The Family and its Members Part 10

--LOWELL.

=Not Fancied but Genuine Happiness in Marriage Now Demanded.=--The fairy tales ended with the wedding and "they lived happily forever after." The dramas and novels of to-day are often devoted to telling how they did not live happily ever after and what or who caused the unhappiness. Although no one need be alarmed that some people get divorced when marital unhappiness becomes acute, every right-minded person wishes that every marriage should turn out happily. We now, however, demand that it shall be genuine, not make-believe happiness, and that places a heavier strain upon all concerned. We have grown wise enough to see that holding people together who should never have been brought into close relations.h.i.+p does not really conduce to high family morality or social well-being. That, however, only makes it seem the more important that we should somehow learn how to prevent the marriage of those who cannot make their union a success. The part that social control can play in preventing the attempt to marry by the wholly unfit in body, mind, or work-capacity has been already suggested, and that pressure of the community upon the individual choice will, without doubt, largely increase as the bad results of too great individualism in the family relation are more clearly perceived.

=Social Restrictions on Marriage Choices.=--There will, in time, be a narrowing of the circle within which personal choices can be made, so that the markedly defective in mind, the victims of disease inimical to family well-being, and the pauper strains of inheritance will be ruled out before young people have a chance to marry according to their own inclination.

With such helpful narrowing of choices there would still remain many dangers to be avoided if the divorce statistics are to be held within bounds of social safety.

The part that the family elders once played in settling vital questions of adjustment within the marriage bond has now, for the most part, to be undertaken for consideration and decision by the young people themselves. To name these most important questions of adjustment and discuss them in the light of modern ideals and desires is to get a better impression of the difficulties they indicate.

=Shall the Wife Take the Husband's Name?=--In the first place, the matter of the name for the married couple must be now considered.

Shall it be one or two? Shall the new sense of personal dignity, so common to the modern woman, increase the already spreading fas.h.i.+on of retention of the maiden name, her inherited family name, as permanently her own, untouched by the fact of marriage union? No one can be cognizant of the conviction and practice of many feminists without understanding that this is a real problem to be settled surely before the marriage ceremony. There is already in the field a "Lucy Stone League" to give the support of the practice of a great and beloved woman to the fas.h.i.+on of keeping one's own name. The question of the desirability of having children bear the same name as both parents is left for the most part in abeyance by those who thus advocate two names for the married couple. It may be that each child is expected to bear as a second name his mother's and as a last name his father's family name, as, for example, John Jones Jackson, Jones being the mother's and Jackson the father's personal signature; but when the child marries, by what name shall the family line be carried on?

To most of us who see in the family name adopted by both husband and wife at marriage a sign of family unity not to be lost without serious embarra.s.sment to offspring, and some danger of easy drifting apart without the knowledge of others, the name seems not to be of vital importance. Why, then, it is asked, should the woman always give up her family connection as indicated by inherited name, and the man retain his? The fact that the custom has grown up by reason of the legal absorption of the wife's life in that of the husband is obvious, and gives much color to the claim that now, when a woman is a recognized personality in the law whether married or single, she should keep the name by which her personality has become known. That is easily seen to be advantageous in the case of professional women of wide influence. The great singer, the great writer, any creative genius or artist, continues, as a rule, to be known by the name under which greatness has been achieved. In such cases, however, women often bear two names, the professional name either of family inheritance or a chosen _nom de plume_, and the social name, which is their husband's and engraved on calling cards. The tendency now is increasing to keep the one designation to which one is born and make no concessions to conventional nomenclature. It must be remembered that in such cases it is the father's name by which the married daughter is called and the mother's maiden name is lost with all the rest of the silent majority of her s.e.x. The fact that men have given the wedded name for ages, and that men are most often senior partners in the marriage firm, and the fact that any other suggested plan gives two names for one family instead of one seems to make that a part of the old inheritance that may not cause great uneasiness if one accepts it without revolt. There is a compromise method which long has been a custom among Friends and is growing even more rapidly than that of holding permanently to the full maiden name. That is the plan of keeping the father's name, or the "maiden name," as a middle one, and adding the husband's name; so that Miss Mary Jane Wood shall, on marrying John Hartley Stone, become, not Mrs. John Hartley Stone, but Mrs. Mary Wood Stone. That keeps in memory her family designation and yet gives her children a chance to call themselves by the one name which is a sign of the family unity. However the settlement may be made, the point is that such a vital question, entering into the legal signature for business purposes as well as into all social relations.h.i.+p, shall reach conclusion before the two enter upon the marriage bond.

=Shall the Wife Take the Husband's Nationality?=--In the second place, there is now a question of nationality to be settled, a most important one in all its political and legal bearings. The old law made a wife the subject of her husband's national law and took her automatically away from her own country if her husband was born and was citizen of another country. The national allegiance of her birth and her family was thus automatically transferred to that of the man she had married.

The suffering of many a woman in the late war when her husband's national allegiance made her legally an "enemy alien" to her own beloved land has sharpened the claim that now, when women have the franchise, they should have complete choice of the body politic to which they owe allegiance. If they wish to marry men of another country they shall have the determination of whether or not they shall become naturalized by his government or whether they shall keep political relation with their own native country. The League of Women Voters is now hard at work to make the national allegiance of women, as of men, a personal matter whether women are married or single. The Federal Bill that is called for by this body would make it inc.u.mbent upon all women of foreign birth desiring to use the franchise in the United States to become naturalized, and would protect any woman on marrying from the loss of her own national allegiance, whatever her husband's might be.[7] Surely such a protection of individual citizens.h.i.+p is best for both men and women, whatever their marital state. It is, however, a matter that often comes up for adjustment in international marriages. It is matter of importance that women of foreign birth as well as men coming to this country from other lands should personally seek for full citizens.h.i.+p and not have it handed to them with a marriage certificate. It is equally of importance that no person should lose allegiance to the country of his or her birth and affection simply by reason of marriage. This question of what country shall one continue to belong to after marriage is one for settlement on high grounds of patriotism and civic duty before the marriage is consummated.

=Who Shall Choose the Domicile?=--In the third place, the matter of chosen domicile is now up for discussion or may be in the near future.

The law from time immemorial has given the choice of residence of the family, wife as well as children, into the complete control of the husband and father. A woman may be "posted" in the public press as "leaving her husband's bed and board," and thereby the husband may be released from any responsibility for her debts or support. The inference is that married women have no rights in marriage that can survive independent choice on her part of a residence apart from the husband. Now we have a movement that if successful would place the law behind an equal choice by married men and married women, of domicile, and of all that goes with that possible separation of residence. There are those who declare that separate residence for husbands and wives might keep the flame of romantic love burning longer and more ardently, since "familiarity often breeds contempt" and the absence of the loved one often kindles desire. This is not, however, the general feeling, and the demand for independent choice of domicile has many side-issues not at present fully met, if at all understood, by those who make the demand noted above. The legal right of choice of domicile goes consistently with the legal obligation to "support," The law still makes it inc.u.mbent upon a husband to give financial support to his wife commensurate with his earnings or income and still more demands of the father the full support of minor children. Naturally, if he has these obligations to meet, a man must go where he can earn sufficient to meet them. He may be unwise or mistaken in his choice, but, having the responsibility, he must try to meet it as best he can, and among the necessary elements in that trial are free movement to the place or places in which he can find work.

If, therefore, the family are all to be kept in one residence, father, mother and children, this economic aspect of the father's responsibility must be considered. If the father and mother each "gang their ain gait," and decide for business reasons or from personal preference to live in separate places, perhaps far apart from each other, then which one is to have the child or children? The old idea that men should have the power to hold women in wholly unsuitable surroundings, and that no matter what home was offered her a wife must submit and accept, is long outgrown in all the States of this Union.

The wife has now the right to help choose domicile, and in point of fact, at least among the older Americans, has often more than an equal share in such determination; but to pa.s.s a "blanket law" that at once gave the suggestion of two choices for the family domicile without any qualifying statement of release of men from "support" clauses in the family legislation as those clauses relate to wives might be neither just nor wise. The one in the family upon whom is placed the heavier economic burden for support of children must have much freedom of choice of residence. To restrict that freedom might be to add to present family difficulties without really giving women better chances in marriage. Now, any woman who feels herself oppressed in the matter of domicile has the remedy in her own hands. She can make complaint to a court or she can leave her husband and no one can prevent her, and she can establish a separate establishment if she has the means and make herself eligible thereby to a practical if not a legal divorce.

But if the twain stay together, and mean to do so, there are mutual considerations that require an adjustment, and there is now little danger of women having to submit to injustice in the matter of choice of domicile, except in cases where no home together would seem desirable to either or to both.

The matter of choice of domicile is now in the United States so much a mutual question and to be decided upon economic grounds, that it is one of the things that it is well to discuss from the bottom up if two people wish to marry, provided there are any reasons why the relative merits of two or more places of residence are involved in the issue.

The reasonableness and generosity of the average American man quite equals the like qualities in the average American woman; hence the domicile question may well be left in abeyance in any struggle for "equality of rights between the s.e.xes" and confined to personal debate and decision; but in that personal debate and decision it should have recognized place.

=Shall the Married Woman Earn Outside the Home?=--The fourth question, now sometimes a burning one, and one most intimately related to that of choice of domicile, is that concerning the continuance of professional or business connection by the woman after marriage. Shall I keep on with my work or not? This is the problem that besets many a woman when the question of marriage with the chosen one is imminent.

For the woman who is a teacher, and already established in the educational field in the city or town where both the man and the woman concerned find it easy to choose to live after marriage, there is a probability that she can continue her work after marriage with comparative ease. The laws that used to penalize the woman teacher who married are rapidly ceasing to operate, and although the common legal requirement for a two years' vacation from public school employment when a child is to be born may exert a strong influence upon the birth-rate (either for or against) the fact that marriage does not disqualify for teaching and that teaching is so near the home interest may lead to much continuance of that type of professional work after marriage. The question, however, is not one for the woman alone to solve. Many women find that the ideal of "taking care of his wife,"

which long ages of law and custom have ingrained in man's nature, may stand in the way of her earning outside the home after marriage. To be settled right this question must be settled by full consent of both parties and that consent may be hard to get from the man who fears that he will be considered incapable if he "lets his wife earn." What is to be done in such a case? That must be determined by the possibility of compromise on both sides.

If the woman has attained a high position in some profession, law, or medicine, as preacher, teacher, or nurse, as business manager or welfare worker, the chances are that she feels she can best help in the family life by hiring things done in the household, which she has little skill, perhaps, to do herself, and keeping on with the vocation for which she has been trained and in which she has already gained a place. But she may have attained her vocational opportunity and to keep it must continue to live in a locality remote from the man's home and work. What then? To be near each other and to live together is the chief desire of genuine lovers. That would be no home which had two centres of vocational activity miles apart. Circ.u.mstances may compel such separation for economic reasons long after marriage has bound two lives together so closely that distance even cannot really separate them. But at the outset, if two people are to belong to each other, they must be able to combine their home life if that is to be a help and not a hindrance to the joint affection that alone makes the two one. The question of domicile, bound up with that of whether or not the woman shall continue her vocational connection after marriage, sometimes becomes acute in this manner:--the woman earns more than the man and her place of earning is in a far-away location from his and the transplanting of his life has no promise of economic readjustment.

Shall she give up her larger salary and go with him to a place in which she is less likely than if single to gain a professional foothold and they both make the smaller income do? Or shall she insist, if he is willing, that the economic advantage of the married firm requires his removal to the seat of her labors at any risk of his getting another hold upon vocational opportunity?

Those who ask such a question should remember that the facts of life, social and economic, all make the upsetting of the man in his work seldom a safe or a happy solution. In the first place, the position of a man who even temporarily depends upon his wife's vocational success and relinquishes his own economic position, is far more difficult than that of a woman who sacrifices her own professional standing to go with her husband to a new centre. Any woman asks more of a man in the way of sacrifice, both of his standing as a man and his chances as a worker, if she demands that he take her income as the basic economic element in the joint family treasury (when such demand entails a change of residence and a giving up of a.s.sured income on his part) than any man asks of a woman when the conditions proposed are the reverse. No woman loses "caste" who depends upon her husband in an economic sense. Perhaps the time will come when it will cost a woman the loss of social prestige and of the best chance for work outside the home (as it now does a man) when the choice is made to follow the larger income from one locality to another. Now, however, it means that a woman can adjust herself to such change far better than a man, and hence that equal right to demand sacrifice and equal duty to mutually help each other demand that where such acute problems arise the woman shall give the man's relation to his work right of way.

Moreover, even those who, like Doctor Patten, believe that women should continue vocational work after marriage place the chief economic burden of the family permanently upon the husband and father.

The wife may earn outside the home if both agree and the opportunity offers in the place where the man's work already is; but the maintenance of the economic standing and the improvement of social condition remain, as of old, with the man. And for the obvious reason that if the woman has children they may take a large portion of her interest and of her strength and energy and, in any case, the married woman, if she really makes a home, must mix her vocational work with a more or less extended devotion to that home-making. Also, although a woman at marriage may be in receipt of a larger income from vocational service than is the man she wishes to marry, he will be more likely, if worth-while, to gain steadily toward a much larger compensation.

The positions which women fill are for the most part self-limited.

They are fast developing high qualities for routine work in the professions, like school doctor and hospital clinician and workers for legal aid and other like salaried employments. These are not highly paid, but have manifest advantages for women in that they give a fixed income, if small, and in that they allow for regulation of hours of service that may easily be made half-time work in case of divided effort. Hence, although at a given point in earlier life (when the usual greater precocity of women give some women the advantage in salary and position), a woman may have a higher salary at marriage, a far greater rise in both income and leaders.h.i.+p may be on the husband's side as the years go on.

=Economic Considerations Involved.=--At any rate, the question of whether or not the woman shall earn outside the home after her marriage must wait upon the deeper question, shall she do anything which will disturb or render more difficult the man's economic adjustment? There are exceptions, a growing number of exceptions, but as a general thing the question of domicile and the question of which one shall give way when there is difficulty of both being well situated in individual work in one place, must be settled on the basis of the man's longer, larger, and more continuous responsibility for the economic standing of the family.

The exceptions make their own excuse and shape their own defense. The average married woman carries on two vocations if she keeps on with her own work, one inside and one outside the home. The one in which she earns outside the home must in the long run and the large way be subordinated to the joint partners.h.i.+p of the household in which she bears a larger share of the internal management and he the heavier burden of the outside support.

Any thorough-going discussion of the questions involved in the wage-earning of married women and mothers outside the home must include study of actual expense of alternate plans. The fundamental question may be one concerning the social value of the woman's vocational work. The next must certainly be what would the family treasury gain or lose by the housemother's continued vocational service outside the home. In the suggestive and encouraging book by Mrs. Mary Hinman Abel, ent.i.tled _Successful Family Life on the Moderate Income_, this economic aspect of the problem is treated with definiteness. In addition to the general conclusion reached by many that a family income of from $2,500 to $3,000 must be reached before continual hired help can be economically justified, Mrs. Abel shows by tables at pre-war prices that unless a married woman has a high-grade profession with a good independent income the duties performed by the average housemother within the home cannot be hired without a distinct economic loss to the family treasury. For example, reckoning conservatively the cost of the full-time hired girl or working housekeeper at $600 to $1,000 per year, and estimating the economic value of the woman who does all her own housework except was.h.i.+ng and heavy cleaning at only fifteen cents an hour, the saving by the average married woman who is competent and well and does all her own work is a large one. There are the best of reasons, therefore, why, for the woman who is in ordinary circ.u.mstances and not so averse to household care and work as to insure her failure in it, the answer to the question, Shall I keep on with my outside earning after marriage?--should be in the negative. The old notion that all women were domestic and would enjoy housework if only they could do it in their own homes is indeed exploded. The natural differences among women are now allowed. The advantages, social, economic, and in matters of health and control of work-time and of leisure, which the average housemother enjoys over the average woman who works at manual labor under the factory system of industry, were, however, never better known or more justly evaluated. The proof of this is in the inclusion of training in household arts by the Smith-Hughes Bill, under which the Federal Government makes large appropriations for vocational training directly aimed at improving the efficiency of women whose labor is confined to the private home.

It is a sign, among other things, of desired and needed flexibility in domestic arrangements that there were listed in 1910 as married twenty-five per cent. of the women at work in "gainful occupations."

Not all the conditions indicated by this count were socially helpful; since in the textile industries, in which many married women are employed, there are fewer children born and more die before the end of the second year than in the average population. It does, however, indicate that among those of higher opportunity in life there is a growing disposition to treat the question of women's continuance in vocational service outside the home after marriage as a real problem and one to be settled in freedom, and with social approval of that freedom, by the two persons most deeply concerned. Only, it must be insisted, that all a married woman gains in salary or wages cannot be reckoned as increase of the family income. The economic value of the average housemother's contribution is now definitely computed and must be reckoned hereafter as so much actually contributed to the family income. And so far, if a woman is physically able, temperamentally adjustable, and adequately trained for household tasks, she can in the vast majority of cases serve her day and generation in no better fas.h.i.+on than by a.s.suming and carrying the multiple duties of the private home.

Hence, although freedom means new choice, prudence and affection alike oftenest point to the old paths of family service for the average woman. As Mrs. Abel well says of the competent housemother who chooses full and personal service to the home and the family, "At her best she represents individual effort fully utilized. She fits her tasks together; she utilizes bits of time; she invents short cuts in her work," Of such it may be truly declared, in the new time as in the old, that she translates every dollar of the family income into many dollars' worth of comfort, of health, and of happiness.

=Is It Bad Form to Earn After Marriage?=--One more consideration, quite new in its full significance, should be given place in any discussion of the wife's relation to work outside the home. That consideration is concerned with the use of her time not needed in household tasks. The modern aids to those tasks, of which mention has been made, give many women who a.s.sume full responsibility for the housemother's work a considerable amount of strength and time which may be used in some chosen way outside the strictly family service.

The general idea is that such time should be given in gratuitous "social welfare work" or in some form of activity divorced from regular vocations. An able President of the Federation of Women's Clubs, the body most distinctly representing the interest and service of women in volunteer social service in this country, has said, in addressing her large const.i.tuency, "Sport is work we do without pay--we are all sports." The sentiment was applauded and with evident sense of superiority to the "paid worker." The feeling, so general in many circles of society, that women lose "caste" if they work for wages or salary, reaches its maximum of prejudice in the case of married women. It is thought highly honorable to sell things in a "Fair" for a good cause and come in contact with a crowd of strangers in the process among people who would consider "keeping a shop,"

unless from dire necessity, a very questionable proceeding. It is thought most virtuous and wifely for a woman married to a minister of the church to give her time and strength gratuitously in mult.i.tudinous religious helps to the organization which usually counts on getting the service of two first-cla.s.s people for a second-or third-cla.s.s salary for one. But for the wife of such a minister, realizing that the income is generally insufficient for proper living, to work outside her home, even for a few hours each day, for pay, is to lay herself and her husband also open to harsh criticism; even if her house is kept well and her children properly cared for. It is also thought by many people that the only really justifiable use of time that can be spared from household duties is in furthering the husband's work, if he is struggling up; or, if he has "arrived," in these miscellaneous gratuitous social services in which the club-women so abound.

There is great need that this judgment be revised. Not only is this true in the interest of women whose devotion to a chosen vocation has right of way in justice when the debate is on as to the use of any left-over time she may save from domestic duties. It is also true that we can not have the democratic feeling and influence from women of social position which our political life so sadly needs unless it is understood that it is as honorable for a woman, married or unmarried, to earn money for her work as it is for a man with or without an inherited fortune. The cla.s.s feeling that makes all married women range themselves with those of their s.e.x who have inherited fortunes, and leads them to place those who serve the community in salaried positions as less unselfish and less honorable social workers than themselves, is one to outgrow. An interest divorced from professional standards or professional compensation is not necessarily n.o.bler or more useful. This fact makes the choice of women before marriage as to the use of time that may justly be spared, even when the home makes its heaviest demands upon them, a choice of social as well as of personal significance.

Every year social effort once strictly of private provision and support becomes a public service, with organized supervision and standardized compensation. When such volunteer social effort becomes a public service it is highly desirable that the trained women it demands for its staff should (some of them, at least) be married women. Otherwise, the same loss of efficiency that the rapid turn-over of the women teaching staff of our schools occasions will be discovered in our social work as it changes its centre of gravity from the private to the public organization.

There is a far greater need from this point of view for reorganization of hours and details of work so as to give more half-time or quarter-time employment to women of proved ability, than for any wholesale condemnation of the woman who works outside her home for pay, even when her husband is able and willing to "take care of her."

It is for society to say, indeed, that women marrying and having children owe first duty to the home. It is for women themselves to say whether they shall use any time at their disposal after that duty is met in continuing such relation to their vocation as is now possible, or in being "sports."

The fact that men are trying to see both sides of this vexed question and that women, as a rule, are trying to make adjustment that will hold an equitable and happy balance between the personal and the family well-being means that this problem will work itself to a democratic result without social loss.

=Shall Parenthood be Chosen?=--The fifth question that should come up for serious discussion and some measure of agreement in advance of the wedding ceremony is that of children. Shall there be any? If so, how many, if we can afford them? If so, how soon shall we try to call about us the new life? If not, why not, and how shall we live together without hope of offspring? These are vital questions. For want of agreement, or at least of understanding of disagreement before marriage, many unions are s.h.i.+pwrecked.

In the old days there were no questions of this nature. Every woman must have as many children as nature allowed, and when she could bear no more must give way to a new wife and a step-mother to carry on the family life; and if there were more children in a family than the father and family friends could support, they had to be cared for by the community. The modern condition is the same in the case of those below a certain grade of intelligence and self-control. But as human beings become more rational in other respects, they apply reason, common sense, and prudence to the great function of parenthood.

Indeed, so much is this the case that the social danger of breeding only from below the higher levels is felt to be an increasing one.

There are not wanting those who believe that rationalism in parenthood is wrong and should be prevented, if possible, but those are the people who decry the use of reason in all other matters, except it may be in the strictly economic field. The fact is that whatever may be said on the side of ancient religious sanction and inherited sentiment, the tendency on all sides is irresistibly toward the personal choice in parenthood as in marriage.

=Some People Have a Right to Marry and Remain Childless.=--There are many, however, who believe that no one should marry unless wis.h.i.+ng and expecting to have children. That is a belief which will doubtless be more and more outgrown. There are young people, children of dependent parents and near relatives, who see no way of starting a family of their own, who yet should not be denied the comfort and help of married life. The tragedies of sons and daughters made to drag out a lonely existence and either condemning the one they love to like denial or else giving up the hope of union and seeing their chosen one wedded to another--the sort of tragedy that forms the subject of many novels--is a tragedy to be outgrown. It may be that social burdens in behalf of parents or other dependents can not be lifted to the extent of making a completed family life possible to some young people. All the more, two people who truly love each other and are bound to one great sacrifice, namely, that of children of their own, should be able to escape another, that of denial of marriage.

There are other cases in which marriage is right and childbearing may be wrong. There are tendencies to disease, in which, although there may be a long and useful life for the one bearing a family taint, it may be socially wrong to risk carrying on that taint. If all who need to know are agreed, and there is a chance of living many years of real union together, no law should step in to prevent, and no inherited view of the limitation of marriage to those seeking parental relation should refuse a.s.sent to the union. There are many conceivable limitations to parental functioning, even for those who are keenly aware of the social significance of parenthood, which do not apply to marriage of those truly mated in thought and purpose. It is, however, the height of irrationality, and will more and more be seen to be such, for men and women to enter a relation the natural result of which, in the vast majority of cases, is the bearing of children, with no idea on either side as to what is the ideal and the wish and the purpose of the other party in the marriage union.

The question, again, for those who are agreed that they want to start a family as well as begin a mating is definitely to be considered, namely, that of the right time to begin the family they wish to have.

It may be, as many believe, that too hasty adding of the strenuous discipline of parenthood to the often difficult task of adjustment of two mature and forceful natures, such as marriage so often brings together, is likely to give an unnecessarily hard start in the new life. Two people who have just got used to themselves, perhaps, have at marriage to get used to each other. It may be that they could succeed better in this great task if they had not so often to adjust themselves during the first year to the needs and masterful claims of a baby. There is no form of tyranny equal to that of the infant, who, a.s.sured of his right to unlimited service from all in sight, makes his demands at all times and in all ways. He pays for his subjection of parents and grandparents and they are all usually willing slaves. But it is often a great advantage if the parents, at least, have had a chance to make full acquaintance with each other's pet weaknesses and each other's best qualities before "the baldheaded tyrant from No Man's Land" makes his appearance. It is, therefore, clearly a matter of frank and full discussion and settlement before marriage not only as to the fundamental question of whether or not there shall be children, but also if, as is the case in the overwhelming majority of cases, the young people hope for offspring, when they shall begin to call them to the home.

The thing of all others to be avoided is the outgrown idea that heavenly magic attends completely to these matters. It is earthly wisdom and unselfishness and good intent that are needed in this as in all the great decisions of life. Hence, there can be nothing more absurdly out of drawing with a rationalized civilization than any law which forbids the serious discussion of this most vital of social questions or one that forbids the full dissemination of scientific knowledge needed by those who would do the right thing in the parental as in all other relations of life.

=What Is the Just Financial Basis of the Household?=--The sixth question that has right of debate before the marriage ceremony is that of the financial support of the household and of the distribution of the joint income. The use of the words joint income prejudges the case on this point. The old idea was of one purse, of right that of the "head of the family," and whatever it held was his to disburse. He it was who determined how the wife should be fed and clothed and sheltered. If he were generous and kind she fared well; if the opposite she fared ill. Her legal right was only the same as that of her minor child. Now the case is wholly different. In spite of some inconsistent left-over laws that can make a showing of belated tyranny when culled from old statute books, the financial right of the wife in the household is generally recognized. It is, however, still true that no logical system of financial sharing has been worked out so clearly as to be accepted by the common mind. We still have talk of a wife being "supported" when, as housemother, she works harder and more hours than her husband. We still have listing of those housemothers, who are the majority of the women of every country, as "without occupation." It is possible for men to speak of "giving" their wives what they think is needed for the household and without reference to any personal preference of the wives in expenditure, as if it were an act of charity and not a debt owed the family life.

On the other hand, some women, having achieved partial or entire financial independence of the husband and earning handsome sums in work outside the home, look upon all that the man earns as "belonging to the family," and all that they earn as wholly belonging to themselves. "What's John's belongs to us all; what is mine belongs to me," said one wife, without any idea of the absurd injustice of taking all the advantage that new conditions had made possible for women and at the same time hanging on to all that old-time privilege gave to wives. There is need of the strictest and most balanced thinking along the line of the economics of the household.

If, as seems in the vast majority of cases the best plan, the husband and father can be and is depended upon for the entire financial support of the family in the matter of earning and the housemother gives an actual service of great economic value in saving and service (as the competent housewife a.s.suredly does give), then what is earned and what is produced by housework and management makes in justice one family treasury. If to that is added some special earning outside the home which the housemother is able to mix in with her family service, then that also is a part of the family treasury. After the marriage there should be a real partners.h.i.+p. There may be a separate account on either side of the gifts of inheritance or savings preceding the marriage, but after the twain are one in home-building they may justly be one in a common treasury. Two bank-books they may have, it is true, and perhaps better so, although many find one in the name of both husband and wife sufficiently convenient. The main thing is to get firmly in mind on both sides before any actual adjustments are necessary what, on the financial side, is the right att.i.tude and plan of married life. The best way seems to be, for some people, at least, the division of the family treasury into three distinct parts. The first, and alas, in most families the much larger share, to be dedicated to common household expenses. The excellent work of specialists in family budgets shows us how this fund should be distributed in details of rent or dwelling, cost of food, clothing, reading, church, recreation, etc. Any one can now make up with prudence and wisdom such an estimate in proportion to the known income and the ascertained cost of living in any given locality. After this common expense is provided for, with due regard for the duty of saving for future needs, the remaining portion, be it much or little, should be equally divided as the personal fund of the husband and the wife.

Some of those who have written on the family budget think that the contribution of the housewife in work, for which wages would have to be paid if she did not give this personal labor in the home, should be estimated in wages value, and should go into her part of a separate fund, after the common household expenses are deducted. That, it seems, would not be fair, for if the man puts in his labor value the woman should put in hers for the first and indispensable expense of the common life together. What is to be made right is the old custom of reckoning the savings and common property acquired after marriage as "his" estate. It is the estate of both, and should be so considered, even if he has earned outside and she saved and earned and helped him earn from within the household only.

=What Shall be the Accepted Standard of Living?=--The final question that must be considered by the two who are to marry and set up housekeeping is the scale of living they shall aim to attain. It has been well said that "the standard of living is what we desire; the scale of living what we can achieve." What is desired often, and what seems to the young only reasonable for all to have, is the scale of living the parents' households have attained after a life of hard work. It is a matter for profound ethical thinking to decide what measure of increase in expense of home upkeep should follow upon increase of income where there are children to be affected by changes.

It may sometime be seen to be a social duty to keep much farther within bounds the natural desire to expand expense as income increases; both for the reason that income may decrease with advancing years for the parents and retrenchment be necessary when it is hardest, and also for the more important reason that children naturally make standards at the height of parental expenditure and may find it thereby the more difficult to "begin at the bottom" when they marry. At any rate, the young couple starting out must keep within their means or suffer from the worst of fortunes, the dread of arriving bills and the shame of inability to pay them. That means some agreement before housekeeping begins as to what is involved in that adventure.

A witty woman said, "I love to travel with my friend Mary, for her economies and mine are the same." Some uniformity of temperamental reaction both to regular economies and to occasional extravagances is, if not an essential, a valuable basis for happy marriage. That means that the engaged couple might well start a game of "Must Haves" and "Would Like to Haves" in the moments that can be spared from other pursuits, a game in which without the other's knowledge each should write the secret wishes and requirements to be later compared for mutual enlightenment. The woman who would gladly go with two meals a day for a fortnight in order to get a ticket for the opera or symphony, and the man who would sacrifice a needed new suit of clothes with pleasure for a fis.h.i.+ng trip, may be able to compromise on essentials, but will find it difficult in the matter of extras unless warned beforehand. Affection bridges many chasms, and sensible people learn that even in the best regulated families father, mother, and the children may all get some of their best times apart. A basis of mutual understanding is, however, essential. The necessity to get at a common plan for the economic standards of the household is a vital one. How many men have run in debt for what they believed essential to the wife's happiness because she had such things in her father's house, without letting the wife know that economy was necessary, only to find out that if full confidence had been given a mutual effort would have secured better results. How many women have gone without things they might have had for want of knowledge of their husband's income and suffered fears that need not have been in the mind. How many also, alas, both of men and women, have lived beyond their means from selfish demand one upon the other, a demand which might have been chastened, at least, if full knowledge of economic resources had been attained before the scale of living was fixed.

All these items of suggested conference and decision given above are counsels of prudence and wisdom. Many, perhaps most, however, of the young couples starting out in life "go it blind" in all or some of these particulars. The wonder is that these who start on the most serious of compacts and the one leading to the greatest extremes of both happiness and unhappiness with so little knowledge of each other's condition, capacity, or deepest wishes, get along, on the whole, so well. We see them on every side starting on the sea of married life with gaiety of heart because the chosen one is obtained for company and with no conception of the difficulties that may make the voyage tempestuous. But they often make safe harbor of comfortable comrades.h.i.+p for middle life and old age, and if they have had a harder time than they need have had at least prove that "love is the greatest thing in the world."

=The Need for Full and Mutual Understanding Before Marriage.=--The rising tide of divorce, however, gives point to the plea of this chapter for a more careful charting of the sailing course in advance.

The fact that so many get their discipline of knowledge and direction as they go along and do not make s.h.i.+pwreck even if matrimonial storms grow frequent or heavy, is a very good testimony to the native goodness of men and women and to their ability to make good their mistakes and work out success even from failure provided the indispensable north star of unselfish affection leads them on. It would be well, however, to lessen the failures if that can be done.

When men and women show what marriage can become for the wise, the idealistic, and the loving, it gives a picture of satisfaction and mutual service that makes most other human a.s.sociations seem trivial and short-lived. Only parenthood is equal or superior to marriage in its possibilities of moral discipline and personal development. To make it successful is worth striving for.

Literature, science, and art have many great marriages to their credit--men and women brought together by identical tastes and similar capacities, working together in high pursuits through a long life of achievement. They illumine the way of life with a peculiar glow.