of pregnancy, birth, fertilization,
and mating, in the order named. They start with a concrete
situation--"Where did Mrs. Holmes get her baby?"--and the three others
follow in logical sequence. Of course, the pattern varies somewhat.
Well, where did Mrs. Holmes get her baby? You know and I know, yet the
thought of getting it all said to this young cherub in a brown snowsuit
makes us a bit fluttery. We didn't think that it would. "Oh, the baby.
All babies grow inside their mothers." How unbelievably simple! No birds
or bees or butterflies, or seeds planted under mothers' hearts. Just
"all babies grow inside their mothers." Six words.
Of course you may touch up the story. You will not want to leave it so
stark and bare. "They grow in a little place just made for them to grow
in. It's in here, the place is, in mothers," and you give a friendly pat
against your side. Many children ask where the place is, and many think
it is the stomach. Other children have said so. "The place is called the
uterus, u-t-e-r-u-s, and is a little sac that stretches as the baby
grows." You don't _have_ to say all this. Whether you do or not depends
upon your child. Some children, the younger ones, may let you off with a
word. Others must have more detail. It's all an individual matter.
Anyway, you keep on answering as long as the questions come, and _no
longer_. (Sometimes enthusiasm runs away with us.)
We need not be surprised, once the matter of pregnancy is established,
to be confronted with a swift second question, "How does the baby get
out of the mother?" Sure enough, how does he? About five years ago I put
this question to a class of high-school-senior girls and requested
written answers. "They are born"; "they leave the mother through an
opening"; "they come from the mother in some way"--these were the best
answers. Most of the others read, "I'm uncertain about it"; "it's very
hazy in my mind"; "I wish you would explain exactly"; "I've always
wondered"; and so on.
An explanation of the process of birth is the second foundation square
of the whole structure. Pregnancy is the first. One depends upon the
other, so we say: "In every mother there is a passage that leads from
the place where the baby is growing. When the baby is ready to live by
himself as a separate little person, he is brought down the passage and
out through an opening into the world. This coming into the world is
called being born. Another word for the same thing is 'birth.' Your
birthday is your being-born day."
Many mothers like to adopt a bit of drama that can be done with the
hands and arms to illustrate their verbal explanations. The pantomime
makes the story simpler and helps relieve self-consciousness. "Suppose
the baby grows in here," you say, cupping your hands together with the
wrists straight and parallel. "Between my wrists is the passageway
leading to the outside. When the baby is ready to be born, the
passageway widens and lets the baby through. It's a good deal like
swallowing, only the other way around. Your food slips down a passage
into your stomach, _out_ of sight. The baby slips down a passage _into_
sight!" There is your story of birth in a nutshell.
Little boys and girls, too, are often troubled at the thought of birth.
It seems an impossible feat. So you explain the contraction of the
muscles, the size of a newborn baby--"about as big as your Molly Lou
doll"--the position of the baby--"all folded up like a little
Jack-in-the-box." Most conscientiously you leave an impression of the
naturalness of the birth process. Not for worlds would you create any
feeling of distress or anxiety. Neither do you, as the mother, seek to
appropriate all the laurels. The children do not owe you love and
obedience because of "what you went through for them," and "that is the
reason I love you so" leaves father a bit out in the cold. No, birth
should not be presented as a sacrifice or an ordeal, but as a
fulfillment, a joyous fulfillment which mother and father together
share.
The two remaining foundation squares, fertilization and mating, take
more courage to answer. They strike so closely into the heart of
existing relationships. You are fearful, too, that the knowledge will be
misused, that it will lead to sex play and experimentation. You don't
know how to phrase the answer anyway. There are some things you just
can't put into words!
Let's see if one can't, and much more simply than you imagine. Your
Philip, or Philippa, who has just learned that babies grow in their
mothers, says: "I wonder what makes the babies start. How do they get in
their mothers in the first place?"
"Babies are not babies from the very start," you answer. "They have to
grow before they are born just as you grow now after you are born. Each
baby starts at first from the union of two tiny particles of living
matter called cells. One cell is in the father, one is in the mother.
These two particles must come together and unite away up in the mother
where the baby is to grow. When they do, then the baby begins to take
form."
Now for the next step, mating. No, it's not so difficult at all if you
have not neglected to build up a foundation for it as you went along.
For an understanding of the act of mating, the children must first be
familiar with the differences in body structure--that boys have an outer
organ, and the girls have a long, slender inner passage. Knowledge of
the first they acquired in the come-and-go of daily home association; of
the second, when they learned how a baby was born. In a discussion of
mating, it takes usually just the merest reference to these structural
differences for children to see immediately the mechanics of mating.
"Yes, these two parts fit closely together so that the father cells
(sperm cells) are able to pass over to the mother and up to the place
where the baby is to grow."
To many this will seem a very cold, stark, and inadequate presentation
of a deeply psychic experience. In these first explanations of human
reproduction, pregnancy, birth, fertilization, and mating, I believe it
would be out of place to try to bring about any considerable awareness
of either the sensuous or the emotional involvements in the act of
procreation. That knowledge comes later. But the feeling which all our
first teaching conveys is important. It is especially important in
relation to the three major experiences, pregnancy, birth, and mating,
about which so much resistance has centered in the past. Our teaching
should carry with it a natural acquiescence to Nature's own plan, rather
than any outward expression of our own mental philosophy toward it. Most
children, given a knowledge of the basic facts of reproduction, usually
grant them a ready and happy acceptance.
Those parents who met their children's questions and other expressions
of interest as they arose, and also those who were not able to, seek, as
junior-high-school days approach, the assurance that their children are
ready for that wider experience. "I don't know how much she knows--she
doesn't say anything, and she doesn't want me to." Certainly the last
thing one does is to probe or question. If you have reason to feel that
something must be done, you may go about it in several ways:
1. You may take the initiative by introducing into family conversation
some topic of current interest which will promote questions--incubator
babies, the Dionne quintuplets, child marriages, the recent
thirteen-year-old father.
2. Pets are marvelous biological laboratories--white mice, rabbits,
puppies, snakes, turtles. Of course there must be mates and matings.
3. Well-chosen books, not only sex-education books, but simple biologies
and Nature books as well, open up thought and discussion.
4. Visits to the zoological gardens, to natural-history museums and art
galleries, are valuable teaching experiences.
If the subject is not marred by too much realism or sentiment or
moralizing, older children will respond with interest to a discussion of
human reproduction. Even when a child is approachable, if your own
emotional balance is insecure, it is, perhaps, well to work out these
objective and tangible activities with the children, as with a fellow
student. The joint interest is a way of achieving in the end greater
poise for yourself.
Before we leave the subject of the biological aspects of sex teaching, a
word concerning preparation for maturing. In general, experience shows
that explanations of the outward phenomena which mark the onset of
adolescence--menstruation and seminal emissions--should be made to both
boys and girls long before they are likely to occur--at ten, surely, or
even earlier if questions arise. Many children become acquainted with
them through older children at school and receive not too pleasant
impressions. In pre-adolescence the whole matter can be presented so
that it is accepted objectively and impersonally. With both boys and
girls there is often a feeling of prideful expectancy, and some day you
may expect to hear a joyful announcement, "Mother, oh, Mother--it's
come!"
At this point I should like nothing better than to leave our teaching to
do its own good work for the children. But in the minds of parents there
is an ever recurring anxiety--the use to which the children will put
this new knowledge. Ideas are not, we know, soporific. They tend to
translate themselves into action. Will the children talk? And won't they
start experimenting? The matter of "talking outside" is rapidly taking
care of itself through the general adoption of sex-education teaching by
most young parents. Nobody runs around telling what everyone knows. It
has become a commonplace. Occasionally one may caution young school-age
children not to say much to the other children, but if they do in their
enthusiasm or in a casual moment, no great harm is done. Certainly one
does not punish for it.
Children who are overweighted either with too much sex knowledge or with
fears and cautions are usually the neighborhood offenders. One father
recently told me that he didn't dare give his son the usual terms for
his reproductive organs because he would go straight out and shout them
from the housetops. As a matter of fact, that was just what the boy was
doing with the substitute terms. Realizing that a wooden gun is as good
as a real one when it frightens everybody, the child used his substitute
terms to shock his father and the world at large. In reality, there
_are_ no substitute terms. Everyone knows them for what they are, and in
addition as confessions of weak courage.
Modern sex teaching is filling the great need of other days in its
adoption of correct terms for the functions of the body and its organs
as they apply to elimination and reproduction. It is an informal sort of
thing which comes along like a little companion of the more important
topics. Strange that so much that is visible should go nameless, while
hidden things like heart and stomach and lungs should be known! A young
five-year-old who adored his pretty nursery-school teacher took constant
note of the beauties of her person. Her eyes were so blue and her hair
was so wavy and her throat was so smooth, and when she bent over, "you
could see her _lungs!_"
In all this provision for your children's understanding, one thing we
counsel against. It is the choice of another person--friend, nurse,
minister, doctor--to take your place, unless that person has had special
sex-education training and possesses those personal qualifications
which fit him for the task. A scientific background is not enough. In
the near future we shall have college-trained leaders, not only trained
but college-sanctioned and selected. Until that time there is no lay
person so well qualified to teach children as their own intelligent
fathers and mothers. They are able to establish a valued inner and
progressive bond of confidence when their teaching has been happily and
wisely carried out. After all, in this age of transition when so much is
counted good that once was counted bad, and so much counted bad that was
once good, it doesn't matter much what our words are so long as they
convey reassurance, dependability, and a sense of the rightness of
living _with_ rather than _against_ the best of Nature's plans.
Does sex instruction tend to start misconduct--suggest to children that
they undress each other, play "father and mother," and does it impel to
too free speech and behavior? No, on the contrary, sex teaching, wisely
carried on, has proved itself to be the best of preventives. It has a
stabilizing influence and leaves the minds of the children free to turn
to other interests. My experience shows a high correlation between sex
misconduct and lack of adequate sex instruction.
Usually in childhood, sexual misconduct is not sexual at all in origin.
It has any number of causes and any number of guises. Most frequent of
the causes are: seeking to know, emotional stress, lack of a good time,
sex activity in others, premature sex experience.
Children who do not live in a cloud of mystery, whose mental horizon has
been cleared by simple explanations of observable facts--the differences
in physical structure of boys and girls, for example--are not likely to
be the aggressors or even onlookers in any neighborhood undressing
episode. It holds nothing for them.
On the other hand, a child may have a very clear idea of sex
differences, may have dressed and undressed freely with sister or
brother, and still be active in undressing episodes as an emotional
outlet. One such boy was mother-bound. He had been brought up a
goody-goody. In order to demonstrate that he was no sissy but a
thorough-going he-man of eleven, he headed a gang of girl tormentors.
Sex misconduct as recreation, as something to do, has a long record. In
a dull and dispirited world, girls and boys find the thrill of adventure
in games, clubs, and play of all kinds, with sex in its most unsavory
form as the central theme. A little nine-year-old who had been a
frequent offender was asked what in all the world she would like most to
do. Promptly she answered, "Go roller-skating." "Which would you rather
do, go roller-skating or play 'father and mother?'" With shining eyes
she answered, "Oh, go roller-skating!" There was no doubt of this
child's sincerity, no doubt of the drab, pinched quality of her meager
opportunity for childish fun.
Sex activity often has its origin in a home situation. In these days of
apartment dwelling and the crowding together of many families, a child
must be very inattentive indeed not to have gathered through
conversation and observation much firsthand knowledge of the adult
sexual relationship. Children should, of course, be aware of the love of
their fathers and mothers for each other as well as for themselves, but
love-making in its final forms is baffling and disturbing to their
emotional natures, and observation of it often leads to sex misconduct.
The most serious type of sex activity is that caused by a premature
sexual experience at the hands of some adult, often an elderly and
trusted person. Even if the episode occurred but once, and the offender
left, never to be seen again, a psychic injury or trauma frequently (not
always) results and manifests itself in obsessive sex behavior.
When premature sexual experience _is_ the motivating factor in sex
misconduct, most careful guidance is necessary, lest the future love
life be endangered. After relieving the child of feelings of guilt, the
conduct of the older offender must be explained in terms of his senility
or his mental state. "He is not normal." "He should be in a hospital."
It is important that this person's abnormal conduct does not represent
in the child's mind the natural sex pattern.
Faith in love-making and faith in love partners must be held intact. Yet
there should be no discussion of love and no real sex teaching at this
critical time. Sex instruction is a post-convalescent therapy. It should
not be used as an immediate or first-aid remedy for fear it may become
associated with a most distressing memory. Above all, family
conversations and speculations should be abandoned, for children are
sensitive to talk they do not even hear. A child who has suffered a
premature sexual experience at the hands of an older person needs all
that his family can give him of thoughtful consideration and
reassurance. Yet he should by no means feel himself a hero. Once the
story is told and accredited, it should sink into a friendly silence.
Whatever form sex misconduct takes--whether peeping and undressing,
playing "father and mother," using vulgar words, making offensive
drawings or writing unsavory verses, urinating in public--punishment in
any of its many forms tends to decrease the quick chances of recovery.
Humiliation, body-guarding (I never can trust you alone), confinement
(lock you up), emotional scenes (you've disgraced your family), threats
(I'll send you away)--strike deep into the emotional nature of the child
and destroy that integrity of spirit and belief in himself which he
needs for his restoration. Persistent probings and grillings will also
block progress.
Correction of any type of sex misdemeanor requires insight, forbearance,
a vast amount of emotional poise, and an understanding of contributing
causes. If lack of wholesome sex knowledge is the cause, then wise sex
instruction _without_ reference to past sins is the remedy. If
fixations, jealousies, or a too strict moral code at home are
responsible (and they often are responsible not only for the more active
forms of misconduct, but for masturbation, thumb-sucking, and other bad
habits as well), then the cure rests with the willingness of parents to
modify their own attitude and exactions. If the cause is a recreational
lack, new activities, new scenes and companions, new interests must be
supplied to break up the old associations and supply the needed zest for
life. If observation of adult relationships has taken place, a careful
explanation and interpretation of the act of mating is necessary to lift
the relationship into its legitimate and acceptable place.
The most difficult phase of sex education is the interpretation and
guidance of sex activities in childhood. Our traditional codes and
sanctions have measured their punishments out of all proportion to the
offense. In order to meet this type of conduct constructively, one must
avoid severe punishment, the awakening of a deep sense of guilt, and set
oneself to work out a quiet regimen of rehabilitation. Best of all, one
comforts oneself with the knowledge that, except in cases of psychic
trauma, studies reveal that there is little relationship between early
sex play and later delinquency.
Wise parents of today build a solid foundation for the sexual happiness
of their children. No longer do they withhold knowledge of love, mating,
and the renewal of life. They equip themselves with a thorough
understanding of the emotional nature of their children and of the
technique of presenting sex instruction. We of this generation are
seeing changes in thought and patterns of sex teaching and ethics. Codes
and sanctions are in transition. It is not that in the years to come we
shall have more knowledge or more freedom purely for the sake of
knowledge and freedom. It is that we and our children and our children's
children, who are tomorrow's men and women, shall live with more
serenity, more wisdom, and more joyousness in their love relationships
because of the foundations which we have built.
_William Lyon Phelps_
CHAPTER TEN
_Religion in the Home_
During my forty years of teaching college under-graduates, if the lesson
for the day was pertinent or an occasion afforded the opportunity, I
talked to the men in the classroom about their careers--not concerning
vocational training; what I emphasized was the right mental attitude
toward life itself, the perhaps inarticulate philosophy underlying all
choices and all ambitions.
I have always been able to speak more intimately to a group of young
people than to an individual. The individual must take the initiative. I
believe we have no more right to probe into the secret places of the
heart than we have to pick a man's pocket. Whenever a student came to me
alone and on his own, then I was willing and glad to discuss anything
with him. But I believe every man's personality is sacred: an
unauthorized or unasked-for attempt to enter it is the worst sort of
trespassing.
In the classroom anything may be discussed without embarrassment. No
teacher ever had a more intimate classroom than mine. For my main
interest in literature, which I taught professionally, is its relation
to men and women. Browning said his poetry dealt exclusively with the
human soul; and it so happens that four poems of Tennyson's which,
intentionally or not, are placed together, deal with four terrific
passions. The poems are "The First Quarrel," "Rizpah," "The Northern
Cobbler," and "The Revenge." They deal respectively with sex, mother
love, drink, and patriotism. All four have produced happiness, and all
four have produced murder. Life is dangerous.
Students naturally wish to be successful in their chosen careers. I told
them the greatest and most important career was marriage; that, unlike
other careers, marriage was a career open to every one of them. For
among the many and striking differences between male and female we may
observe this: not every woman can be married, but every man can. There
is always some woman who will marry him.
The highest happiness known on earth is in marriage. Every man who is
happily married is a successful man even if he has failed in everything
else. And every man whose marriage is a failure is not a successful man
even if he has succeeded in everything else. The great Russian novelist
Turgenev said he would give all his fame and all his genius if there
were only one woman who cared whether he came home late to dinner. It
would have been well if he had known this when he was young.
I told my students: "Young gentlemen, although very few of you are now
engaged to be married and not one of you is married, _your wives are
alive_; they are living now. You do not know their names or where they
are; but isn't it exciting to think that you are every moment drawing
nearer to each other? She is half an hour closer to you now than when
you entered this classroom. Some in California are sound asleep, for it
is before dawn; some are eating breakfast in New York City; some are
eating lunch in Europe. But all your wives are as real as if they were
already living with you. What do you intend to do about it?"
Those preparing for the law or medicine take special studies; those
preparing for athletic contests take special training. If they did not,
they would be idiotic. Those who are preparing for marriage should not
leave success to chance. For, while happiness is sometimes dependent on
luck, in the majority of instances it is not; happiness usually follows
the proper conditions.
Thus boys and girls, young men and women, will do well if they train
their bodies and their minds to be successful husbands and wives long
before marriage. It is worth it; for they are in training for the
highest prize obtainable on earth, and yet one open to and won by
millions.
Not being a physician and being ignorant of physiology, I know little
about the value of sex instruction. Yet however important sex
instruction may be to those about to be married, there is one thing more
important--character. Two people unselfish and considerate, tactful and
warmhearted, and salted with humor, who are in love, have the most
essential of all qualifications for a successful marriage--they have
_character_. People about to be married need training in character much
more than they need instruction in sex.
From childhood boys and girls find out how children come, but the secret
of a good character, temperament, and disposition is not so readily
found.
The reason why character is the most important requisite for success in
marriage is not merely that it happens to be the chief cause of
happiness, but that those who have character can turn an unsuccessful
marriage into a successful one, instead of taking the easy way out, and
acknowledging failure. No man or no woman is to blame for making a
foolish marriage; it might happen to anyone. The test of character is
not whether one has or has not made a foolish marriage; the test comes
after the foolish marriage has been made. What a triumph then to turn
that failure into a success, as the statesman turns a minority into a
majority!
This article is addressed to young people, for those who marry late in
life either do not need any suggestions or are already incurable. I am
in favor of early marriages. I am delighted when either the boy's
parents or those of the girl have money enough so that the young pair
can be married at twenty-two, before they begin professional study or
work. And when there is little money but either or both have a job, then
by all means they should be married. When young people marry, they take
difficulties of housekeeping and privations as a lark, even as young
people do camping out. When I was a boy, camping out was absolute bliss;
now it would be absolute horror. Furthermore, in youth neither of them
has "set"; they can accommodate themselves to each other.
The late President Harper of the University of Chicago was married at
nineteen--not so young in his case, for he had already taken his
doctor's degree. He told me that during the first five or six years
there were times when neither he nor his wife could mail a letter,
because they did not have enough cash to buy one postage stamp. He
laughed aloud as he recounted this, and added, "There was never one
moment when either of us regretted our marriage."
Marriage can be wonderful from every point of view when it is a
combination of the highest physical delight with the highest spiritual
development. It is indeed the sublimation of the senses. The great
novelist George Meredith, who hated priggishness in all its forms, said
in a letter: "I have written always with the perception that there is
no life but of the spirit; that the concrete is really the shadowy; yet
that the way to spiritual life lies in the complete unfolding of the
creature, not in the nipping of his passions. An outrage to Nature helps
to extinguish his light. To the flourishing of the spirit, then, through
the healthy exercise of the senses."
Could there be a better description of the union of physical and
spiritual development in marriage than his phrase "the complete
unfolding of the creature"?
To his son Meredith wrote: "Look for the truth in everything, and follow
it, and you will then be living justly before God. Let nothing flout
your sense of a Supreme Being, and be certain that your understanding
wavers whenever you chance to doubt that He leads to good. We grow to
good as surely as the plant grows to the light. Do not lose the habit of
praying to the unseen Divinity. Prayer for worldly goods is worse than
fruitless, but prayer for strength of soul is that passion of the soul
which catches the gift it seeks."
What is love? From the age of six or seven on boys and girls fall in
love with a good many different persons. But this is not the same thing
as married love, which grows by companionship and by sharing sorrows as
well as pleasures. Many years ago a college friend of mine, a splendid
fellow with everything to make life worth living, was married to a fine
girl. He died suddenly, during the first week of the honeymoon. I said
to a man of sixty, "Can anything be more tragic than that?"
"Yes," he replied unhesitatingly, "it is more tragic when the husband or
wife dies after twenty-five years of marriage."
He was right; the loss after twenty-five years is more terrible; and in
the instance I mentioned the shattered and desolated bride was in two
years happily married to a second husband.
The overwhelming passion of love is certainly rapture, and marriage is
its most satisfying consummation. But true love is not so expressive in
desire for possession as it is in consideration for the welfare of the
beloved object. "Oh, how I love you!" may not mean as much as "Don't go
out without your rubbers on." Do you remember that passage in Guy de
Maupassant where the husband said just that to his wife? And they were
astounded when the maiden aunt, who had lived with them for years
without a word of dissatisfaction, who had gone in and out of the room
as unremarked as the family cat, who was thought to be incapable of
emotion, suddenly burst into a storm of weeping and cried, "No one has
ever cared whether or not I had my rubbers on!"
Yet expressions of love and passion, embraces and caresses, are also
essential. I told my students, "After you are married never leave the
house, even if only to post a letter at the corner, without kissing your
wife." This very simple act is a tremendous preservative of married
happiness.
I also advised them during the first twenty years of marriage to occupy
the same bedroom. Quarrels and even insults given in the heat of anger
are certain to happen in nine marriages out of ten. It is supremely
important not to let these flames of resentment become a fatal
conflagration. They must not last. Never go to sleep with resentment in
your hearts.
"And blessings on the falling out
That all the more endears,
When we fall out with those we love,
And kiss again with tears!"
Although happy marriages are common (unhappy ones are still news), the
only ideal, flawless marriages I ever heard of were those of the
Brownings and the Hawthornes; in both instances the husbands were men of
genius and the wives positively angelic.
Since the greatest of all the arts is the art of living together, and
since the highest and most permanent happiness depends on it, and since
the way to practice this art successfully lies through character, the
all-important question is how to obtain character.
The surest way is through religion--religion in the home. All that we
know for certain of every person is that he is imperfect. Human
imperfection means a chronic need for improvement. The most tremendous
and continuous elevating, purifying, strengthening force is religious
faith.
My parents neglected my social training. I am sorry they did. They were
careless about my clothes and my personal appearances. I am sorry for
it. But I am supremely grateful for their religious and spiritual
training. Every day of my life I am grateful. I would rather belong to
the church than belong to any other organization or society or club. I
would rather be a church member than receive any honor or decoration in
the world.
It amuses me when I read novels written by those who never had any
religious faith or who have lost it, novels that describe religious
training in the home as producing unhappiness and hypocrisy and
morbidity, the atmosphere one of thick gloom. As I look back on my
childhood, it seems to me that our house was full of laughter. Table
conversation was enlivened with mirth. If there ever was a merry
household, it was ours. Our daily existence was full of fun, and
Christmas, New Years, Fourth of July, and birthdays were delirious.
This is normal and natural and logical. Religious faith is a central
heating plant--it warms and energizes one's whole existence. It gives a
reason for life itself, for development. It gives a philosophy for
conduct, and, far more important, it _emotionalizes_ conduct even more
strongly than athletics and patriotism.
Of all essential things, the most essential in married life and in the
bringing up of children is religion. When two people are engaged and are
making plans for living together, they are sure to discuss religion. You
remember how suddenly Marguerite turned to Faust and asked him
point-blank, "Do you believe in God?"
A chief reason why bringing up children is so difficult is that example
is so much more important than precept. I am a qualified literary
critic, although I never wrote a novel; I am a qualified drama critic,
although I never wrote a play; I am a qualified baseball and lawn tennis
critic, although I never was a first-class player. But when parents
endeavor to bring up children to reflect honor on the family and be
useful members of society, the parents must set a good example. A man
once wrote to Carlyle asking him if he ought to teach his little
children to say prayers. The severe Scot replied: "Yes, but only if you
pray yourself. Don't teach them anything in which you yourself do not
believe."
The Scot was right. To teach little children to say their prayers when
the parents never say them themselves is like teaching a dog to say his
prayers, a trick that seems to amuse many people. To have little
children say grace at the table when no adult in the room has any faith
is again only a pretty trick. But to send them to church and Sunday
School when the parents stay away is far worse; it is culpable. Then the
children regard church-going, praying, and religion as one of the
innumerable burdens and penalties of childhood, from which they will
escape as soon as they reach independence.
When Overton, the great Yale athlete, who was killed in the war, left
his Tennessee home to go to college, his father told him that he would
not give him any advice as to morals or behavior; "but, Johnny, will you
promise me that you will never go to sleep at night until you have said
your prayers?" John promised, and afterward told his father he had kept
his word.
If both young husband and wife share a similar religious belief, it is
an enormous asset; and immense help to permanence in married happiness.
Now, one cannot believe in God and in Our Lord merely by wishing to do
so. Yet I often think that many who do not believe do not really wish to
with passionate earnestness; with as strong a wish as they have for
money or good looks or popularity.
There are many who say and more who think without saying: "If I only had
the faith I had as a child! Then I believed in God and in Jesus Christ
and in Heaven." One might almost as well say, "If I only had the
knowledge of algebra I had as a child!" Why do small boys and girls know
algebra and why in later years do they not know it? Because when they
were at school, they gave their attention to it; they studied it; they
thought about it. But after leaving school they may never have opened an
algebra book or considered the subject again.
What does one expect? If one expresses regret for the lost faith of
childhood, it is proper to ask: "How long is it since you read the
Gospels? How long is it since you prayed?"
Since religious faith is such an asset to happiness, such a foundation
for character and for married life and bringing up children, one might
make an effort to recover it, or at least to consider it.
I believe Sunday should be a day of joy and happiness. Sunday afternoon
games and recreation are fine, but one enjoys them more if one has been
to church in the morning or spent part of the day in either solitary or
community worship. Those parents who selfishly seek only their own
pleasures every weekend, who do nothing but amuse themselves--are they
likely to bring up their children successfully?
To those who have no faith and to those who have lost it let me
recommend some wise words by Dean Inge. There are those who are as
explosively and suddenly "converted" as was St. Paul; but there are also
those who cannot have such an experience; and many, many are the ways to
God. Give the matter serious attention; it deserves it. It is the most
serious of all things.
Being educated means to prefer the best not only to the worst but to the
second best. It means in music to prefer Beethoven not only to jazz but
to Brahms. So it is in all forms of art, in athletics, in politics, in
everything.
Now, the Person celebrated in the Gospels is the greatest Personality in
all history. He knew more about life than Shakespeare. He was the
greatest nerve specialist who ever lived. "Come unto me ... and you
shall find rest unto your souls." His way is incomparably the best way;
it is the way to peace of mind, to courage, independence, fearlessness,
to joy. If we find faith lacking, try His way.
Listen to Dean Inge; he is discussing the illumination of the mind that
_follows recognition_ of the Master:
"This illumination must be earned, or rather prepared for, by a
strenuous course of moral discipline. The religious life begins with
Faith, which has been defined ... as the resolution to stand or fall by
the noblest hypothesis. This venture of the will and conscience
progressively verifies itself as we progress on the upward path. _That
which began as an experiment ends as an experience._ We become
accustomed to breathe the atmosphere of the spiritual world."
Young people about to be married, young people recently married, young
fathers and mothers, should give religion the most serious
consideration. To neglect it, to be indifferent to it, is worse and more
foolish than to be antagonistic. Religion is not a frill or an ornament
or a luxury; still less is it a thing to clutch at only in danger or in
heartbreak.
Religion is the greatest creative force in the world; it has made
thousands of saints and thousands of heroes; it has revolutionized
innumerable individual lives. It has changed people from selfishness to
unselfishness; from cowardice to courage; from despair to hope; from
vulgarity to decency; from barrenness of life to fruitfulness. When
religion can change the lives of millions, when it can produce supreme
creations in art, it is a force worth serious consideration.
Religious faith has produced the finest architecture, the finest
painting, the finest music, the finest literature in the world.
The late John Philip Sousa, the famous composer and bandmaster, said
that the reason why there was not so much great music produced in the
twentieth as in the nineteenth century was that religious faith had
declined. According to him, creation is based on faith. This may be
claiming too much, but his testimony as a composer is interesting.
The American philosopher Paul Elmer More, who died in 1937, and who was
one of the most profound scholars in the world, after prolonged thought
and study and observation, came from agnosticism into a complete and
passionate faith in the Christian religion and in the incarnation. He
said that while love was the main principle in religion as a way of
life, the most important contribution to humanity made by religion was
hope. Hope in the destiny of man, in the superlative value of the
individual, in the Personality of our Father in Heaven.
I might add that if hope deferred maketh the heart sick, hope destroyed
maketh the heart dead.
The most unfair, last word to describe religious faith is the word
anesthetic. Religious faith is a comfort to the old, the sick, and the
suffering; but in general it is not a sedative, it is a tonic. It is a
dynamo; it is a driving force. Henry Drummond, the most effective
speaker on religion I can remember, said to a group of students: "I ask
you to become Christians not because you may die tonight but because you
are going to live tomorrow. I come not to save your souls, but to save
your lives."
Religion adds an enormous zest to daily life; it makes everything
interesting. It keeps alive the capacity of wonder. I myself am
interested in everything in the world, from a sandlot ball game to the
nebula in Orion. The mainspring of my existence, the foundation of my
happy and exciting life, is Christian faith.
I suggest to those recently married and those about to be married that
they are entering into a relationship that can bring them the highest
and most lasting happiness or the most crushing disillusion and despair.
Such a relationship is particularly remarkable because of its intimacy,
an intimacy far transcending that of friendship, love of parents, or any
earthly emotion. As Thomas Hardy said, marriage annihilates reserve. In
this amazing intimacy every care should be taken to insure success. A
common interest in religion, saying prayers together, will help
enormously toward increasing and preserving happiness.
For a true belief in the Christian religion will improve daily manners.
Husband and wife will not take each other for granted; they will not
become stodgy or commonplace or stereotyped.
Tennyson gave in "The Princess" the real kind of marriage which one of
my students described in the vernacular: "I am going to be married. It
won't be much of a wedding, but it will be a wonderful marriage." Listen
to Tennyson:
"For woman is not undevelopt man,
But diverse. Could we make her as the man,
Sweet Love were slain; his dearest bond is this,
Not like to like, but like in difference.
Yet in the long years liker must they grow;
The man be more of woman, she of man;
He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care,
Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind;
Till at the last she set herself to man,
Like perfect music unto noble words."
A wife may be a civilizing force; this is well. But she may be far more
than that. She may be a revelation in daily intimacy more unconsciously
impressive than a professional saint.
This is what _Caponsacchi_ said of an imagined union with _Pompilia_, in
Browning's "The Ring and the Book":
"To live, and see her learn, and learn by her,
Out of the low obscure and petty world--
Or only see one purpose and one will
Evolve themselves i' the world, change wrong to right;
To have to do with nothing but the true,
The good, the eternal--and these, not alone
In the main current of the general life,
But small experiences of every day,
Concerns of the particular hearth and home:
To learn not only by a comet's rush
But a rose's birth, not by the grandeur, God,
But the comfort, Christ."
_Stanley G. Dickinson_
CHAPTER ELEVEN
_It Pays to be Happily Married_
Business believe that the happily married man will occupy a bigger
position in the business world than will the man who is unhappy at home.
The young men and young women in _Good Housekeeping's_
marriage-relations course have a right to know this, to know precisely
the interest which business has in harmonious marriage and the extent to
which home life is a factor when men are considered for promotion,
employment, or transfer--any one of which means more income, more
responsibility, and an opportunity to live more fully.
Business might very logically take another view. It _might_ believe that
the single man is the better employee, because single men are free to
travel, are not burdened with the expenses of a family, do not run the
risk of going home to trouble. It _might_ believe that the home
experiences and environment of the people it hires are not its concern.
But business is concerned with these aspects and young people should
know in what way and why.
While business negotiates with the husband, it has long since learned
that _both_ husband and wife are entitled to consideration whenever one
is being employed or promoted. The more important the job, the more
important it becomes to determine whether husband and wife have tried to
keep pace with each other, or whether there is discord at home. Business
can afford to place responsibility upon the mentally capable, energetic,
and tactful man _if_ his marriage relations are harmonious. It cannot
afford to gamble with the man who is in trouble at home--not necessarily
vicious trouble, but trouble arising from carelessness, maladjustment,
and misunderstanding.
As a business consultant advising corporations upon their major
objectives and policies, I attend several times each week conferences
during which men are discussed for promotion, transfer to new work or
new territory, salary adjustments, and sometimes demotion. The business
consultant prefers to limit his counsel to such objective matters as
plans and operating policies, but this cannot be done actually, because
all business situations must be resolved into the persons in them. Hence
our discussion is necessarily devoted to men--to what we can do to make
them more effective, to how soon we can promote them safely, to how much
responsibility they can assume, to what they are best fitted for doing,
and the like. During the past fifteen years, I have discussed such lowly
functions as clerkships at $85 a month and such exalted positions as
vice-presidencies at $20,000, with the average running between $4000 and
$10,000 a year.
The judgment of executives is not infallible, and some of the men we
pick are unable to measure up to the increased load we place upon them.
We try to analyze these failures even more carefully than we analyze the
successes. Here is what we find: in the majority of instances, men do
not fail because they do not know enough, or because they are lazy;
they fail because business cannot always depend upon them--they break at
the wrong times. We can find men who know their work and who are capable
of learning the requirements of a better job. We can find plenty of men
who are willing to work, and who will work even harder for the promise
of a better job in the future. But we cannot find enough men whose
emotional mechanism is dependable--at least not in sufficient numbers to
carry on the responsibilities which business would like to place upon
them.
Peculiarly enough, the results of emotional instability are complex, but
the chief cause may be defined simply: trouble at home causes more
emotional upsets, more instability in business, than any other single
factor. By the same token, lack of progress in business causes trouble
at home. No home can be run successfully without a degree of financial
progress, and such progress cannot be made--except by a negligible
few--without harmony at home.
All wives have, by and large, an equal stake with their husbands in
their husbands' material progress. The increased income is a major
consideration, but it is only the beginning in a chain of useful
consequences. Business progress means mental growth, added intelligence
to be applied to both working and living. Personal growth means a fuller
home life, a finer environment in which to bring up children, an
opportunity to become a respected member of the community. Business
progress means greater responsibility, and this breeds the ability to
take on still more responsibility, both at home and in business.
Progress eventually brings more leisure, more culture, and more of the
other refinements of living. Progress is accelerating, feeding upon and
multiplying itself.
No one would deny the truth of all this, yet only a searching few have
actually created at home the degree of harmony which has been the aim
of this series in _Good Housekeeping's_ course on marriage relations. If
effective contributions from home to the consistent progress of
breadwinners were universal rather than rare, half of our troubles in
finding men for added responsibility would be over. The majority of men
dissipate their energy in _wishing_ and _wanting_, but restrict
themselves to wishing and wanting the _result_, rather than the _cause_.
These insist that they want to better their situations, but insist also
that business is a thing apart, something to be shut in the office,
something which need not be understood or supported at home, and
certainly something over which a wife at home has little influence.
These two points of view are not reconcilable; hence everyone loses who
tries to hold to both at once.
If you say to a business executive, "Business is a thing apart," he will
point out at once that your theory is true only in the least important
jobs. The management does not worry much about the home environment of
the beginner upon whom no real responsibility rests, but it frequently
goes to unbelievable ends to get its more important employees back onto
the track if they have lost their heads over a home problem. Again,
business does this for no humanitarian reasons; it takes this attitude
because its employees produce better where there is harmony at home.
The capable, intelligent, and progressive worker is almost invariably
married to a capable, intelligent, and progressive woman. Each acts and
reacts upon the other. Men are not so versatile that they can fill $5000
jobs during the day and then go home to become husbands of $1500 women
in the evening. Neither are women so versatile that they will remain in
contented harmony with husbands who are not their mental equals. Some
look negatively at the problem, feeling that "I could have done better
if I had had the advantages of so-and-so." The facts are that these
envied couples were growing up together, keeping pace mentally, long
before the promotion came which is given the credit for their present
condition.
When a wife falls down on her part of the job, neglecting either harmony
or her personal development, her husband's first natural reaction is to
separate his business from his home life--to grit his teeth and go on,
hoping to achieve the impossible. This usually sets up a vicious circle
of events. Being handicapped in personal effectiveness, he spends more
and more time at business. His home goes to ruin; he suffers the most
dangerous emotional upsets; his work fails, and conditions get worse and
worse. He breaks, in short, at the wrong time--a time inconvenient to
business, to put it brutally.
It is dangerous to generalize here, because there is a fine distinction
between harmony at home and bringing business into the home. Hasty
thinking is likely to confuse the two. The man who takes petty troubles
of the routine day home to his wife is a weakling, and business cannot
consider him for increased responsibility. The husband who takes none of
his problems home is frequently a mystery to his wife, but he probably
feels that she is not sufficiently informed to be useful in helping him
make decisions on purely business issues. Wives sometimes rebel against
this, because they do not make the essential distinction between respect
for them as individuals and respect for their information about a
specific business question.
The soundness of the belief that wives have a specific and clearly
defined responsibility here is verified by the fact that _husbands want,
and business demands, one and the same thing_. The approach is
different, because the husbands of America are asking primarily for
harmony at home, while business is looking for an efficient producer;
yet they both are seeking the same thing. The husband asks his wife for
harmony at home and a progressive instinct so that she will grow
concurrently with him. Business, when evaluating men for promotion, asks
whether there is harmony at home so that this man will be free from the
greatest single source of emotional unbalance, and whether this man and
his wife have demonstrated the ability to grow in the past--the best
available indication of their ability to grow in the future. These two
questions take in a lot of territory, but the ground must be covered so
long as business, in effect, employs or promotes both husband and wife.
Do not be misled for a moment respecting the importance of these two
points merely because businessmen do not talk a lot about them. Their
sense of good taste makes them hesitate to inquire bluntly into so
personal a problem, and so their investigations are conducted quietly.
Numerous confidential sources of information are used, and superiors
take their own means to meet husband and wife together, generally under
some casual pretext. If we could look behind the scenes, we would find
that emotional stability--that elusive product of a satisfactory home
environment--is regarded just as highly as knowledge, experience, or any
of the other orthodox considerations. We would find executives saying,
"We can count on Jones for Chicago now that we have seen his wife and
determined to our satisfaction that she will measure up to the
promotion" or "It's too bad we can't give this job to Smith, but you
know how hard it is to succeed without support from home." Another would
be saying, "Brown flew off the handle again yesterday; it must have
started at the breakfast table."
Wives, if you can be the Mrs. Jones of these examples, and avoid being
the Mrs. Smith or the Mrs. Brown, you will be removing for businessmen
the greatest hurdle to promotion which we encounter. You will be doing
your part as the wife of a man in business.
You may determine the extent to which you are doing these things now by
testing yourself in the light of these ten questions:
_1. Did my husband start for work this morning in a better frame of mind
for having married me, or would he have been happier as a single man or
married to someone else?_
Remember, as you ask this question and apply your own answer, that we
are talking about business; hard, practical business where intentions do
not count. You may love your husband dearly, but if the results of your
love are not constructive, you must write the word FAILURE across the
record.
_2. Do I always treat my job just as seriously as if I were working in
an office for a monthly salary?_
Some wives feel that it makes no difference if they linger so long over
bridge or cocktails or shopping or whatever in the afternoon that they
are unable to prepare a suitable meal for their husbands in the evening.
_3. Have I grown in poise and interests like the wives of my husband's
associates and superiors?_
Wives who keep up with the procession are an asset; those who fail to
grow are a liability.
_4. Can I talk in the same terms as his associates and their wives?_
This indicates how carefully you have maintained your interest in the
source of your income, and how accustomed you are to expressing
yourself.
_5. Do I dress and act like the wives of the business associates and
superiors of my husband?_
You place a heavy handicap upon your effectiveness if your husband
cannot be proud of you in the inevitable comparisons with other wives in
his organization.
_6. Do I entertain with reasonable frequency the people who are in a
position to help my husband in business, or is our social life planned
wholly for my own amusement?_
Perhaps this question should read, "How long since I have entertained
So-and-So?" You may be surprised to find that months have slipped away
without your having done a single stroke of good for your husband
socially.
_7. Do I limit our social engagements during the week to those which
will not take essential energy from the job, or do I feel that my
husband "owes" me constant amusement when he is not actually at the
office?_
As employers pile responsibility upon your husband, more and more care
must be used in the allocation of time to social affairs. You may be
able to rest the next day, but business does not permit husbands to rest
on the job.
_8. Do I act as a balance wheel, cheering him intelligently when he is
tired or discouraged, or do I rub him the wrong way on such occasions?_
If your husband does not share with you his disappointments, it is
almost invariably because you have not qualified yourself to share them.
_9. Do I try to smooth things out after unpleasant discussions--as I
would if a new dress or theatre party were at stake?_
Many married persons have an uncanny capacity for making miserable the
objects of their affection. It is said that the course of true love
never did run smooth, but the wise husband or wife will not
unnecessarily roughen it.
_10. Do I carry my share of responsibility, or do I save up all the
petty annoyances for our dinner-table conversation?_
Wives who complain that their husbands are silent during dinner have
usually good reason to overhaul the quality of their own conversation.
Don't bore him with your fight with the grocer or the catty things Mrs.
X said at bridge or afternoon tea.
Here are some actual examples of the way wives affect their husband's
business:
We selected Blake for a branch managership at Chicago, and we thought
that his wife could measure up. We took him out of a job where he had
reached his limit and placed him in one where his developed ability
might enable him to earn twice his salary. He failed. We who appointed
this man took the blame for his failure, because _business recognizes no
alibis_. As usual, it wasn't that he didn't want to be a branch manager,
or that he didn't know enough, or that he wasn't willing to work hard
enough. We found that the trouble was within his emotional mechanism. He
was losing his head and his temper at the wrong times.
At last he wrote to his firm: "This town takes the heart out of my wife.
She is terribly lonesome, refuses to make new friends, and reminds me
continually of the good times we used to have back home. Her mother
misses her and threatens to come to live with us here. I appreciate this
opportunity, and I know that we have more of everything here than we had
back home, but I want my old job back. I can't stand it here."
Business doesn't work that way, and so we persuaded another employer to
"hire him away" without his knowledge, thus saving his face and helping
to maintain his courage. He would have been branded for life if we had
permitted him to crawl back to his old job. Blake will never go as far
as he is entitled to go, because Mrs. Blake places her own feelings
above any other consideration, and her husband is not strong enough to
control his emotions where his wife is concerned. Few men are.
We do not in any way blame Mrs. Blake for the part she played in her
husband's failure. She merely attaches more value to staying in her old
groove, in the constant companionship of her mother, and in the regular
contact with old friends than she attaches to promotion for her husband.
We have no quarrel with her choice, if only she realizes that she has
chosen something for herself, and is now living under conditions
dictated by her own choice.
Take Smith. In the language of business he is a "whipped puppy." Again,
there is no question of his ability, his desires, or his willingness to
work. We have, in a certain corporation, a job for Smith which would
mean a 50 percent increase in salary, a place of notice in the
community, and a wider acquaintance among substantial people. We have
considered him for this job a dozen times, but each time we have decided
to postpone action, because we are afraid of the influence of his wife.
On his present job, it does no great damage for her to be so possessive,
demanding all his time outside of office hours, ordering him around like
a child. On the new job, such a performance would ruin him before he was
fairly started. Dare we depend on her ability and willingness to grow
quickly into the person she would have been training to become? We dare
not, for we are held responsible for results!
"Just as I thought," some will say, "business is inhuman." One who takes
this attitude has an incomplete view of the facts. If business were to
tolerate a repetition of mistakes, its general level of
productivity--which, in turn, means income to its employees--would be
lowered immediately. This would operate against the very thing we are
trying to sponsor--increased responsibility and more full living for all
as soon as they earn it.
This point of view frequently gives women no end of mental trouble,
because they are more inclined than men to think subjectively rather
than objectively. Business employs a man for what he can produce, other
things being equal. So long as he is morally sound and honest, business
cares little about his attitudes on other subjects. Wives measure their
husbands by their helping with the housework or their thoughtfulness in
little things around the home; all of these have their value, but not in
the scale of production on the job. Sentiment counts heavily with the
feminine mind, as it should, whereas business is more realistic.
Business buys results rather than intentions.
Business did not have an inherent desire to consider marriage relations.
Its interest in them began with the many examples of maladjustment to
which it was compelled to give attention, in line with its age-old
policy of believing that "everything is all right until it is proved
otherwise." When the negative consequences were brought to light, and
business really became interested, a constructive attitude was developed
which gained its momentum from the countless examples where wives have
been major reasons for the success of their husbands. Fortunately for
every failure there are a dozen successes.
The Mortons, for example, are a couple who have found that it pays to
live both harmoniously and progressively at home. Mary Morton is a
convert to the constructive attitudes brought out by the ten questions
outlined earlier. They have made it a custom to entertain at least one
evening a week, always having in mind that certain people can be _both_
good company and helpful in business. They try to reach up rather than
down in the people with whom they mingle. When they were to be
transferred to another city, the news was broken to them together in
their home by a superior. Mary's first and genuine reaction was, "It
will be fine to make new friends and to have the children see a new part
of the country."
When they arrived at the new city, the old process, so successful in
their home town, was begun again--new friends, new interests, new
growth. If they were ever homesick, the firm never found it out; but I
am inclined to believe that they were too busy on constructive matters
to get homesick. Morton's salary is three times what it was ten years
ago, and most of the credit goes to his wife. Likewise she is the chief
beneficiary.
Another illustration of the extent to which business recognizes the
principle of harmonious development of both husband and wife is shown by
the experience of Parsons. He was a junior executive, capable in every
direction but one. When a vacancy occurred higher up, he was the logical
candidate; but the president of the company refused to promote him until
he had had a chance to demonstrate his ability to meet the social
requirements of his position. He conceded Parsons' brilliance, his
energy, and everything but his capacity to become genuinely interested
in the people who were both above and beneath him in the organization.
Inquiry revealed that he was making the best of a situation in which
neither he nor his wife had realized the importance of social activity.
Bear in mind that we do not mean a playboy temperament or a mercenary
attitude, but rather a genuineness in human contacts.
When the problem was laid before them, a program was laid out for them
to follow. Parsons and his wife called on everyone they felt should not
be neglected, later inviting to their own home those who seemed in a
position to help them. During these second visits, the conversation was
turned to what might be done by "people like ourselves" to prevent
getting into a rut. Dozens of helpful activities were recommended, and
they made it a business to explore the most valuable, so that they could
tell others about forthcoming meetings of discussion groups, plays,
lectures, and the like. Within six months, they had entirely overcome
the president's objection, and a year later Parsons was promoted to the
other position at a $2000 increase in salary.
Two facts will occur immediately to anyone who is an intelligent
observer of such things: first, Parsons and his wife had a better time
after the change than before; and second, business expects people to
discover these things for themselves. This couple were more than usually
fortunate to be led by the hand up to this new experience.
Business gave Parsons his chance when it permitted him to demonstrate
his ability. Quick jumps in business are not made available to people
upon the basis of their belief that they can qualify. Business would be
guilty of rash speculation with its funds if positions were given to any
except those who had demonstrated their qualifications in advance.
Business has no time for or patience with those who do not recognize the
importance of these things. We have no license to give responsibility to
those who say: "I didn't know that this was important. Give me a trial,
and I will do my best to learn quickly." The answer to that is: "We have
another man who has been qualifying for many years. He saw the place of
these things in business progress. We'll risk our money on him."
When a young man brings to business a reasonable amount of ability and
energy, reinforced by the emotional balance which comes from the right
kind of home life, he is likely to surpass both his own expectations and
those of his employers. Business _wants_ him to succeed. Business
wonders, as a matter of fact, why more people do not succeed, with the
incentives for success so generally open to public view. It realizes,
just as you will realize when you analyze the situation, that the
incentives have been understood, but the ways and means have been
missing. This is a common mistake in human progress. We have all erred
in making someone else want something, thinking that the process of
arousing desire would insure intelligent action. Most humans realize
that they lack the ways and means, a realization which accounts for the
interest shown everywhere in better marriage relations and in the
methods for achieving them. The desire to succeed is not enough. Desire
has its place, however, once the ways and means are understood, because
strong desire sustains interest in the ways and means.
Does this seem an idle theory? Not to business, the instrument through
which most men and women work out their economic security. Business
says: you must show us harmony at home and mental growth before we will
believe that you are a safe candidate for promotion. Give us these along
with the ability you have always brought us, and we will make it worth
your while. We will increase your salaries. We will put you into jobs
where you may live in better neighborhoods, mingle with more capable
people in business and at home, give your children advantages you may
never have had, and provide you with all the creature comforts for
successful living, a base upon which you must build your own philosophy
of happiness, but without which no genuine happiness is probable.
Being composed of realists, business does not paint these rewards in
glowing colors. It merely says, without question or qualification, _the
happily married man will occupy a bigger position with us than the man
who is unhappy at home_.
_Ernest R. and Gladys H. Groves_
CHAPTER TWELVE
_The Case for Monogamy_
If we put off examining the case for monogamy until we had personal
questions about it, most of us would never get around to studying it.
For most people no more doubt that monogamy is the best possible program
than that good health is better than bad. To argue such a matter seems
strange.
But there is much loose talk about on the other side of the case, crying
up the non-monogamous program practiced by a few and publicized by more.
The adherents of this group are so vocal that their ideas are constantly
being aired. Knowing themselves a small minority, with the burden of
proof against them, they excitedly attack the existing order.
Their arguments are likely to interest the average person, however, only
when he or she is momentarily thrown off balance by an emotional
upheaval of one sort or another. And right there is the danger. It is
hard for anyone--particularly a young person--to make a rational
decision when his thinking is colored by his emotions; his tendency is
to use his intellectual processes merely to justify what he wants to do
at the moment, and not to search out the truth. If he is unprepared for
the anti-monogamy arguments ready and waiting for him, he is likely to
accept them without question. Before we have occasion to doubt it,
therefore, those of us who take monogamy as a matter of course should
understand why we do, and what its significance is to us. Then, if ever
the occasion does arise, we shall be better able to let our minds, not
our passions, decide the issue for our greater happiness.
The question is shall I, having given myself to one man or one woman,
abide by the till-death-do-us-part vow, or shall I be free to change
partners at will?
The natural mood of most men and women entering marriage is deeply
monogamous. The one thing husband and wife crave is to depend only on
each other forever. Yet later on some of them will suddenly desert the
standards of monogamy without giving themselves time to think, and
others will pass through a period of turmoil before making up their
minds to go or to stay. What has happened in the marriage experience to
change these individuals who were strong for monogamy into men and women
either dead set against it or very doubtful about it?
The answer lies both in the particular temperament of the persons
concerned and in certain characteristic features of the early, middle,
and later stages in married life. Sometimes a young man or woman bolts
from the tenets of monogamy in a late-adolescent panic when marriage
responsibilities begin to be irksome. Sometimes it is the older man or
woman who married in good faith only to lose sight of the values of
monogamy. Not having the backbone to accept what comes and do something
about it, this type of person wants to give up as soon as the going gets
rough, and daydreams about making a better start elsewhere.
What are the parts of the marriage experience that bring out this
disposition of wanting to run away in order to try again? The romantic
love that marks the early part of marriage is a characteristically
youthful attitude. Each spouse idealizes the other and pictures their
life together as something almost unique in its perfection. Stimulated
by the mate's expectations, each one rises about his or her previous
habits of behavior, and for a while the two seem indeed to be finer and
better than the general run of humankind.
In time the first flush of enthusiasm wears off, and the husband and
wife gradually get to see each other more nearly as other people see
them. For those who flinch from reality, this is as bitter an experience
as any of the other hard parts of growing up. For nobody is it easy. But
for all who face it squarely, it is a big step toward emotional
maturity.
Without hastening the process, and thereby losing most of its benefits,
one can learn to accept it little by little, as it comes. The wife who
seemed the most beautiful or most gracious woman imaginable, the husband
who was looked upon as the strongest or cleverest man in the world,
slowly loses this impossible glamour and shrinks to the life size
proportions of a real man or woman.
When one catches a glimpse of oneself in the estimation of the newly
married spouse, and realizes how far the idealized picture is from the
somber reality one has grown up with, it is easy to think, "I am made
different by this love that expects so much of me, and if I am not yet
quite so wonderful as my beloved thinks me, I shall soon become so, for
this expectation spurs me to hitherto unimaginable efforts."
Something of this improvement does take place--but then, to the chagrin
of the one trying to improve, it becomes increasingly clear that the
original expectations of the mate are being lowered in the direction of
one's actual present level of attainment. Surprisingly enough, by the
time one is sure of this, it is not disturbing in the way one would have
expected, for one's own impression of the mate is also coming down to
earth.
At first this descent from the clouds of fanciful exaggeration of the
loved one to the lesser status of everyday life seems more or less
tragic, as both fear that the supreme quality of their marriage is
vanishing. The more a couple have been lifted up by their romantic
attachment for each other, the more they can be hurt when the wearing
out of its unreal element drops them to earth again. The ones who are
stouthearted enough to count their own hurt a small matter, if they can
still help the partner to have something to look forward to beyond the
present difficulties, are matured by this part of their marriage
experience, and later come to look back on what went before as a
dreamlike time when they lived on nothing more substantial than hopes.
This is the testing period of the marriage. Each partner must
continually get used to the new outline of the other's personality as it
is showing itself, without losing sight of the value of the essential
quality that persists. Of one thing both can be sure: each still has
need of the other.
In today's mail comes a letter from a businessman who admits that he had
got out of the habit of showing his wife how he felt about her in the
rush and worry of trying to keep his head above water financially. Now
that she in her loneliness has lost her heart to another man, the
husband almost breaks into poetry in telling of his feelings. Not
vindictive, he is just hopeless. If the wife could have had imagination
enough to realize the strength of his need of her, she would never have
wrapped herself in loneliness away from him.
The drop from the temporary bliss of the beginning of love to the
lasting burden-sharing of the rest of life offers many a chance for hurt
feelings. Those who lose confidence in their own or their partner's
ability to keep on trying to live together on a reality basis are
generally the ones who want to keep one foot in the dreamland of
immaturity. If he drinks and she sulks, both would rather think
themselves martyrs and talk over their troubles with sympathetic friends
than get down to business and do something about their problems.
Quarrels are intense in proportion to the depth of tender emotion in the
background. Not understanding what is happening to them, the husband and
wife think it is the end of love, and he may be tempted to accept
comfort from another woman, she from another man. Then they need
desperately to know, "What is the case for monogamy?"
History shows that monogamy has always been accompanied by increasing
vigor in the society or group practicing it, and that its
opposite--freedom from social restraint in the relationships of men and
women--has always been associated with social or group decay. But modern
young people are interested in the meaning of monogamy for them
personally.
Monogamy is a going on in the healthy spirit of meeting what life
brings, not running away from it. Escape into a substitute relationship
is a going back to the dreamlike stage of late adolescence, putting new
promises ahead of present performance, and attempting to make life stand
still, so that one may continue on the threshold of maturity without
ever stepping over into the place where one must make good one's
promises.
No human craving, from infancy to death, is stronger than that for
security of affection. What misleads people into thinking of going
outside their marriage association, or wanting to break it for a new
one, is their failure to understand the slow growth of permanent
affection. Looking back at the intensity of its beginning in romantic
love, they suppose it is dwindling, when it is really taking root.
As a child that has been spoiled at home has a hard time getting used to
the lesser attention he receives away from home, the married person who
believes that courtship love is the essence of marriage finds it hard to
come down to the quieter affection that can endure. This is the person
who, unable to stand being valued only for his or her real worth,
complains to an outsider, "Nobody understands me." The outsider,
flattered, murmurs, "I do," and romanticizes about "this fine,
unappreciated person," only to discover when it is too late that the
person was only too well understood by the unfortunate first partner.
One may not be able to make oneself grow up suddenly and all at once,
but one can hold on to the principles one knows to be worth fighting
for, by the simple process of refusing to let go. All kinds of wonderful
qualities needed in marriage may seem to be conspicuous in oneself
chiefly by their absence, but one can always play for time. Even if
infatuated with another person, one can hang on to what one knows is
right until Time, the mighty leveler of passion, comes to one's help.
An exceptionally happy married woman, after going through this ordeal,
said that at the time when she was almost carried away by an unexpected
infatuation for a business associate of her husband's, it seemed as if
nothing was real but the lover. Neither the memory of past happiness
with the husband nor the thought of his future misery if she should
leave him was able to mean more to her than so many words. Only, in her
half-stupefied condition, she had the wit to remember, as one might
recall the multiplication table without caring anything about it, that
she had always previously despised people who acted on impulse without
trying to find out the probable consequences. Therefore she stuck to her
self-imposed rule that she would have no contact with the man, even by
letter, until she could get over the strange numbness of her emotions
toward her husband. Then, gradually but thoroughly, she came out of her
trancelike infatuation, until she found it hard to remember that it had
ever happened.
The time to put on the brakes in checking runaway emotions is before
they gain momentum. While the feelings aroused still seem harmless, the
person can redirect his or her energy toward a more desirable object
such as finding new grounds of communion with the spouse or sublimating
its expression by turning it into constructive artistic or social
channels. To wait until disaster threatens before taking oneself in hand
is to pile up, at best, a guilty feeling that one has not done one's
best to meet the needs of the mate.
Those who "step out" in the frantic forties and foolish fifties
complicate the picture for their younger observers. What they are trying
to find is not so much a new thrill as the reliving of an old glow--the
hopefulness of their lost youth. Not content to live over in memory the
high hopes that were theirs when life was new--because of the gap
between expectation and realization--they close their eyes to the new
disillusionment they are heading for, and think only to shut out their
sense of inadequacy in their present association by steering full steam
ahead for another encounter, in which the odds are even more against
them.
One may think one doesn't care much about the partner, one may get tired
of listening to the same old jokes, the same set of worries, the same
reminiscences; but let there be a misunderstanding, and one finds that
one must care tremendously or one could not be so devastated. No
association is so humdrum that it cannot be quickened into life, no
matter how long it has been meagerly taking its course.
Certain types of people, whom we might lump together as a restless,
discontented lot, enjoy "shopping around" for doctors, for jobs, for
friends, for lovers, never staying long enough with any one doctor, job,
friend, or lover to have to take any back talk. As soon as the first
signs of a candid relationship appear, they are off, bag and baggage, to
newer hunting grounds. We may suspect that what they really want is to
outrun their own personality.
This appears in their willingness to slough off even their children, in
an adolescent impatience with any barrier to an immediate desire. So
contrary is this to nature that regret follows closely their decision.
The children, however, are laden with a burden put on them by their
parents. Instead of joyful confidence, they experience a divided
affection. Driven to a choice of loyalties or caught between competing
rivals who attempt to win their love, they are thereby denied security,
the one gift every home owes a child.
Depending as he must upon his parents for this, it is a shattering
experience for him to find that the twofold support of his existence is
no longer holding together. He wants and needs not his mother or his
father, nor just his mother and his father, but his two parents
love-linked together as the one source of steadiness in a universe which
otherwise is in flux and turmoil.
The child who finds his parents have given up trying to maintain their
affectionate interdependence is hurt beyond any other hurt that can come
to him. Precociously matured by being denied that security of
encircling affection which is his right, he is forever cheated of his
childhood and therefore can never become fully mature emotionally, but
must have great gaps in what should have been the slow development of
his emotions, before they hardened into adult form.
The monogamic fellowship normally encourages the coming of the child.
Neither husband nor wife can awaken in the other the strong normal urges
that come to expression in love fellowship, without bringing forth the
desire that seems rooted in human nature for a child of their own. In
any case, when the child does enter the home, experience soon makes
plain his need of security. Where there is no monogamic commitment, he
is forced into family life that is confused, incomplete, and uncertain.
In such a situation, open as he is to first impressions, he suffers
most, and not infrequently so deeply as to carry emotional scars for
life. The friend of children recoils from the thought of any sort of
transient motherhood or fatherhood. Monogamy provides a stable home in
which each member--husband, wife and child--although they are copartners
in love, has an indispensable, unique, and satisfying role.
Monogamy is not a fettering of human impulse, but a registration of the
deepest yearnings of men and women. The laws that define and support it
are merely man's efforts to express the common opinion that has taken
form out of the experiences through the centuries of a great multitude
of persons who, like ourselves, have sought success in marriage. Those
who think of monogamy as something imposed on human nature through
external authority, a sort of strait jacket of emotional restraint, are
obtuse to the overwhelming testimony of human nature. Monogamy is not
established by a thundering edict from Mount Sinai, but by the quiet,
persistent inward-speaking of human need. The one-man-one-woman craving
is so deeply laid in the structure of all of us that any other way of
mating and establishing a home is alien to desire, the thought never
arises, except when the one-time expectations have been lost through
personality failure.
Monogamy is not something that suddenly and finally takes shape, a
petrifying of emotion that for a season in courtship flourishes. It gets
its vitality through a growth process, continues with life, a spreading
of an affection always forward-looking; anything else is an indication
of a faltering marriage. In the beginning love announces the awakening
of mutual need. Then the feelings flow swift and strong and carry each
toward the other. The impulse to possess, to annex, to have possession
of the beloved, is a consuming hunger. It is a covetous grasping, a
recognition that the other is indispensable. Out of this comes a union,
and from then on, the two grow not only together, but also their common
fellowship grows, becoming their way of life.
The passion to possess the other one, who seems external, fades away,
and in its place comes the joy of mutual sharing, the security of an
exploring fellowship. It is thus that monogamy offers love its
fulfillment. There must be this welding of self with self if the
emotionally awakened man or woman is to escape loneliness.
Self-expansion in power, distinction, or pleasure does not suffice. Any
by-oneself fulfillment only brings home the profounder need of a
different achievement, not in separation, but through union, the fusion
of two persons in a constant intimacy.
This growing together comes from no deliberate, effort-making program.
It grows out of the affectionate living together. It is a day-by-day
consolidation, not only of interest or experience, but of satisfactions.
It is this that led Plato long ago to say that the man or woman apart
from the other is incomplete, a partial person, hungering for the needed
lover. Monogamy is, however, not a mere getting together; it is a
growing together. It furnishes the opportunity for continued unrivaled
intimacy, and its on-going not only strengthens the life together, but
makes it pregnant with the forces that lead to character growth.
Monogamy is therefore a preference, usually so much a matter of course
as to seem the natural way of living. This explains its supremacy among
the schemes of human mating. It is a product of love ties, but only as
these flourish in a maturing intimacy. It asks no more than that each
member of the fellowship grow with the other.
Monogamy is indeed a test of character, but not in some extraordinary,
aristocratic way that would put it out of the reach of most of us.
Although its benefits cannot be had for the mere asking, it is denied to
no one who in sincerity lives in love with the person of his choice. It
is an achievement, but not in the sense that one eventually awakens to
discover that he has at last arrived at a monogamic relationship. It is
rather a hand-in-hand walking through life of a man and woman, each
having chosen the other and offered his every possession. It as surely
adds to character as it demands character.
The vitalizing union provides incentives that enrich both character and
ambition. The two sharing a common life add more, do more, and feel more
than each found possible in their one-time isolation. This in turn
strengthens the union and makes each more indispensable to the other.
They do not attempt to duplicate each other, but knowing that their love
is secure, each gains through the life contact of the other. It was thus
that Robert and Elizabeth Browning each affected the quality of the
other's work, both being able to write deeper and more human poetry as a
result of their marriage.
It is most important for an understanding of monogamy that it not be
thought of as a monotony, a petering out of the energy of love until the
high hopes of the confident lovers disappear in a drab, toilsome
existence. This fading out does come to married people just as it does
to those who have never married. Rightly used, however, monogamic
fellowship protects by making adventure in life more zestful because it
is shared. However hard and dreary experience becomes, it is more so if
one walks alone and less so if its testing is met by two who travel
onward in love. Monotony is always a reflection of inner losses. So long
as we are alive to what is, so long as we have the feelings that uncover
the zestfulness of things, we keep out of the desert. Monogamy cannot
guarantee enthusiastic living, but undoubtedly, by encouraging mutual
love, it protects the roots from which most of all each of us draws
vitality.
When the relationship becomes monotonous, there is the same confession
of failure as when day-by-day happenings grow stale and repellent. The
difference is that when love goes, the fortress has been taken and all
life flattens out.
The exclusiveness of monogamic fellowship, the out-coming of the deep
hunger for a unique experience in affection, can be greatly
misinterpreted by failing to see that it is human nature's effort to
keep to the golden mean as one is driven by tremendous impulses toward
the supreme man-woman comradeship. In all such relationships there is on
one side the extreme which shows itself when one member of the intimacy
crushes and destroys the personality of the other. This eventually
spoils the union by making it a conquest of one by the other. The
opposite disaster appears when there is no fusion at all but merely an
alliance of two independent, self-centered persons who come together in
the spirit of temporary self-interest and refuse to develop a common
life. Even when they maintain the letter of the monogamic code, they
lose its spirit.
In contrast with these unfortunates, victims of will-to-power and
self-centered passion, those in monogamic fellowship enlarge the life
they share. One often notices, as did Hudson, the naturalist, in his
description of the English shepherd's home, that husband and wife reach
such understanding that they share feeling without recourse to words;
and gather so much in common that as they travel through the years they
do, indeed, seem to grow even to look like each other. They winter and
summer together, and when time sends the children to their own
adventures, we hear these life-tested lovers, hand in hand, saying:
"Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made."
Index
Acquiescence, 102, 109
Adjustments, marital, 9-11, 16, 104-110
Adolescence, 119, 158
Adopted children, 94-96
Advancement, wife's contribution to business, 142-153
Affection, security of, 159
Allowance, wife's, 16, 49
Ambition, 6, 164
American Eugenic Society, 90-91
Antagonism, emotional, 104-105
Apartment houses, 20-21
Appearance, preserving attractive, 78-79
Appliance replacements, 70-71
Art museums, visits to, 25, 119
Assessments, property, 72
Automobile:
depreciation of, 70
expenses, 69-70
Baby:
bonds, 84
budget, 88
time for first, 82-84
Bacon, Lord, 90
Banks, savings, 67
Banning, Margaret Culkin, 25
Baseball, 17
Biologies, 118
Biologists, heredity studies of, 32
Birth:
control methods, 23
questions of, 114-116, 118
rate, 41
season of, 33
weather and, 33-34
Birthdays, eminent people's, 33-34
Blood tests, 22
Blunders, marriage, 1-2, 5, 8, 20-21, 48, 97-110
Boredom, 161, 165
Borrowing, budget and, 19, 71, 84
Brides-to-be, advice to, 17
Bridge, advice on, 17
_British Dictionary of National Biography_, 34
Browning, Robert, 127, 138-139
Budget:
baby, 88
borrowing and, 71
family, 67-79
Business:
failures, 141-142
wife's aid in, 141-153
Bussing, Elizabeth, 66-79
Buying (_see_ Purchasing)
Careers, wives', 43-53
Carlyle, 133
Cells, sperm, 35, 117
Challenge, marriage, 1
Character:
courtship candidate's, 6
development, 128-129, 164
Chastity, benefits of, 25
Checking account, wife's, 16
Cheerfulness, wife's, 147
Child marriages, 118
Children:
adopted, 94-96
clothes of, 78
cost of, 46, 69, 82-84, 89-90
cultural value of, 42
economic readiness for, 40-42, 82-84, 90
emotional stability of, 113
environment of, 95
feeding, 82
health of, 28, 78, 82-83
heritage rights of, 28
illegitimate, 94
insurance for, 71-72
lack of, 29-30, 93-94
marital conflict and, 161-162
medical care of, 28, 78, 82-83
monogamy and, 162
number of, 40-42, 82-83, 90
nursing, 83
parents' responsibility to, 161-162
planning for, 16, 28-29, 31, 40-42, 46, 69, 80-96, 107
pleasures of, 82
postponing, 46
preparing for, 16
saving for, 40-42, 82-84, 90
sex activities of, 121-125
sex instruction of, 111-125
sliding-wage scale for, 91
spoiled, 159
toys of, 78
Christian faith, 137
Church attendance, 134-135
City apartment houses, 20-21
Clothing:
allowances, 69-70, 73, 78, 97, 146-147
child's, 78
depreciation of, 70
party, 4
wife's, 146-147
College students:
marriage courses, 12, 25
premarital examination of, 10-12
Compromises, 57-59
Concentrated intimacy, 60-61
Concerts, 17
Conflict, avoiding marital, 97-110
Constitutional vigor, 33-34
Contempt, 104
Conversation:
benefits of good, 18
wife's, 146-147
Cooperation, 103-104
Courage, 7, 103
Courts, avoiding divorce, 97-110
Courtship, 1-12
Courtship candidate:
character of, 5-6
courage of, 7
mental growth of, 6
wearing qualities of, 5-6
Cowardice, 102-103
Criticism, 16
Culture, aids to, 142
Date, wedding, 16
Day-to-day expenses, 70
Death statistics, 32
Debt, dangers of, 19, 71, 84
Defective teeth, 30
de Maupassant, Guy, 131
Dental bills, 77
Dependence, mutual, 48
Dependents:
marriage and, 19
provision for, 70
Depreciation allowances, 70-71
Diabetes, 30
Dickinson, Stanley G., 140-153
Diet, 34
Dinner-table conversation, 147
Dionne quintuplets, 118
Disappointments, marriage, 1-2, 5, 8, 20-21, 48, 97-110
Disease statistics, 32
Divorce:
averting, 97-110
grounds for, 29
rates, 14, 20-21
Doctor:
bills, 77-78
certificate of fitness by, 22
counseling service of, 10, 25-26, 30, 36-37, 92-93
Dress (_see_ Clothing)
Drummond, Henry, 137
Duncan, Matthews, 93
Durable goods budget, 70-71
Duty, marriage, 27-42
Earning power:
husband's, 66-69, 141
wife's, 73-74
Economy, domestic, 66-79, 97
Education:
health, 35
religious, 126-139
sex, 9-10, 12, 111-125, 128
Elementary school children, sex instruction of, 114
Emotional:
antagonism, 104-105
instability, 31-32, 36, 142, 144, 159-160
reactions, 4-5
restraint, 8
stability, 13, 34, 61-62
Emotions:
checking runaway, 159-160
child's, 113
Employment, wife's outside, 21, 73-74
Engagement:
intimacy of, 16
length of, 18
period, 13-26
Engineering school, marriage and, 19
England, birthdays in, 33
Entertainment expense, 76-77, 147
Environment:
child's, 95
defects, 32-36
home, 140-141
postnatal, 35-36
pre-natal, 35-36
Eugenics, progress of, 36
Everyday life, party manners _versus_, 4
Examinations, medical, 10-12, 22, 28-29, 36, 94
Exercise, benefits of, 17-18, 76-77
Expense, marriage, 66-79, 88
Extravagance, 75, 78
Eyesight, poor, 30
Failures, marriage, 1-2, 5, 8, 20-21, 97-110
Faith:
Christian, 137
religious, 126-139
Family:
budget, 16, 18, 67-79, 140-141
doctor, 10, 25-26, 30, 36-37, 92-93
income, 16, 49
insurance, 71-72
jokes, 107
joys, 106-107
planning, 28-29, 31, 80-96
size of, 40-42, 82-83, 90
support of, 66-79, 108
welfare, 109-110
Father fixation, 6-7
Fatigue statistics, 32
Fault-finding, avoidance of, 16
Faust, 133
Feeblemindedness, 31
Fertilization, 114, 117-118
Financial:
independence, 48-49
planning, 16, 18, 45, 66-79
Fingers, misshaped, 30
Fire insurance, 72
Fishing, 17
Fitness:
for marriage, 22, 27-42
physical, 28-31
Food:
budget, 68-70, 73, 82
child's 82
France, birthdays in, 33
Frankness, 108
Friends, value of, 20-21, 60
Fuel, cost of, 69
Furniture replacements, 70-71
Gallagher, E. G., 94
Germany, birthdays in, 33
Gifted women, 52-53
Golf, 17
Good Housekeeping:
Health and Happiness Club, 84
marriage-relations course, 140
Gospels, reading of, 134-135
Grooms-to-be, advice to, 17-18
Groves, Dr. Ernest R., 1-12, 154-166
Groves, Gladys Hoagland, 54-65, 154-166
Grudges, surrender of, 104
Guidance:
marriage, 3, 9-10, 12, 25-26, 30, 36-37, 56-65, 92-93
Hardy, Thomas 137
Harelip, 30
Harmony, home and business, 142-153
Harper, President, 129
Hart, Dr. Hornell, 97-110
Health:
and Happiness Club, 84
child, 28
education, 35
ideal temperatures for, 33
weather influences on, 32-34
Heart ailments, 30
Heat, cost of, 69
Hereditary defects, 30-36
Heredity studies, 32
High school children, sex instruction of, 114-115, 118
Hobbies, 17
Home:
acquiring equipment for, 16
childless, 29-30
children spoiled at, 159
cultural value of, 42
environment, 140-141, 143
happiness in, 28, 107
harmony of business and, 142-153
moral code of, 124-125
location of, 20-21
ownership, 71-73
planning, 21
purchase price of, 73
religion in, 126-139
renting, 67-70, 72-74
sex instruction in, 111-125
stability of, 162
Honeymoon arrangements, 20
Hospital:
bills, 74, 77-78, 83
plan, 77
Household management, 44
Hudson, on shepherd's home, 166
Human:
genetics, 36
reproduction, 114-120
Huntington, Dr. Ellsworth, 22, 27-42, 89
Husband:
dependence of wife and, 48
selection of, 3-5
understanding, 107
Idiots, 31
Illegitimate children, 94
Imbeciles, 31
Income:
husband's, 66-69, 141
wife's outside, 73-74
Incubator babies, 118
Indebtedness, marriage and, 19, 71, 84
India, birthdays in, 33
Infatuations, 159-160
Inheritance, child's, 28
Inge, Dean, 135
Instruction:
religious, 126-139
sex, 9-10, 12, 111-125, 128
Insurance:
benefits to children, 71-72
choice of, 18-19
fire, 72
life, 67, 71-73
renewable term, 71-72
straight life, 71
Intemperance, 24, 158
Interests, development of, 146
Intimacy, undue concentration of, 60-61
Irritants, elimination of, 105-106
Jealousy, 16, 104
Jokes, family, 107
Joys, family, 106-107
Junior-high-school children, sex instruction of, 118
Kenyon, Dr. Josephine Hemenway, 84
Laboratory experiments, controlled, 32-33
Law school, marriage and, 19
Lease, ownership _versus_, 67-70, 72-74
Leisure, 142
License, marriage, 22
Life:
adjustments, 63
changed ways of, 7-8
everyday, 4
intimacy of married, 54-65
joys of married, 127, 140-153
mode of, 34
refinements of, 142
successful married, 13-15, 22, 54-65, 102-110, 140-153, 163-164
Life insurance:
company budget forms, 67
provision for, 71
savings aspect of, 72-73
straight, 71
Literature, sex, 9-10, 12
Longevity:
vigor and, 33-34
weather and, 33-34
Love:
aids to, 163
earlier, 15
falling in, 13
quarrels, 16, 157
_Luxury_ clothes, 73
Manners, party, 4
Marriage:
adjustments, 9-11, 16, 104-110
benefits of, 140-153
blunders, 1-2, 5, 8, 20-21, 48, 97-110
challenge, 1
child, 118
clinics, 25
college courses on, 25
conferences on, 25
dependents and, 19
during post-graduate training, 19
during professional training, 19, 68-69
duties, 27-42
engineering school and, 19
expenses, 66-79
failures, 1-2, 5, 8, 20-21, 48, 97-110
fitness for, 22, 27-42
guidance, 3, 9-10, 12, 25-26, 30, 36-37, 56-65, 92-93
happiness, 127, 140-153
hasty, 18
in poverty, 46-47
law school and, 19
license, 22
moral conduct after, 16
of under-graduates, 19
outside occupations after, 43-53
overestimating, 8, 157
personality adjustments after, 9-11, 16, 104-110
postponement, 19-20, 23
preparatory courses, 12, 14, 17, 25, 140
program of action, 108-109
progress, 63-65
relations course, 140
right, 27-42
rules for successful, 13-15, 22, 54-65, 102-110, 140-153, 163-164
secret, 20, 23
sex experience before, 23-26
sliding-wage scale for, 91
spiritual side of, 24
statistical studies, 14-15
testing period, 157
training, 12, 14, 17, 25, 140
unfitness for, 30-36
union, 56-57
vacations from, 17
while indebted, 19
wisdom of, 27-42
Marshall, Dr. Jessie, 80-96
Mate (_see_ Wife)
Mating, 114, 117-118
McConaughy, Dr. James L., 13-26
Meaker, Dr. Samuel R., 94
Meals, child's, 82
Mechanical appliances, cost of, 70-71
Medical:
advice, 10, 25-26, 30, 36-37, 92-93
care of child, 78, 82-83
examinations, 10-12, 22, 28-29, 36, 94
expense, 77-78
profession (_see_ Doctors)
Menstruation, 119
Mental:
deficiency, 31-32
inherited ability, 34
growth, 6, 78-79, 142
Meredith, George, 129-130
Mills, Professor C. A., 35
Misshaped fingers, 30
Mismating, 15
Mistakes, marriage, 1-2, 5, 8, 20-21, 48, 97-110
Monogamy:
benefits of, 154-166
children and, 162
Monotony, averting, 161, 165
Moral conduct, 16
More, Paul Elmer, 136
Morons, 31
Mother fixation, 6-7, 99-101
Museums, visits to, 25
Music appreciation, 17
Natural history, 118-119
Nagging, avoidance of, 16
Novak, Dr. Emil, 92
Nursing expense, 78, 83
Occupation:
choice of, 27
wives' outside, 43-53
Organic diseases, 92
Outdoor sports, 76-77
Overton, death of, 134
Parenthood:
age for, 82-84
responsibilities of, 2, 161-162
Parents:
domination by, 14, 20-21, 99-101
living with, 21
Party:
dress, 4
expenses, 76-77, 97
manners, 4
Personal:
budget, 67-79
growth, 142
Personality adjustments, 16, 55-56
Pets, value of, 118
Phelps, William Lyon, 126-139
Physical examination (_see_ Medical examination)
Physical exercise, 76-77
Physical fitness:
doctor's certificate of, 22
preserving, 28-34, 78-79
Physical vigor, 33-34
Physician (_see_ Doctor)
Picnicking, 76
Plato, 164
Play, benefits of, 76-77
Pluck, courtship candidate's, 7
Pocket money, wife's, 16, 49
Poise, development of, 146
Post-graduate training, marriage during, 19
Postnatal environment, 35-36
Postponement, marriage, 19-20, 23
Poverty, marriage in, 46-47
Prayer, 134
Pregnancy, 92, 114-115, 118
Premarital:
courses of study, 12
relations, 23-24
Premiums, insurance, 71-72
Pre-natal environment, 35-36
Pre-school children, sex instruction of, 114
Pretense, avoidance of, 74
Profession, choice of, 27
Professional training, marriage during, 19, 68-69
Program of action, joint, 108-109
Property:
assessments, 72
taxes, 73
upkeep, 73, 76
Psychiatrists, advice of, 6
Psychic trauma, 124
Purchasing economies, 75-76
Quintuplets, occurrence of, 88
Radio appreciation, 17
Rates, insurance, 71-72
Recreation expense, 73, 76-77
Refrigeration costs, 70
Religion in home, 126-139
Reno, avoiding, 1-2, 5, 8, 20-21, 97-110
Rents, 67-70, 72-74
Reproduction:
human, 114-120
seasonal cycle of, 33-34
Resentment, 104
Residence, location of, 20-21
Respect, mutual, 59-60
Responsibilities, wife's, 142-153
Right, marriage, 27-42
Romance:
aids to, 8, 16-17
careless seeking of, 101
Roosevelt, Eleanor, 43-53
Russia, birthdays in, 33
Savings accounts, 72-73, 97
Savings banks, budget forms of, 67
Scientific method, 14-15
Scolding, avoidance of, 16
Season of birth, 33
Secret marriages, 20, 23
Selection, wise mate, 3-5
Self-acquaintance, 4-5
Self-centered engrossment, 60-61
Self-consciousness, 31
Self-control, 31
Self-discipline, 8
Self-expansion, 163
Selfishness, 32, 57-59, 103
Seminal emissions, 119
Sex:
adjustments, 9-11, 63
education, 9-10, 12, 111-125, 128
experience before marriage, 23-26
frustration, 98-99, 101
literature, 9-10, 12
mannerisms, 55-56
meeting opposite, 3-4
misdemeanors, 121-125
technique, 9-11
temperaments, 55-56
Shakespeare, 135
Shelter, cost of, 67-70
Short-sightedness, 30
Social affairs:
expense of, 76-77
planning, 147
Social group:
keeping up with, 74
vigor of, 158
Social training, 132
Sousa, John Philip, 136
Spain, birthdays in, 33
Spending, orderly, 66-79
Sperm cells, 35, 117
Spiritual development, 126-139
Spoiled child, 159
Sports:
encouragement of, 17-18
outdoor, 76-77
Statistical studies, marriage, 14-15
Sterility, 29-30, 93-94
Straight life insurance, 71
Strain, Frances Bruce, 111-125
Sunday:
observance of, 134
recreation, 134
School, 133
Success, marriage, 13-15, 22, 54-65, 102-110, 140-153, 163-164
Support, family, 66-79
Sweden, birthdays in, 33
Syphilis, 28
Tact, 16
Tastes, 55-56
Taxes, property, 73
Teeth:
care of, 77
defective, 30
Temper, loss of, 31
Temperament, 55-56
Temperatures, health, 33
Tennyson, 127, 138
Term insurance, renewable, 71-72
Theatre expenses, 76, 147
Toys, child's, 78
Training (see Education)
Traveling expense, 68-69, 76
Trust, mutual, 63-64
Turgenev, 127
Twins, recurrence of, 88
Undergraduates, marriage of, 19
Union, building marriage, 56-57
United States, birthdays in, 33
Upkeep, property, 73, 76
Uterus, 115
Vacation allowances, 76
Venereal disease, 25, 28
Vigor:
longevity and, 33-34
society's, 158
Wages:
husband's, 66-69, 141
sliding scale of, 91
wife's, 73-74
Wearing character, courtship candidate's, 5-6
Weather:
child conception and, 33-34
longevity and, 33-34
Wedding date, fixing, 16, 20
Welfare, family, 109
Wife:
aid to business progress, 141-153
allowances, 16, 49
attitude of, 4
characteristics of, 4, 6
checking account of, 16
cheerfulness of, 147
childless, 72
conversational ability of, 146-147
dependence of husband and, 48
emotional reactions of, 4-5
entertaining ability of, 147
gifted, 52-53
home allowances of, 16, 49
house, 44
income control by, 16
insurance for, 72
mental growth of, 6, 78-79, 142
outside employment of, 21, 43-53, 73-74
selection of, 3-5
support of, 66-79
understanding, 107-108
Women (_see_ Wife)
Work:
ideal conditions of, 32
wife's outside, 21, 43-53, 73-74
Zoological gardens, 119
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