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Page 50
Because married life is so perfect when it finds its highest levels, it
is capable of sinking to any form of vulgarity, base betrayal and
cynicism when realization fails. The God to whom noblest souls aspire in
hours of deepest exaltation, is the God invoked by the ribald drunkard
when he curses his comrade. The family life we are discussing is the
subject of most of the vulgar and indecent jokes of the disappointed and
the unfit. The earth which nourishes the nations, merely soils the
boots of the boor who unthinkingly lives on her bounty.
On the working side the life of the family has an evil record for
pettiness and monotony, but much of this is due to wrong comparisons. A
woman who does her own housework would presumably have to work in any
case. Is the work of the family more petty or monotonous than the work
of the factory, shop or office? Surely the woman who spends her days
looking after the details of furnishing a house and keeping it clean, of
providing and serving meals, of looking after clothing and caring for
children, has a world of self-expression compared with which factory and
shop work is infinitely petty and mean. In the social life of friends,
neighborhood, school and church she is at least as well placed as the
factory worker. If the woman has the preparation required for teaching
or independent business, she will find ways to use her powers that will
relieve the routine of housework. And if the family has means to hire
help, the wife has a position from which she can exercise social and
political power superior to that of the foot-loose celibate.
Meantime, the housework grows steadily simpler and less exacting, even
with the growing complexity of our modern life. Most of the primitive
industries have left the home, and products come from the factory ready
to use. Furnace heating, hot and cold water, improved cooking conditions
and many domestic inventions of our day are keeping housework well
abreast of other unspecialized work in attractiveness.
The fact that domestic servants are scarce and unwilling to do general
housework, in no way disproves the soundness of these conclusions. The
wife, if she is a real wife, and we are discussing no others, is working
for those she loves, under conditions of free initiative. The general
servant is working for those who will not even admit her right to
participate in their social life, and instead of freedom in her
industrial life, she must generally adjust her efforts to the caprices
of an untrained mistress. Well-trained mistresses, who know how to work
themselves and who have a democratic sense of human values, seldom have
trouble in securing able servants, even in this transition time when the
shops and factories are calling so loudly to working girls.
No intelligence which a woman may possess needs remain unused in the
handling of a family. Women spend most of the household money to-day, at
least in lower and middle-class homes. To use wisely the family
pay-envelope requires knowledge and judgment of a high order. Problems
in economics, sanitation, food-values and �sthetics confront the
housewife at every turn of the day's work. "Even a slave need not work
as a slave;" and a woman living with the man she loves is the freest
woman on earth, so far as mind and spirit are concerned.
But the factory girl, or the teacher, or the professional woman who
seeks the fulfilment of all of life in the factory, the school or the
consulting-room, will soon tire and clamor for relief. The housewife, or
the mistress of a home, must likewise seek life away from her work if
she is to love it and wake each morning with a desire to continue it.
Luckily we have reached a place where working women in the home are
seeking supplementary life outside, and they seem to be quite as
successful in their search as are factory girls or teachers.
To the man, family life, of the kind we are considering, brings a vital
connection with the past and the future. Reputation, possessions,
friends, all become deeply significant when a man becomes a link in the
generations of men. In establishing his material home, and modifying it
to the changing conditions of the family; in building up a social
setting for the group; in projecting his work and his service into the
future, he is held to highest standards by the fact that he is working
with the partner of his choice, and for interests that are in harmony
with the constitution of the universe.
Of the greater physical health of married people there can be no doubt.
Statistics all show the greater longevity of married people, and
insurance companies recognize it. The celibate type of physical
degeneration is so well differentiated that it can generally be
recognized even among strangers, at least after forty.[57] On the moral
side, too, very few criminals are found among married people.
[57] ARNOLD LORAND, _Old Age Deferred. The Cause of Old Age and its
Postponement by Hygienic and Therapeutic Measures._ F.A. Davis Co.,
1911.
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