The Modern Girl As Wife

From Home Notes, July 27th 1918.

THE MODERN GIRL AS WIFE.

One middle-aged woman tells you why she, at any rate, thinks Miss Up-to-Date will make a much better life-partner than her mother did.

I HAVE no patience with the people who pull long faces and affect to pity the husbands of the present generation.  One such woman said to me the other day, "I am really beginning to despair of the girl of to-day.  She seems to have lost all the feminine qualities that made girls so attractive when I was young—modesty, gentleness, the love of home, and so on.  Her great ambition seems to be to ape men in manner, habits, and taste.  And when she comes to marry, she will have scarcely a single qualification for the rôles of wife and mother."
Of course, this is all nonsense, and I told her so.  It is the habit of many middle-aged women to idealise the girls of their own time, at the expense of the modern mademoiselle.  Fortunately I have a better memory and more charity.
Now, what was the girl of a generation ago, in fact, and not in fancy?  With few exceptions she was jealously kept under the parental wing, and allowed to know as little as possible of men or the world outside her own narrow circle.
She was taught a few feminine accomplishments, from piano-playing to fancy-work; but of the arts of housekeeping she was kept profoundly ignorant.  She was given to understand that her mission in life was to get a husband, without the least idea, of what to do with him and how to manage his home when she got one.  And when she should have been out in the open air, she would spend her time in working samplers or shedding tears over sentimental novels, to the detriment of her health and nerves.
Both physically and mentally she was, speaking generally, just about as unfit for the responsibilities of married life as a girl could be.  And more often than not she was a hindrance and anxiety to her husband instead of a help.

Pal and Partner. 
Now look at her successor, the girl of to-day.  She has a hundred advantages her mother never enjoyed.
From early childhood she is, as a rule, allowed to mix freely with boys and, in later years, with young men. 
She learns to know them through and through, and has no sentimental illusions about them.  She knows their good and their bad points; and she learns how to manage them —knowledge which is invaluable when she comes to have one of them for husband.
The active, open-air life she leads strengthens her muscles and nerves, and lays the foundation of the health which is so vital to the future wife and mother.  And her free mixing with young men rids her effectually of all foolish shyness and false modesty.
Then, too, she knows her way about the world.  In very many cases she goes out into it to earn her living, the finest training possible for a wife; for she learns to rely on herself, to form her own judgments, and to submit to discipline.  And all this without losing a whit of feminine charm or attractions.  In fact, she decidedly gains—in the good looks that come from health, and in the frankness and unaffectedness that appeal so strongly to men.
Thus she has a far finer equipment for wedded life than her mother had.  She brings health and training and capacity to her new duties.  She is a support instead of a burden to her husband; for she not only relieves him of all anxiety about his home; she is able to help him with sound advice, often to share his work.
She is, in short, his "pal" and partner, as ready and able to fight his battles as to share and enjoy his successes.