Courtesy of George Herbert Palmer
Alice Freeman Palmer
Mrs. Palmer's was one of the ideal marriages in which husband and wife each lived a fuller life than would have been possible without the marriage. Happy in her home life, Mrs. Palmer yet had time to achieve a brilliant success in administrative educational work
Common interests are an almost certain safeguard in most marriages. Common duties are more often than not a source of difficulty. An untold number of matrimonial ventures fail because of inadequate responsibility in adjustment of expenses to income. Many more are rendered inharmonious by failure of parents to agree as to the management of children. In both these directions increased knowledge will do much to secure harmonious action. Family traditions are more than likely to clash when they are adopted as principles of family discipline. "Children must mind," says the father, in memory and emulation of his father's method with him. "Children must not be coerced," says the mother, who has been reared by a different method. Clearly a course in child psychology would have been of value to these parents in determining a common procedure. There is probably no subject upon which either father or mother finds it so hard to yield to the other's way as upon this. Each feels, and rightly, that the material to be trained is so precious, and that failure, if it comes, will be so stupendous, that neither dares do what seems wrong to his own mind. Nothing but common knowledge and a predetermined policy can solve this problem so near to the root of success or failure in marriage itself.
Girls are commonly taught too little of the duties of married women to their husbands. They look for a lifetime of unalloyed bliss. If they fail to realize their impossible dream, they turn their faces toward the divorce court. Many girls have had too smooth a pathway, too little of responsibility, and too little of disappointment, before undertaking the serious duty of establishing and maintaining a lifelong partnership. There has been little in their lives to prepare them for long-continued relations of any sort. On the other hand, the same girls have equally little idea of what they have a right to expect of marriage for themselves. Much of the necessary adjustment is left to chance.
Photograph by Paul Thompson
Amelia E. Barr
Far from interfering with her career, Mrs. Barr's home interests were the inspiration for it. Thrown on her own resources by the death of her husband, who sacrificed himself in a yellow fever epidemic in Texas, Mrs. Barr took up writing to make a living for her children
Scarcely any phase of woman's part in marriage is arousing more attention at present than the question of childbearing. Women, and especially educated women, are accused of sterility or of intentionally avoiding motherhood. They are said to believe that children interfere with their careers, that they can render greater service to the world in public work than in childbearing. They "prefer idleness and luxury to the care of a family." The "maternal instinct is fading." They threaten us with "race suicide," the "extinction of mankind," a silent world given over to dumb beasts who have not yet learned the principles of "birth control" and "family limitation." Thus on the one hand.
On the other: "The world is better served by the small family well reared than by the large one necessarily less well cared for." "Women are not merely the instruments of nature for multiplying mankind. They have a right to some time for living their own lives." "The maternal instinct has not faded, but merely come under control of a wisdom which directs that it shall not bring forth what it cannot care for."
And so on, with added arguments for either side.
In all these discussions of birth control the fathers or the husbands who desire not to be fathers are usually left in the background. As a matter of fact, however, men as well as women desire luxury and freedom from the care of a family. It is a general sign of the times, not a characteristic of one sex alone. Men as well as women fear for their ability to care for and educate large families. With the demands of our present complex existence bearing heavily upon them, one can scarcely wonder at the hesitation of either man or woman to add again and again to their already pressing cares. There is but one remedy—not to cut off education for women, as some suggest, but to learn the joys of a simpler life which will afford people time and strength and means to bear and rear their young. To this end let us teach our girls and our boys something of the essentials of a useful and a happy life, and teach them how to eliminate the non-essentials which waste their time and spirit.
Who can best instruct the girl in what we may call the ethics of marriage? Her mother? Usually the mother's viewpoint is too personal. Her teacher? Most of her teachers are unmarried and know little more about the subject than she does herself. A specially selected married teacher? Perhaps, but only if she is a deep student of human nature and of marriage from a scientific standpoint.
An ideal course for every girl somewhere before her education can be considered complete would cover "woman's life" as (1) industrial worker, (2) wife, (3) mother, (4) citizen, (5) civic force.
Here, without undue "dangling of the wedding ring," girls might study marriage as an important phase of woman's life. Such a course, simplified or elaborated to suit the circumstances of the girls who participate, might well be given in all girls' schools and colleges, in continuation schools, in settlement-house clubs and classes, in rural clubs and neighborhood centers. For, reduced to its simplest terms, marriage in the tenement rests upon the same principles as marriage in the mansion.
Happily married, or happy unmarried, with her life work stretching before her, the girl enters upon her heritage of work. We have trained her to be a homemaker, but we need feel no regret in regard to her training if she finds her life work in an office or a schoolroom or a hospital. She may never "keep house," although we hope that she will some time help to make a home. But, whether she becomes a homemaker or not, a true understanding and appreciation of the value of the home and a knowledge of the principles underlying its maintenance will make her a broader woman and a better worker than she could otherwise be. In the home, or wherever she may be, she cannot fail to show the girls who are growing up about her what home means to her and what it means to the race. And in her hands we may safely leave the future of the home.
General Books Which Introduce The Reader To The Larger Phases Of The Woman Movement
Bruére, Martha B. and Robert W. Increasing Home Efficiency. New York: Macmillan.
Colquhoun, Mrs. A. The Vocations of Woman. New York: Macmillan.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Women and Economics. Boston: Small, Maynard & Co.
Key, Ellen. Love and Marriage. New York: Putnam.
Schreiner, Olive. Woman and Labor. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co.
Spencer, Anna Garlin. The Challenge of Womanhood.
Tarbell, Ida M. The Business of Being a Woman. New York: Macmillan.
Some of these books are conservative, others very radical. They are recommended, not because the writer agrees with them, but because every mother and teacher who acts as a vocational counselor should know both conservative and radical points of view.
MORE DISTINCTLY VOCATIONAL BOOKS
Bloomfield, Meyer. Readings in Vocational Guidance. Boston: Ginn & Co.
The following articles in this book are especially recommended:
"The Value, during Education, of the Life-Career Motive." By Charles W. Eliot.
"Selecting Young Men for Particular Jobs." By Herman Schneider.
"The Permanence of Interests and Their Relation to Abilities." By Edward L. Thorndike.
"Survey of Occupations Open to the Girl of Fourteen to Sixteen Years of Age." By Harriet Hazen Dodge.
Brewer, J.M. Vocational-Guidance Movement. New York: Macmillan.
Brewster, Edwin T. Vocational Guidance for the Professions. Chicago: Rand McNally & Co.
Bureau Of Education, Washington, D.C.
Butler, Elizabeth Beardsley. Women and the Trades. New York: Charities Publication Committee.
———. Saleswomen in Mercantile Stores. New York: Survey Associates.
Davis, Jesse Buttrick. Vocational and Moral Guidance. Boston: Ginn & Co.
Department Of Commerce And Labor, Washington, D.C.:
Contains nineteen volumes on "Condition of Women and Child Wage-Earners in the United States." The most comprehensive study of conditions of women in industry before the war.
Bulletin No. 175. "Summary of the Report on the Condition of Women and Child Wage-Earners in the United States." Gives in condensed form the findings in the nineteen volumes.
Gowin And Wheatley. Occupations. Boston: Ginn & Co.
Hollingworth, H.L. Vocational Psychology: Its Problems and Methods. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
LaSelle and Wiley. Vocations for Girls. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Leake, Albert H. The Vocational Education of Girls and Women. New York: Macmillan.
McKeever, A. Training the Girl. New York: Macmillan.
Pressey, C. Park. A Vocational Reader. Chicago: Rand McNally & Co.
Puffer, J. Adams. Vocational Guidance. Chicago: Rand McNally.& Co.
Women's Educational And Industrial Union Of Boston: