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·Marriage and Family Problems AND HOW TO SOLVE THEM

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·Marriage and Family
Problems
AND HOW TO SOLVE THEM
Ву
John J. Anthony
Director, Marital Relations Institute, New York.
THE WORLD'S WORK (1913) LTD
KINGSWOOD
SURREY

·FIRST PUBLISHED 1946
THIS 100K IS PRODUCrt) 1. COUP.TTT.
COXTONUITY
AUTIONS!.1%
I'COHOVY STARDAROS
1'*T1O 3! GI..T KITAI: AT TIT: WINDMILL TROSS
BIR(Soon, SCrity

·1
To
ETILLE ANTHONY
whose intelligent understanding of how to live
with a difficult husband has contributed
more to this book than anyone
other than myself can
possibly know.

·CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I THE OBJECT OF LIFE 1 1 II WHAT IS MARRIAGE? II MI THE DAWN OF INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 19 IV DAYS OF IMPATIENCE 30 V NEW HOUSES FOR OLD 39 VI THE WORLD SHUT OUT SI VII PULLING YOUR WEIGHT 56 VUI THE ETERNAL CHILD 62 IX THE OTHER WOMAN 74 THE OTHER MAN 87 XI TAMING THE WOLF 95 THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD 106 XIII VIEN THE BOUGH BREAKS 114 XV CHILDREN BY CHOICE 124 IV AS THE TWIG IS BENT 135 146 XVI THE LONELY HOUSE XVII TIIE BROKEN CORD 150 XVM THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 161 XIX *THIE VORI.D YOUR FAMILY 168 ·CHAPTER I 1 The Object of Life Long after every other office in the building was closed and its occupants had gone home for the night I sat at my-desk and listened to Mrs. B. tell me her story. She had come from a distant city to consult me; she had told me in her letter that she must leave New York that night, and I had waited for her. Now she sat before me, her face wet with tears of self-pity, while the long twilight of a summer evening deepened into dusk over Manhattan. Outside I could see the brilliant patterns made by the gradually increasing lights of neighbouring skyscrapers. Just outside my slightlyopened window three pigeons strutted back and forth on the window-sill, cooing loudly and pausing now and then to crane their necks and peer in at us, cocking their heads froni side to side, undisturbed by our talk, as if looking for something or someone. Mrs. B.'s story was not a new one to me. In one form or another I had heard it many times, from both men and women. It was the story of a person who had vever outgrown her childish need to have everyone wait on her, to have everyone subordinate every desire, every hope, every convenience, for hers, who wanted to take everything she could from everyone and give nothing in return. Orphaned at her birth by the death of her mother, Mrs. B. had been raised by a much older half-sister, a woman who had apparently always been jealous of her father's love for his second wife, a woman who, frustrated in her desire for a normal love life herself, had expressed all of her yearning on her half-sister, waiting on the younger child' hand and foot through childhood and adolescence, dressing her elaborately, and sending her through college and, when Mrs. B. had finally married, had taken the initiative in constantly urging the younger woman to insist upon conveniences, luxuries and trappings of grandeur which her husband could not afford. I ·2 Marriage And Family Problems It was obvious that Mrs. B.'s husband had been a decent, hard-working, honest, loyal and affectionate man, who had done everything in his power to make their marriage a happy and successful one. He had satisfied as many of her foolish whims as he couldma house in an expensive suburb which they could ill afford, a maid, even when in 1929 he lost his job and had to borrow money to carry them until he found another several months later, a new car every other year. He had wanted children, but during the five years of their marriage Mrs. B. had always said that they must wait until they had more money. And anyway, she thought that they "ought to have a few years in which to enjoy their youth before they tied themselves down.” The truth was that she was simply too selfish either to sacrifice a few luxuries for the expense of bearing and raising a child, or to suffer the inconvenience, the pain and the temporary loss of physical girlishness which childbearing would entail. Year by year their marriage went from bad to worse. Her older sister was constantly urging her to new demands on her husband demands which in every case Mrs. B. thought justificd. As the marriage relationship became more and more a grim and unhappy onc, Mrs. B. found consolation only in the presence of the older sister, with whom she spent all the time she could. Her husband began to objeci-tried to come between her and her sister--as Mrs B. put it. Finally, when she suggested that the sister come to live with them, Mr. B. asserted himself and refused to allow it. In a bitter quarrel he told her at last all of those things which must have been accumulating in his troubled mind during the five years of their marriage, accused her of her selfishness, told her that she was more her sister's wife than his, and that, since her sister seemed to mean so much more to her than he did, perhaps she'd better go and live with her... In an angry flood of tears Mrs. B. did exactly that. She left the house that night, bag and baggage, and went ta ·در The Object of Life her sister's apartment. Later, in what was actually intended as a threat to make him ask her forgiveness and invite her to come home, she told her husband that she wanted a divorce and was shocked and hurt beyond measure when he told her to go ahead and get one. He would be glad to furnish grounds. And so they were divorced. A year later her sister died, and Mrs. B. found herself suddenly helpless in a world in which there was no one to wait on her save the servants she could not now afford 10 hire. She would have given anything now for the security and ease of the home which her husband had furnished her and which she had thrown away in the feeling that she was revenging herself on him for his "selfishness". But that seemed beyond recall. She wrote him and found that he had not remarried, but his answer to her letter, while courteous, had been cool and impersonal. Plainly he was not in love with her any more. This, too, she took as a personal affront, and did not write him again. That had happened a year before she came to see me. * Now she was lonely, unhappy and badly frightened. The little money her half-sister had left her' had been all but spent. During the year in which she had been spending if she had made not the slightest effort to support herself, nor the slightest examination of herself in an effort to see whether her unhappy history was not due to her own faults and shortcomings. Instead, she had frantically used her charm (These are naturally not her words; I am interpreting them here for you.) as a weapon against what seemed to her to be an unfriendly world. She had plenty of it on the surface, a beautiful baby-like face, with wide, innocent-looking eyes which seemed ready to shine with laughter or become clouded with tears at any moment, a seductive body, welldesigned clothes which she wore well, and a smile which, consciously studied as it actually was, would yet make any but the wisest and strongest man succumb to it. And one had succumbed to it, a good man, who for months had been urging her to marry him. Up to now she had refused him. Her reason for refusing him was not the ·4 Marriage And Family Problems fact that she was not in love with him. It never occurred to her that this might be a barrier, for she, poor child; had never been in love with anyone save herself. No, it was simply that he earned "only £10 a week, and she didn't see how they could possibly live on that. But soon-within the next two months--all the money she had in the world would be gonel What could she do? Could two people possibly be happy on so little? I made no attempt to answer that naïve question. I didn't tell her what every intelligent and thoughtful person in the world knows--that young married couples have been ecstatically, divinely happy on 23 a week, with love and hope and honesty and courage and unselfish loyalty to each other to add seasoning to their modest fare and to roof and enclose their tiny living quarters with such a shield against adverse weather and circumstance as brick and stone can never makcor that unlimited wealth cannot of itself make any marriage successful. These truths are so obvious that her failure to realize them, untold, made it plain that a mere reiteration of them would accomplish nothing. I didn't say these things. I sat for the moment and looked at the strutting, cooing pigeons on the window-sill. Their number now had increased to six, and they all pecred in at us in increasing intensity in the intervals between their strutting back and forth. I know why they were there., Every cvening when I happened to be working late I saw them, and had become used to the monotonous murmuring in their throats and their solemn parade back and forth on the window-sill. Looking at them, I suddenly had an inspiration. I raised the phone and called the office of the superintendent of the building. "Could you locate Mrs. R.," I said, "and ask her if she will come to my office a moment? I'm sure she must be somewhere in the building by now." While we waited I asked Mrs. B. a few detailed questions about her life with her husband. I was really only stalling for time, for alrcady I know the basic facts of her problem, know the one thing she must learn in order to have any ·The Object of Life 5 chance for future happiness. But I didn't want to say any. thing to her until we had heard from Mrs. R. In a few-moments Mrs. R. came in, surprised, embarrassed, when she saw the finely-dressed Mrs. B. at my desk, and looking a little frightened by this unexpected summons. As she entered the room, the hubbub on the window-sill increased. One of the pigeons, bolder than the rest, actually strutted through the open window and stood inside, his head cocked first on one side and then on the other, his attention fixed on Mrs. R. She was one of the army of charwomen who came in after the tenants of the offices had gone out, to work on their hands and knees far into the early morning in order that we might come back to clean offices in the morning. I introduced her to the surprised Mrs. B., who did not offer her hand. Then I began asking the staunch, kindly charwoman to repeat a story she had told me one night when I had questioned her about the pigeons. "Thank you for coming up, Mrs. R.,” I said. "We want · you to help us. Will you tell us, please, why those pigeons are on the window-sill?” "I've told you about that, Mr. Anthony," she said haltingly. “How they come every night to get the corn I bring them. Are they a bother to you?" Plainly, it was not going to be easy for her to talk in the unfriendly presence of Mrs. B., who quite evidently considered this an intrusion, but I urged her on. "No, no, of course not. I smiled. “You know that I like them. Tell me again, please, for I want Mrs. B. to hear it, how you came to be bringing them corn in the first place." "It was after all my trouble," she said slowly, looking directly at me, as if ignoring the fact that Mrs. B. with her cold stare, grown suddenly hard, was in the room. "First my husband died of pneumonia, and then three months later my son, who was all I had left, was killed in an accident. I didn't have nobody and nothing and I was like a crazy person, went around in a daze, 'as it were. I couldn't sleep good and I never smiled, and got thin from not eating, and went around with a long face that you would think S3 ·6 Marriage And Family Problems I was the only woman in the world ever had any troubles. I thought I'd never get over it and I got so I didn't care. Sometimes I thought I'd do away with myself, because I thought the whole world was against me and I'd never be happy again. "Then one night a sick kitten followed me home. I hadn't even the heart to shut the door in its face. I guess I thought it looked too much the way I felt, half-starved, and with a puny little voice that sounded as though it wanted to dic. I guess when I felt a little sorry for the kitten it was sort of like feeling sorry for myself. "Well, I gave it some milk, and the way if drank it, it looked as though it hadn't had any for a long time. After it was through it came and rubbed itself against my legs and I stooped down to pet it. Then, when I straightened up, I saw myself in a little mirror across the room, and I was smiling. For a minute I just sat and looked at myself, because I was that surprised. I hadn't smiled in months. “The next night I hurried home so I could feel that kitten rub against my legs and purr its thanks after it had its milk. For the first time since Skandor died I wanted to get home, bccausc there was some reason for it. "Then I stopped to think. If helping that kitten could make me smile and hurry home, maybe I'd be happier if I helped something else. So the next day I baked a little cake and took it around to a poor bed-ridden woman in the next block I hadn't seen since my trouble. Every day I tried to think of something like that I could do for somebody, because whenever I did I felt better. "Then I noticed the pigeons and began bringing corn for them, and now they wait for me cvery night. That's the way it was, Mr. Anthony.' "And are you happy, Mrs. R.?” I asked. "I don't know anybody that sleeps better or has a better appetite." She laughed. "Sure I'm happy. I don't mcan to say that it's crer been the same or will be, without Manny, because he was the only man there ever was in my lifc, or without Skandor, cither, because he was the only ·7 The Object of Life son I had left after his two older brothers were killed in the war, but everybody has sorrows, Mr. Anthony, and the only way you can cure them is to do things for others. You can't be happy unless you're thinking of how much you can help :- others instead of how much you can get for yourself and how unlucky you are. She stopped, and out of the corner of my eye I could see that Mrs. B.'s eyes were lowered and her cheeks flushed. I knew that she was feeling a sudden-vague sense of shame, that a new possibility was suddenly opening in her mind. What I might not have been able to make her see in an hour's persuading, this humble woman and her simple and profound story had made clear. Mrs. R. was turning to go, but I stopped her. "Thank you very much," I said. "Let me ask you a question, please. Were you and your husband happy together?” She looked at me in surprise that I should ask it. "Nobody could ever have been happier for thirty years," she said. "He was a good man and kind. There was never any other man in my life, nor any other woman in his." "Then I assume you were well off financially,” I said. "We always had everything we needed," she answered. "Manny was a hard worker and always made good money when times was good. And if times was bad I could always do a bit of washing or work by the day. We always got along fine and saved money, too. We paid as we went and was never in debt." "If you don't mind my being very personal, Mrs. R.,” I persisted, "what do you mean when you say your husband always made 'good money'? How much did he make?” "Seldom a week he didn't bring home £6 and give it all to me to take care of,” she said proudly. "Sometimes when he was lucky and got a bit of overtime it'd be as much as £8." “Thank you,” I said. “I'm sure you've helped us both Neither Mrs. B. nor I said anything for a moment after the door had closed behind the charwoman. Then I saw very much.

·03 + Marriage And Family Problems that my visitor was crying-not as she had wept before, in self-pity, but quietly, the tears rolling down her cheeks in silence. She dried her eyes and looked up at me. "Don't say it,” she whispered. “Mrs. R. is right. I know now what I must do. I'm going back home and I'm going to find myself a job. I'm going to try to make a person out of the useless silly doll that I've always been. I'm going to try to help people instead of always wanting them to ! help me. And if I succeed-then I'm going to try to find my husband again and see if there is any of that love left that I threw away once before I knew better-before I had scen the pigeons and Mrs. R.” And so I didn't need to give Mrs. B. any advice after all, for she had put into a few blunt words exactly what I would have tried to say to her a bit more diplomatically. But long after she had left I sat there thinking, wishing I knew how to tell every married person in the world, and every person who is about to be married, and every person who is afraid of marriage because of the marital unhappiness they have scen in the world, the truth that Mrs. R. and her fricnds, the pigeons, helped Mrs. B. to sec. For there was nothing really peculiar about Mrs. B. and her problem. She wanted happiness, just as everyone else in the world docs. Her confusion and pain camc, not because she was sceking anything fundamentally different from that which everyone sceks, but only because she had taken the wrong way to find it. The fact that another member of her family had intruded into her marriage is typical of another scrious menace to marital success, but in her casc it was incidental. Married or unmarried, Mrs. B. could not have becn happy until she had lcarned what a charwoman taught her. Happiness is the right of cvcry living being. But it is right which must be worked for, a right which must be won, a right which comes only as the result of wise thought, wisc living and successfully fitting oneself into the world of which cach of us is a part. It is a right thc cnjoyment of which is achieved only through living according to the ·The Object of Life 9 golden rule of giving at least as much as we receive, of doing unto others always as we would that they do unto us. A child does not know this. A person, man or woman, who never grows beyond a child's way of thought, does not know it. When a baby lies in his crib he finds pleasure only in the satisfaction of his own desires. His little fists are always grasping for something-his bottle, or a pretty string of beads or the watch which ticks so pleasantly beside his tiny pink ear. All that he thinks of is his own pleasure, the things which will give him satisfaction. But when childhood is left behind he begins to 'learn, if he is properly taught, that there are things which are often of more value than his own immediate desires, that the happy life is a life of give and take, of giving freely and joyously to others, as well as taking graciously that which they give freely. The one who spends his life scheming and working to satisfy his petty, selfish desires at the expense of anyone who may be in the way of their fulfilment may sometimes live in a better house, wear better clothes, ride in a better car and see his name in the newspapers, but he finds his life strangely empty, as Mrs. B. did, without those, priceless treasures of friendship, love, trust, the respect of others and, most important of all, his self-respect the kind of feeling of dignity and place in the world which Mrs. R., the simple charwoman, ħad actually in so much greater measure than had Mrs. B., for all her fine clothes. Man cannot live for himself alone. This has always been true, it is true now, it will always be true. And year by year new inventions and improvements of old ones, the constantly increased speed of transportation and ease of communication, the constant increase in knowledge, make all the persons in the world come closer and closer to each other and more and more dependent upon each other. Our grandfathers' neighbourhoods may have consisted of the villages in which they lived. But to-day the whole world is our neighbourhood, and that which affects any part of it affects. us. And it is a troubled and dangerous world in which we live, a world whose problems can be solved only ·10 ugt by the best thought of every one of us and the greatest help cach of us can give to all the others. These world problemas, the things which drive nations into wars and, in peace-times, force them to raise huge armics and spend much of their energies in trying to avoid war, are too vast for the individual man or woman. Yct, in a manner of speaking, every one of us faces the same problems in our relations with those who are closest to us.--- the member of our own families. The world is divided into nations, cach of which has its individual problems, our country into counties, the counties into towns and villages, and the villages into individual families. The family is the unit of society, the basis of the social life of every nation, of the world itself . As family harmony and unity increase. so does the happiness and the harmony of people in village, town, county, nation and the world increasc. And what will undoubtedly seem more important to the average person, only through the harmony which comes from giving, front co-operating with those closest at hand, only through living by the basic code of the golden rule can any individual find happiness for himself. For many years I have been helping people to solve their marital problems. I have listened to stories of practically every difficulty which can come to a marriage, of quarrels based upon every conceivable cause, of incompatibilities between men and their wives which seemed to them completely incapable of any solution. You might think, from having been given the opportunity to gaze into the innermost lives of literally thousands of unhappily married people, I would have become a cynic about marriage (for naturally the ones who are happy never have to come to mc), and decide that marriage is a failure. Not a bit of it! I always did believe in marriage, long before I started this work, and now, after having secn these thousands of persons, most of whose difficulties it has been possible to iron out and adjust once they were made to iinderstand why they had been unhappy, after having scen them start learning anes the part which cach had to play ·II What Is Marriage? in marriage, I am more strongly than ever convinced that the one sure way to happiness for the normal human being is through marriage and the establishment of a fine home, complete with children, and that no other way offers such rich opportunities to attain that fine and universal object of life, contentment. But I know, too, that this most intimate and important of all human relationships must be based upon the only rule by which it is possible to guide any happy humanrelationship, the golden rule, the rule that teaches us' to "do unto others as. we would that they do unto us". Let this rule be accepted and acted upon by any married couple." and all of the detailed problems which I shall discuss in the following chapters, and the many others which there is no room to discuss, can be adjusted. Let this rule be denied, and all attempts at finding happiness in any marriage will be hopeless. CHAPTER II What is Marriage? WHEN America paid especial honour to the mothers of the nation on Mothers' Day, 1939, one mother stood out among all the rest, for she had been named as the American mother of the year. Her name is Mrs. Otelia Compton. At eighty she is a mother, a grandmother and a great-grandmother. In her sweet and gentle and strong face is the light of happiness and peace which has come to her through living a life of service to others. Each of her three sons has won a place of distinction through following the path she pointed out to themma path made possible to them by the support which the pattern of their family life gave them. Karl T. Compton is president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Wilson M. Compton is a professor of economics at George Washington University; and Arthur H. Compton ·12 Marriage And Family Problems is professor of physics at the University of Chicago. All of them have given their lives to the advancement of knowlcdge for the benefit of the world. I have not asked any one of these men the question which immediately presents itself when one thinks of a family with such an amazing record as that of the Comptons, but I am sure that I know the answer. If one were to say to any one of them: :"How does it happen that one group of brothers has achieved so muchmin happiness for theniselves, and in good for the world?" I know that he would say, in effect: "This has come out of the strength and goodness of the family life we all have known from the day of our birth, and the strong true leadership given us by our parents. Mrs. Compton herself, erect and vigorous as a woman of fifty, speaking in New York at several Mother's Day ceremonies, was asked how she had raised her famous sons. Quite simply she said: "With love, faith, patience and the golden rule. And when it was necessary I spanked them." How much there is in those simple words! Love, faith, paticnce, the golden rule and wise, sound discipline! And how rich are the rewards which the Compton family-and through them the world-have reaped from the wisdom of that fine mother! I wished as I read the words that every person with a problem, whether it concerned marriage and family life or not, could read them and understand them and apply them to his own lifc. For there is not a human hurt which cannot be helped by these great mcdicincs, not a confusion of human life which cannot be somewhat clarified, not a human weakness which cannot be strengthened. not a huinan desire which cannot be achicred or overcome if only these guiding principles can be fully accepted, and their healing, strengthening, helping force utilized. In thc first chapter I told you thc storics of two monien -Mrs. B., who had left her husband and who camc to me in a panic of fear and hopelessness, and Mrs. R., the charisoman, whose husband and sons had died, leaving her dcsolate, but who, in her humble life, much of which was spent ·. What Is Marriage? •13 over a mop and pail, had achieved a measure of peace and happiness, unknown to the apparently more fortunate Mrs. B. A careful analysis of these two women and their relationships with their families and with the world would explain many of the basic difficulties of the human race and suggest the way to finding a solution to their problems. I shall not make that analysis here, for it would fill a book in itself, but before going on to discuss more detailed problems and some individual cases, I want to try to tell you what a marriage and a family are, for only through understanding the meaning of these two highly important words can we, understand their significance to the individual and to society. Long before there was marriage as we now know it there were families. This in itself is a matter which many people do not realize or understand, and it is of the greatest importance in approaching the whole matter of human relationships—the matter involved in nine-tenths of the human problems of the modern world. First of all we must remember the unswerving law of nature that life shall go on in all its various forms. Through- · out nature the male seeks the female, and from their union young are born, helpless creatures who cannot at first care · for themselves. Unless adults of their own species care for them, feed them, warm them when warmth is necessary, protect them against their natural enemies, and train them to protect and care for themselves, they will die, and so the law of continuing life in nature will be violated. But in all creatures there is, in addition to that initial and irresistible impulse which brings male and female. together, a second, equally powerful instinct, which creates in parents the need to care for their offspring. Let us think for a moment of a man, living many centuries ago like the animals of the forest, in a cave or rude shelter which he threw up with the boughs of trees and the skins of animals. There are no cities, no great congregations of people, no laws, save those made by nature, of ·14 Marriage And Family Problems which he has no understanding. He is conscious of. little more than those instinctive animal hungers which he shares with the four-footed creatures of the woods. Wandering in the forest one day, he meets a woman. She is young and vital, vibrant with newly acquired womanhood. She has not yet borne a child, but her body is surging with its instinctive desire for motherhood. Probably she does not know that this is what she feels, any more than the man knows that his sudden excitement is caused by his need to become a father. Neither of them could say why this strange, mysterious restlessness, in which is mixed delight and fear, desire and speechlessness, has come upon them. Each knows only that they are impelled toward cach other by something they have never encountered before, by a tremendous tumult within them which they know (without ever having been taught this) can be satisfied only by the violent meeting which their bodies crave. Yet even then not all has been satisfied by that one meeting. Month by month, as the child grows within her, her need and her ability to care for it are increasing. Within her swelling breasts, which until now have been simply a part of her beauty and her power to attract a man, is forming the milk which will keep her child alive and make him grow. And within her mind and heart the need to have him live and grow are strengthening. These are not matters of will for her. She could not change them fundamentally cven if she chose to. But she will not choose to change them, for her mind has not become confused by the complications of modern civilization. In the man, too, a change has occurred, though a less fundamental one than that in the woman, for that act which is primarily essential for him in the law of nature has been performed. Even if he now leaves the woman and her child the child's chances of survival are fair, becausc thc woman who will bear him will also care for him. Yet probably he is not able to Icave her with complete ease and no further thought of her. Spiritually as well as physically a part of him remains with her. For dimly within ·1 What Is Marriage? 15 his consciousness he has found that he needs her. Even though he may leave her to-day this need (which he has not defined, and which includes more than the obvious · physical urge which drove him to take her in his arins in the first instance) may send him to seek her again in a few days. He finds her again and gains in her companionship a release from the burden of loneliness. This time, perhaps. he takes her by force and carries her to his own cave or hut, and she, happy in his mastery of her, roasts for him the antelope he has killed that day in the forest. After a time their child is born, and the man, again acting from the impetus of his instinct, finds that it gives him a nameless satisfaction to watch a little more carefully for prowling animals at night, feeling a surge of joy and triumph as he imagines himself wrestling with them barehanded if necessary, interposing his strength between them and his woman and child, that he may protect them. The ineat which he brings home at night has a new meaning, for he shares it now with those who seem strangely a part of himself. And he finds, too, that he has gained in practical ways through bringing this woman to his cave. Their joint strength is greater than his alone. He knows less fear now than he did before he had her. His precious fire goes out less often. As it is written in Ecclesiastes: "Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to help him up. Again if two lie together, then they have heat; but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” Yet there has been no marriage in the sense in which we now speak of marriage. Nothing holds these three persons, the man, the woman and their child, together save their common needs and desires. Perhaps long before the child has grown to the point at which it can care for itself, its father has left it. Perhaps even the mother, without hindrance from others (for there are no manmade laws in ·- 15 Marriage And Family Problemis her time and place), may abandon it to die. But those mothers and fathers in whom is the strongest nurturing instinct, the strongest will to achieve something like a continuation of their own lives through the lives of their offspring, have stayed with their children and taken care of them, while the children of parents who did not have the instinct so strongly are dying out. Thus, generation after generation, through the survival of the children of those who cared most for them, there has grown in the human race this instinct of caring for the young on which many of our most fundamental social laws arc based. Meanwhile, in the early days of the history of our race, something else was happening which was of perhaps cven greater importance in the formation of the family than the sex and nurturing instincts. Man was learning that alone he had little strength; in groups his strength was multiplied. Whether a man and woman joined cach other in thc procrcation of young or not, both men and women wanted 10 join with others in groups for the sake of companionship. for protection and for the division of labour so important to material security. This grouping together of individuals for a common advantage was probably the process which could first have been called the formation of families. Through the mating of men and women and the closeness of scx and blood ties, the instinct to care for the young and the intimacy of the associations involved in the procreation, bcaring and rearing of the young, family ties became more and more those of blood; and society, realizing the importance of the group or family unit, gradually imposed the marriage customs and laws which we know to-day to protect thosc units, so far as possible, and prevent their destruction. For we have learned as a race that only through the stability of those units can society as a whole be stablc. If only cveryonc cntering a marriage and therchy creating a new family group could understand this and face the whole prospect of marriage with a clear realization of the part that it must play if there is to be human happiness ·What Is Marriage? 17 and orderliness instead of chaos and misery! We are all here because thousands of generations of our ancestors survived through their wills to bear and care for children and form the basic units on which society is built. They have passed this will and this desire on to us through our very blood streams. No rationalization, no attempt in our minds to think of marriage from other more selfish and superficial points of view can change this need. Because of this our underlying need for children and for family stability is among the strongest needs of our nature. Whatever we may think are the reasons, it is to satisfy these needs that we marry. It is in seeking their satisfaction that we form families. To-day there is, in the superficial parts of too many persons' minds, the belief that the union of a man and a woman may be entered into selfishly for the mere purpose of fulfilling individual, personal, easily recognized purposes, for the satisfaction of what we call love and the desire for congenial companionship, the desire to be supported economically—a hundred superficial reasons may be given for a marriage, all with little relation to the true reasons. Marriages entered into with as shallow understanding and as petty purposes as these, families established on as frail bases as these are but preparation for unhappiness, constant disappointments, confusion, terror and destruction. In the true marriage, the marriage based upon the heritage of the human race which has survived all threats to its existence, the thought of self is abandoned in the greater thought of - the family, the human race and the deep, underlying purposes of life. Ready to sacrifice selfish desires to the good of the whole, ready and eager to pass on-life and ideals to another generation, to lose individual freedom in order to give others life and happiness, a man or a woman finds a new freedom and peace and happiness in obeying the inost fundamental commands of his nature. This is not denial but fulfilment. How many times have I heard a man say: "I've become so used to freedom—10 going where I want to when I want to, to being my own ·IS Marriage And Family Problems boss, to having no responsibility for anyone but myself, I'd be a fool to give that up in marriage!" The truth is that he is fooling himself in every word he spcaks. Not he, but actually these decp needs of his nature which he does not understand are his boss. Because he refuses to seck their satisfaction in the normal way that nature has prescribed and strengthened throughout the many generations of human life, he is constantly aware of his need for what he calls “freedom". He must find a thousand disorganized outlets for his energies while he is unconsciously fighting his most basic needs. Once he has stopped fighting them and begins to go in the way with them, sacrificing his dearly prized "freedom" to the needs of his nature and of the human race, he has set his feet on the path which can lead to peace and happiness through the satisfaction of some of the most basic of all human instincts. Yet there are other instincts in us too, forces which work against us, and there are circumstances outside ourselves which tend to disrupt family life and to destroy marriage. These are not apparent in the first flush of romantic love which more often than anything else brings a man and a woman together. But as the family which is cstablished as a result of this love scttles down to the stern tests of dayto-day living, threats to their happiness become apparent. one by one. Selfishness or inability to become adjusted to the loss of individual freedom, physical or mental disability, cconomic insecurity, improper attitudes toward the sex rclarionship, refusal on the part of cither the husband or wife to accept responsibility, attitudes towards marriage and life based upon an crasion of reality, childlessness or too many children, the interference of relatives especially "in-laws”- extra-marital relationships on the part of cither husband or wife or both these and hundreds of other potential dangers thrcaten every marriage and the unity of cvery family. The marriage which docs not at one time or another face one or several of these problems is a rare marriage indcccl. They are not only thrcats to marriage and family liſc, but ·19 - The Dawn Of Individual Responsibility are the basic sources of weakness of the human race in all its relationships. Every human being must learn to recognize them, to face them and to solve them satisfactorily, whether he is to be married or not, before he can live happily with himself even. How much more important, then, that he try to solve them if he attempts the more difficult task of living with another! And the solution is in most cases possible and practical. Through the growing knowledge which the sciences concerned with human relationships have given us it is possible for the normal individual to solve these problems and live constructively and happily. And it is more than his privilege it is his duty to himself, to those whose lives his life most closely touches, and to the whole of society, to do so. Whatever your problem is, however difficult it may seem at the moment, remember this: it is not a new problem, it is not peculiar to yourself. Hundreds have faced it beforewhatever it is—and many have solved it. But those who have 'succeeded have done so because they have followed the guiding lights of those strong and healing stars pointed out by Mrs. Otelia Compton, the American mother of 1939, "love, faith, patience, the golden rule and discipline”. CHAPTER III The Dawn of Individual Responsibility MRS. N. sat nervously twisting her handkerchief and fumbling in her mind for words with which to tell me the story about her daughter, which had driven sleep and peace from her mind. Beside her sat her husband, his face red with embarrassment. Neither of them could easily find words with which to tell me the simple, oft-repeated stort of a girl whose parents suddenly realized that she was a stranger to them, that she had grown out of their lives a into a world of her own which thcy did not under ·20 Marriage And Family Problems and which they feared as we all fear the unknown, Mr. and Mrs. N. were old to lie the parents of a seventeen-year-old girl. Married latc, neither of them had ever cxperienced parenthood until Mrs. N. was thirty-cight and her husband forty-five. Both bad counc from a lilla village in tlic fur Middle West which hadd, in their childhoods, still ther aspects of rugged pioneer liſc. Their parents had been righcous, Coul.Scaring, liard-working people who had backed their way into the wilderness and lived by the brawn of their arms and the strength of their consciences and seir faith in Gorl. They had needed and used simple, unswerving corles of bchaviour. A knowlcclge of the Bible, at strici incrprctation of its prcccpıs, had been their guide. There were simple, casily understood rules for a man and woman, or a boy and girl, 10 follow. The slightest deviasion from the could lead only in 1lic downward path of sin and cventual damnation. "Sex" was a word which neither of then had ever spoken or would be able to speak without llic dccpest (ccling of slame. Chance and circumstance had brought ilıcm 10:hc East, and their daughter had bca: born in : village not far from New York City. Meanwhile the world into which slıç wasi growing had become an entirely different world from that in whichi Mr. and Mrs. N. had grown up, but these two goul people had scarcely been aware of it. In their youths farm festivals and square dances and hay.rack rides bchine scams of friendly horses hac satisfied their needs for good times, liccause there was sothmg cisc which the rime and De circumstance offered. The world had 1301 yet lcarnce) the exhilar:11on of speed; Mr. N. had no car in which lic could take his succilicuri riding at nigh little chcrgy left from tlic iremendous plıysical labour then necessary 10 the business of wresting food from ilic carth, firewood from the forest, and a few shillings with which to buy cloul for home-made clothing, Sertled comfortalily for their old age, they had been bappy in the knowledge that their daughter, Gertrude, would not have to work as thcy had, that slıc could have ·21 The. Dawn Of Individual Responsibility a college education and make more of herself than they had ever had the opportunity to do. But they had failed during those years in which Gertrude had been close to them to give her any conception either of her own nature or of the world into which she was going. They had raiked to her about God and the Ten Commandmerits and duty and faith. They had told her in many ways that she must always be a good girl. But year after year more and inore of Gertrude's questions had been unanswered, because they seemed improper questions to the good Mr. and Mrs. N. Some of them, they told me, had seemed to show that therewas a streak of “nastiness" in their daughter's mind which she had probably picked up from her playmates. At that point I interrupted Mrs. N. “Let me ask you a question,” I said, “I want to be sure that I understand what you mean. Just what kind of questions were these? You see, it seems to me that any question which a child may ask honestly, wanting to learn, is a good question. How else could she find things out? As long as your child asked questions, don't you see that she was giving you the opportunity to protect her by knowledge of the truth from what you call the ‘nastiness' of playmates? Can you tell me what some of these questions were?” For a long moment she was silent while her face flamed scarlet. "It was all so long ago," she said at last. "I just couldn't bring myself to say those things before you and my husband, Mr. Anthony." “All right,” I said. “Go on with your story,” for I saw not only that it was hopeless to try to get Mrs. N. to talk freely, but also the mother's painful reticence with me to whom she had come for professional advice indicated clearly the faltering course of frustration which Gertrude's mind' must have followed during those impressionable years when it sought so eagerly for knowledge-and failed to find it at the source to which she instinctively and rightly " “But that hasn't happened for years,” Mrs. N. 1 . went.

·2 Marriage And Family Problems "I scolded her and talked to her about the need to keep her mind pure, and then she stopped asking. For a long time now she hasn't said any of those things. She's scemed such a quiet, good girl at home. We decided that that troublesome time in her mind was over because she never mentioned any of those bad things. She always went to church with us, sang in the choir as we wanted her to do, and we were sure that she had got over thinking about such things." Shc pauscd again and lowered her eyes, obviously fighting her desire to cry. “Then what is your problem now?" I asked. When she looked up there were tears in her eyes. “She's disgraced herself and us at school," she said. "It's her first year at college-her first year away from home. We had a letter from the dean of women there and went to see her. Gertrude hasn't kept up with her lessons. She's broken onc rule after another. The girls are supposed to be in their rooms at nine o'clock. A week ago the matron of thc house came to her room unexpectedly late at night and found Gertrude gonc. She waited there in the dark until after midnight, and our daughter camc in--through the window! They had put her in a first-floor room because she seemed so good, and so quict, that they had never suspected that she would do anything like that, but when the matron questioned her she confessed that she had donc it many timesmto meet a manOh, Mr. Anthony, I don't know what's happened between them! It's too terrible to talk about?" Here Mrs. N. became incoherent. Covering her face with her hands, she burst into sobs while her husband, Icaving his chair, tricd awkwardly to comfort her. I lcft iny seat, 100, wanting to give them what privacy I could for the moment, and walked to the window. Outside the warın April sun was beating against the side of the building. Even the city throbbed with the vital newness of spring. Suddenly I remembered a thin book of pocins which by chance I had among my hooks at the office, and onc pocin ·The Dawn Of - Individual Responsibility 23 in it particularly. If only Mr. and Mrs. N. could understand what it meant. I was not sure that they could, but I got the book, anyway, and, without any preliminaries, read them a poem called April's Amazing Meaning. * April's amazing meaning doubtless lies In tall hoarse boys and slips Of slender girls with suddenly wider eyes And parted lips; 1 For girls must wander pensive in the spring When the green rain is over, Doing some slow, inconsequential thing, Plucking .clover; And any boy alone upon a bench When his work's done will sit And stare at the black ground and break a branch And whittle it Slowly; and boys and girls, irresolute, Will curse the dreamy weather Until they meet past the pale hedge and put Their lips together. I suppose really I was reading it aloud to please myself as much as anything, for it did nothing to comfort Mr. and Mrs. N. or to make them see that their daughter had been breaking the rules of her school in obedience to demands of her nature stronger than herself, demands which had been increased by her parents' failure to make her acquainted with them. A few days later Gertrude came to see me at my request and I found, just as I had suspected, that she was as good as gold. Nowhere in her beautiful nature, in which the child and the woman were both apparent, was there any *Reprinted by permission of the publishers, the Viking Press, from. Boy in the Wind, by George Dillon, ·22 Marriage And Family Problems "I scolded her and talked to her about the need to keep her mind pure, and then she stopped asking. For a long time now she hasn't said any of those things. She's scemed such a quict, good girl at home. We decided that that troublesome time in her mind was over because she never mentioned any of those bad things. She always went to church with us, sang in the choir as we wanted her to do, and we were sure that she had got over thinking about such things." She paused again and lowered her eyes, obviously fighting her desire to cry. “Then what is your problem now?" I asked. When she looked up there were tears in her eyes. "She's disgraced herself and us at school," she said. "It's her first ycar at college–her first year away from home. We had a letter from the dean of women there and went to see her. Gertrude hasn't kept up with her lessons. She's broken onc rule after another. The girls are supposed to be in their rooms at ninc o'clock. A week ago the matron of the house came to her room unexpectedly late at night and found Gerirude gone. She waited there in the dark until after midnight, and our daughter came in-through the window! They had put her in a first-floor room bccausc she seemed so good, and so quiet, that they had never suspected that shc would do anything like that, but when the matron questioned her she confessed that she had done it many times-to meet a man! Oh, Mr. Anthony, I don't know what's happened between them! It's too terrible to talk about!" Here Mrs. N. became incoherent. Covering her face with her hands, shc burst into sobs while her husband, Icaving his chair, tricd awkwardly to comfort her. I \cft iny scat, ton, wanting to give their what privacy I could for the moment, and walked to the window. Outside the warm April sun was bcating against the side of the building, Even the city throbbed with the vital newness of spring. Suddenly I remembered a thin book of pocins which by chance I had among my books at the office, and onc poem ·The Dawn Of Individual Responsibility 23 in it particularly. If only Mr. and Mrs. N. could understand what it meant. I was not sure that they could, but I got the book, anyway, and, without any preliminaries, read them a poem called April's Amazing Meaning. April's amazing meaning doubtless lies In tall hoarse boys and slips Of slender girls with suddenly wider eyes And parted lips; For girls must wander pensive in the spring When the green rain is over, Doing some slow, inconsequential thing, Plucking .clover; And any boy alone upon a bench When his work's done will sit And stare at the black ground and break a branch And whittle it Slowly; and boys and girls, irresolute, Will curse the dreamy weather Until they meet past the pale hedge and put Their lips together. I suppose really I was reading it aloud to please myself as much as anything, for it did nothing to comfort Mr. and Mrs. N. or to make them see that their daughter had been breaking the rules of her school in obedience 10 demands of her nature stronger than herself, demands which had been increased by her parents' failure to make her acquainted with them. A few days later Gertrude came to see me at my request and I found, just as I had suspected, that she was as good as gold. Nowhere in her beautiful nature, in which the child and the woman were both apparent, was there any *Reprinted by permission of the publishers, the Viking Press, from Boy in the Wind, by George Dillon.

·24 Marriage And Family Problems tracc of what her mother had called "nastiness", nowhere anything but a vital need to know and to be alive. Her parents had failed badly in meeting a part of that nccd, but fortunately they had passed on to her their own staunch characters, a guide so true that with a little help Gertrude was fully capable of making up for their blundering with. out harm to herself or anyone else. With the approval of her somewhat confused' but well-meaning parents we arranged for her to come to see me frcquently I have never had anyone ask me more intelligent qucstions than Gertrude has, and in addition she has answered many of my own. As soon as she learned that it was possible to talk freely about anything she wanted to, as soon as she began to understand some of the things within herself which had caused her to do things that her parents would think "bad" when what she wanted passionaicly to be (and what she rcally was) was a good girl, her entire life began to be simplified and she found that she didn't have to climb in sccret out of her bedroom window and spend half of a spring night wandering aimlessly about a park or the countryside with a boy, restless and irresolute until they "put their lips together". Too often the problems of boys and girls in their teens arc less casy to solve that Gertrude's' was. Often I am appalled by the beauty and the confusion that is in adolescence. For herc, in the body and mind and soul of an cager yet frail and incxperienced person, all that makes lifc important and full of incaning is struggling to be understood and expressed. Childhood, in which there has been the blessed sccurity of dependence upon others, is being reluctantly left behind for the strange and unknown world of adults. Impulses which thc untutored inind cannot understand (for indeed can cven those of us who have been well tutored by training and experience conspletely understand them?) are constantly forcing them. selves upon the consciousness of the boy and girl, and often impel them to thoughts and acts át variance with what they believe to be right. The insistent demands of ·La The Dawn Of Individual Responsibility 25 their individual natures are often at war with the demands of society. What are they to do unless they have firm and wise and loving guidance at every step? But I do not want, in this chapter, to talk about training and guidance for the young. This chapter is intended for young people themselves, or for anyone who would like to try, through what I shall try to tell you, to understand them a little better. Adolescence is the beginning of the time when the individual becomes acutely conscious of the problems of human relationships, when the direction of his life will become more apparent than it has been before, the time when his task of self-examination and choice of direction becomes most pressing. The problems of childhood may be as complex at bottom as those of any grown person, but the child is not aware of this in the same way that an adult is, for he has not the same kind of consciousness of self nor the same ability of self-analysis. During his earliest years he is principally conscious of that which can be expressed in two, words: "I am.” To be sure there are people about him, but their significance does not dawn upon him. “They” feed him, they clothe him, they bring him presents, they amuse or part which they play in his life is highly important to him-he scarcely thinks of the part he plays in theirs. When adolescence suddenly comes upon him without announcement or explanation to make its many mysteries familiar to him, consciousness begins to tell him not only "I am", but also, “I am one of many". The approval of others becomes more important to him. The need to look ahead and plan the place into which he will fit as a mature individual assails him. The walls of his parental home, which have always been a haven for him, seem suddenly to hem in his surging desire to be a part of the world outside and to set up a home of his own. His newly awakened consciousness of sex desire confuses him and frequently is at cross-purposes to his training. His new sense of himself as an individual and of his need to express that individuality annoy him. The ·26 Marriage And Family Problems and let it find its way to work out his own life often sets him in revolt against parental instruction and advice. Sometimes his economic responsibility to his parents makes his own economic future seem uncertain and even hopeless to him. How can a man with a limited carning capacity support his parents and get married, too? How can a boy or girl, good at heart and wanting only to do the right things, be limited by what seems often to them thc unthinking, ununderstanding advice of a generation which has forgotten what it is like to be young? How much actual domination ought an adolescent to be expected to suffer from parents? I can give only a general answer to thcsc and hundreds of other similar questions-especially the questions of young people. I have every sympathy for the problems of youth. I have only admiration and something a little like awc for the beautiful, fearful spectacle of youth, with its magnificent energy, its godlike desire to create, its dauntless courage, its readiness to rush blindly ahead into untried paths, to find out for itself in the face of anything that anyone can tell it. But if you are one of the questioning young, I ask you, in the midst of all your cnergy, in the face of all your courage, in the heat of all your desire, in your readiness to try anything as the only way you know to prove it, to remember always that you are now at the turning point of your life, to remember not only that you are, but also that cach of you is one of many, and that you have dcep responsibilities to them as well as to yourselves. How you act now in things that matter may determine to a great extent whether you shall live happy lives as adults, or years filled with frustration and miscry, whether you shall be uscful and respected members of your group or not, and you cannot be truly happy unless you are. I'm not going to tell you that your parents and the rest of the gencration which went before you always know whar is best for you, because there are plenty of individual cases in which I am sure that thcy do not, and as for the world ·person within The Dawn Of Individual Responsibility 27 at large, you have only to look at it living constantly in dread of war, at the millions of unemployed or at the divorce court statistics to be justified in saying: "See what a mess you older folks have made.” But I am going to tell you that there are older persons than you in the world who know a great deal which will help you at this critical period of your lives. Find them, in person, or in books. And more important than that, I am going to tell you that you yourself are now an "older person". Up to now you have been dependent upon others. The independent individual you has been slecping in the arms of what psychologists call “the security of childhood”. Adolescence marks the dawn of your responsibility. From now. on you must depend, in the last analysis, completely on that hidden self within you, that self which is now trying to become known through the strange restlessness, the mysterious impulses and the unremitting questioning now á part of you. Learn to know the meaning of these mighty forces which are at work in you. Learn from them and from the inherent wisdom which is in your own-hearts and minds your places as units in a great social scheme to which you must contribute if you are to be happy. Learn to regard the welfare of those around you and of the world at large as more important than the satisfaction of your immediate individual desires. Assume your responsibilities. Wherever you are, they begin with those closest to you—your parents and your brothers and sisters, if you have them. If you adopt as the highest rule of your life that you will never consciously do anything to hurt them unnecessarily, and that you will always do those things which will help them, and if you will follow this rule in every one of the new contacts which your awakening consciousness of coming maturity brings upon you, no one-least of all yourself,need fear the consequences of the conflicts which adolescence brings with it. If you can really accept this rule in all of its deep meaning, learn to understand it and to follow it, if you have C ·Marriage And Family Problems true love for mankind, and faith and patience (the most clusive of all qualitics for the young) you will find your way safely through the difficulties of your conflicts with your family and your schoolmates, and thosc cncounters with persons of the other sex which your dawning maturity brings about. If you are an average young person you will soon be called upon to face the most important choice which any inan or woman cver makes in his life that of a husband or wiſe. Now, before the actual decision is clouded by your irresistible desire and love for one person, is the time to be getting rcady for that choice. For when the time comes the choice should be simple and almost automatic, a spontancous coming together of a man and a woman through the grcat love which they bear cach other. But learn now as well as you can what love rcally is, so that you will not be fooled by a powerful attraction which has not within it the seeds of lasting, constructive lovc. I have always said that love between a man and a woman is a combination of physical clcsirc and fricndship, but I know in my hart, and heart, and you know, that this is too simple a detinition, that it is mcrcly a convcnicnt handful of words 10 try to explain that which is never completely cxplained. Love is much more than that. It is long-suſſering kindness; it is paticnce" and generosity; it is cxaltation of the belovce! above all the rest of the world; it is faith and trust and the cver-rcady willingness to sacrifice, if need bc, for the lover one. It is the undying hope and light of liſc which never fails even when all clse fails. That is what love is, whcthcr it is love of a father or mother for a child, of a child for his parents, of a friend for a friend, or of a man and woman for cach other, and that is what you must prepare yourself to give to, and im scek in, your matc if you are to find a happy marriage and build a constructive life through it. Learn now before you are swept off your feet by ihe physical passions wliich accompany love between a man and a woman. Do not minimize the importance of those phvsical ·The Dawn Of Individual Responsibility 29 emotions. No marriage which is not based upon the strong physical desire of a man and a woman for each other, and in which there is no joyous and full and free. expression and satisfaction of those desires, can possibly succeed wholly. But here is a truth which you must never forget. Unless true love is the motivating force of that physical desire. unless your love for your mate and your mate for you is something much greater than physical desire, even your physical relationship with your husband or wife is almost surely doomed to eventual failure, and your marriage to a state of unhappy chaos or dissolution. Strengthen early in life that side of your nature which is, capable of spiritual love, before you are plunged into a relationship with one of the other sex which may be so intense that you find yourself enslaved by it. Do not be too pready to encourage your physical passions or those of another by too intimate secret physical contacts with the other sex. I'm not a prude. I see nothing but beauty in the impulse which makes a boy and a girl want to kiss each other and feel the warmth and closeness of each other's bodies. It is not sin and virtue that I'm talking about. But I (and perhaps you) have seen grass fires started by such a little thing as a carelessly thrown cigarette. I have seen the pretty little flame which has sprung up in a tuft of grass, looking innocent and harmless. And then a gust of wind has come along, and in five minutes there has been such a raging fire that a dozen men, working with all their strength, could not put it out until it had run its coursc. destroying everything which was in its path. Your emotions are like the dried grass of autumn, ready for the spark of a little too much physical contact with the other sex to set a raging fire ablaze in them. Try to be sure before you lët that kind of fire burn too hotly in you that you are ready for it. Be sure that you are old enough and mature enough to know your own goals in life (as well as any man can know them in his youth). Be sure that you are capable of loving unselfishly, that your love is capable ·30 Marriage And Family Problems and eager to support all that is finest in the person you love, not simply an instrument through which you seek in gratify your own desires. Be sure that you want in love and marriage to build up your own character and that of the person you love, to set a high standard with that person of mutual conduct and respect for each other, to give yourselves and all that you have of energy, ability, intelligence and kindliness to the welfare of a family and of society, The days of adolescence are the days in which you must be finding out what these things mean to you. Strengthen them and leave your search for the passionate love of one of the other sex until a little later, when you are a little older, when you are a little more sure that you are capable of making love a strong, sure basc upon which to build that important social unit called a family. CHAPTER IV Days of Impatience MARY T. came to me reluctantly and with an air of defiance plainly visible in cvery gesture and cvcry word. She had not come of her own will, but because her parents had brought her. Although she was twenty-one years old, she had still many of the points of view of a child of thirteen. She was selfish, vain, sure of her own physical beauty, expecting all the world, and especially the world of men, to do homage to it, thinking still that what she called "having fun" was the most important thing in her life. Her parents were worried about her becausc, having promised (of her own accord, and without any suggestion from them) to marry a fine, hard-working, self-respecting young man, she showed no inclination to limit hcr dcsirc for romantic attention from men to her fiancé, nor the slightest desire to think about the responsibilities of her approaching marriagc. The poor boy to whom she was ·Days Of Impatience 31 engaged was in a constant tumult of confusion and pain and, what was equally important, the prospects of the girl's own happiness in her marriage to him or to any other man were seriously clouded by her attitudes. In her untrained mind her fiancé was not actually a life partner whom she had chosen to the exclusion of all others, one with whom she intended to face the responsibilities of maturity, but simply another man whose desire to marry her pleased her vanity and made her lift her head a little higher and feel a little more sure of her power to attract all men. His love was simply precious food for her shallow ego, not something before which she could feel humble and strong in her need to be the finest woman and the finest member of society which she was capable of being. “Tell me about Jim,” I said, because I wanted to get in her own words her attitude towards the man she had promised to marry: "Oh, he's sweet,” she answered lightly. "But he's so damned jealous! And he never wants me to have a good time. All he thinks about is working and saving his money. He expects me to sit with him and talk about crossing a lot of bridges we haven't come to yet. It's time enough to worry about inarriage after we get married. I'm going to have a good time while I can. He probably won't let me look at another man after we're married. I like to dance and have fun, not always go around with a long face.” "Tell me,” I said, "doesn't Jim dance?" "Oh, sure, he dances divinely. You don't think I'd've said I'd marry him if he didn't, do you?” "And doesn't he ever take you to dances?” "Sure he does, but that's no reason why I shouldn't go with other men when he doesn't, is it? He always wants get home early, and when I go with other men they're willing to stick it out and really have a good time." "What do you mean by early?" "Oh, one or two o'clock. The fun's just starting then.” “But Jim has to go to work, doesn't he?" "Sure, but if other men can take it, why can't he?" to ·32 Marriage And Family Problems "What time do you get up in the morning after, as you say, really having a good time with some other man?” "Oh, I'm usually up in time for lunch.” I shan't go on in detail with the story of Jim and Mary, for already it must be apparent to you that Mary's complete lack of consideration, her utter failure to comprchend the meaning of an engagement, made her prospective union with Jim a tragic farce in which ncither of them could find any_happiness. I finally convinced Mary that she must end her long scrics of unkindnesses to Jim with one lasting kind. ness, by breaking her engagement with him, completely and unequivocally, and I hope that I gave her a little clcarer understanding of herself and the meaning of engagements and marriages, which will stand her and some man in good stead when she again promises to marry. For an engagement to marry is not the light and inconscqucntial thing which Mary considered it. Next to marriage itself (with all that it connotes of responsibility to husband or wife, to children and to society) it should be regarded as the most important human relationship in liſc. It should be founded on one thing only, the declaration of a man and a woman to cach other that, becausc thcy love cach other in a way that puts their love far bcyond that which they feel for any other human beings, they intend, in marriage, to merge their individualities in a common life, in the hope of gaining from that union the blessed gifts of happiness and peace and constructive living, and to assume all of the responsibilities to cach other, to their children and to the world which their marriage places upon them. An engagement should be an announcement to cach other and to the world that such selfish individual desires as must be sacrificed by cach of them for the common good will be sacrificed. If this attitude is taken towards an engagement it will not be entered into too soon or without thought. No man can say lightly: "Will you marry inc?" And no woman can, without stirring the deepest parts of her naturc, say: "Yes," iſ engagement and marriage mean these things to ·Days Of Impatience 33 them. In fact, so strong can this conviction of the importance and seriousness of engagements and marriages be that it can act as a constant deterrent towards choosing the wrong mate. I once knew a man of eighty-five, who was perhaps the happiest and most peaceful person I have ever known in my life. Everyone who knew him loved and respected him. His years had been filled with work from which everyone who touched his life benefitted. At eighty-five he had been married for sixty years, and his wife, seven years his junior, was still at his side, her snow-white hair a crown of glory. She had borne eight children, all of whom had made fine places for themselves in society and two of whom were now themselves grandparents. This beautiful old man and woman needed few words between them when I knew them, but I never saw them look at each other without the unmistakable light of love in their eyes, and more than once I saw them sitting silently together, hand in hand like young lovers, peaceful and content and filled with the glory of a love that never failed either of them. More than once I have heard this old man express himself about marriage. He, who had made his life and that of many others glorious through union with a noble woman, invariably gave this advice: "Never get married so long as you can help it.” I shall never forget that. For what he meant was that until you were so sure that you had found your mate, the one who would support you for ever in everything that was right and fine and good for you both and for the world, until you knew so beyond a doubt that your love would never fail that person and that one's love would never fail you, until this conviction was so powerful that any opposition to your need to be forever with that person would be futile, you achieved a sound basis for marriage. And until you have achieved that basis you must not, if you are to keep your attitudes straight and the plan of your life right, enter into what the world calls an "engagement”. For it must be the preparation for marriage. In had not yet ·34 Marriage And Family Problems many ways it must be the testing ground of your love and faith and the rightness of your decision. It must not be simply a shallow satisfaction to your cgo or an cnlargemení of your opportunity and privileges with cach other, nor yct a justification for cither man or woman making more demands and giving less to the other than before. I am often asked at what ages it is wise for a man and a woman to plan marriage. Before making any answer to that question let mc repeat that love, faith, completo respect, a sense of responsibility in both persons and a desire for cach other which excludes all clse are more important prercquisites than any combination of ages can possibly bc. And further, it is apparent that no strict rule can be made which can fit all individuals. Even physically," different individuals mature at different times, but in discussing inarriage the question of physical maturity is of less importance than that of mental and spiritual development. I do not mean by this that physical compatability is noi important. But there can be no lasting physical compatibility without that spiritual and mental union which only maturc persons can know. Biologically the average girl is rcady for “marriage". (insofar as she is capablc of bcaring children) at the age of twelve or thirteen, and a boy before he is twenty; but who, in his right senscs, would bclicve that children of these ages are ready for marriage as we know it in a luighly complicaicd modern civilization? Even if they were endowed with cnough money so that they need never inave any Konomic worry, their minds and spirits have not yet reached thc point of development at which they are capable of meeting those responsibilitics to cach other and 10 society which marriage entails. No, much more than plıysical maturity is ncccssary to a successful marriage. Other things being right, a man of from twenty-six to thirty and a woman of from twenty-two 10 twenty-six scem to be of idcal ages to marry cach other. In any case they arc fortunate if there is about four ycars' difference in their ages-ilic man, of course, the oldcr--for a woman who ·! Days Of Impatience 35 matures physically at a much earlier age than a man, who is born older in instinctive knowledge and wisdom, likewise fades more quickly, once she has passed the more vigorous years of life. there may No more pitiable sight exists in the world than that of a man, still vigorous and youthful, and a wife, physically so old that she can no longer be a wife to him in all senses of the word. I almost never advise marriage between a man and a woman who is older than he is, yet even this rule has its exceptions. When I advise against such marriages I anı always reassured by the knowledge that, if the two persons involved love each other so deeply and are so well suited to each other spiritually and mentally that they cannot bear the thought of separation, they will not follow my advice, and it is probably right that they should not. Once an engagement has been entered into, it should he regarded as a time in which much can be done to lay the foundations of a happy marriage. In the first flush of love and desire which brought about the engagement have been little time for actually getting acquainted with the detailed points of view of each other. "Now, while actively saving for your marriage (if you are like most persons and have to save for it) is the time to lcarn, through frank and honest discussion, each other's attitudes towards sex, towards having children, towards the new relations which you will cach take on in marriage-your “in-laws" towards money matters, towards the career upon which the man is engaged or about to become engaged and towards the woman's point of view about her own place in life. Will she be satisfied and happy, if economic circumstances permit, to work out her career in her home, or does she feel the need of independent expression of her abilities outside the home? All of these details of each other's mental and spiritual life need examination and understanding before they are tested on the proving ground of marriage. I pause with some little trepidation before entering uponi discussion of the difficult question of physical intimacy during engagements. I cannot imagine an engagement in ·36 Marriage And Family Problems which the question does not arise. Unless a man and a woman arc so strongly attracted to cach other physically that the denial of sexual intimacy is difficult for them, they have no right to marry cach other. Yet sociсty, through. its recognized customs, through the dictates of its churches, cven through its laws, says that this desire shall not be indulged before marriage. I cannot cven pretend completely to agree with the absolute quality of that dictatc for cverybody under all circumstances. But I know this: thc prohibition of sexual intimacy outside of marriage is based on wise premises and is intended to be (and, I think, in the main is) bcncficial boi! to thc individual and to society, and this and cvery other prohibition of such time-honoured standing should be carcfully examined in cvery light before it is discarded. Whether you and the man or woman you intend to marry can safely discard this highly-important prohibition (which is practically universal in theory, if not in practice, throughout Western civilization) will depend largely upon the quality of your relationship to cach other and your attitudes towards it, towards its implications and towards everyone concerned. And "cveryonc concerncd" includes many more ihan you two. "As a man thinkcih in his heart, so is hc.": In cvery act of your life, that which seems wrong to you, iliat which seems to you capable of harming others or giving them pain, that which seems premature, that which seems unconstructive of good--that thing is wrong for you so do. Test your decisions by this rulc, hy thoroughly scarching your minds and hearts, and know that if you act contrary 10 thesc dictates you will only harm yourself and the person you love, will only throw a cloud over that which should always be filled with light and joyousness. There is ihis much obvious reason in the prohibition. Purting aside for the moment the possibility of procrcation and the consequence of children without homes and firm marriages to take the responsibility for them, there is 10 bic considered the influence which rexual intimacy will have upon your own relationship with thc person you intend 10 ·· Days Of Impatience 37 marry. In the height of sexual passion which intimacy brings about, there is a grave danger that physical attraction will claim the entire attention of the two lovers. This may happen, of course, for a time after marriage, but there is a balancing force in the common everyday practical events of living together, factors which are absent in an engagement. In marriage satisfaction of the need for intimacy is distributed over all the many intimate events and contact of household life; in an engagement all such intimacy may be concentrated in the sex act, magnifying its importance to the point at which there is little or no other common meeting ground between the lovers. I do not mean to say that this will happen inevitably. Whether it does or not depends very largely upon the character of the two persons primarily concerned, on the nature of their relationship, on the development of their love for and their acquaintance with each other, and the length of time which they must wait before marriage. I do not believe that any man and woman can safely enter into, a sexual relationship with a firm expectation of its satisfying both of them for the rest of their lives and they should have this expectation before attempting marriage) unless they have first learned to know each other spiritually. and mentally. It is impossible to tell at what point this acquaintanceship becomes a fact. Yet the theory of an engagement without sexual intimacy, and a marriage to begin at that time when they are ready to strengthen their spiritual companionship by a closer physical union, is sound. That part of your relationship which is pure love will only uplift and strengthen both of you for ever, if you have made it fine _enough and strong enough. Your physical - union must contribute to its strength and beauty, and will, if you are right for each other. But if it becomes a fact before you are ready for it, and if, through secrecy and indulgence against the prohibitions which are bound in our présent society to surround it outside of marriage, it becomes a furtive, stolen thing, there may be in- it for both

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·New Houses For Old 39 the bottom of my heart that they are infinitely less than the hurt of a bad marriage. Be as sure as anyone can possibly be before you promise to marry. But be surer than that before you fulfil the promise. Be ready, when you say "I do” on your marriage day, to have your bridges burned behind you and to feel no regret, but only boundless joy when you look back over the chasm which separates your days of single independence from the new freedom of spirit you have every right to expect in subordinating your selfish interests to those of the one you love. CHAPTER V ý New Houses for Old IN THE mind of every normal young man and woman there is a picture. Painted in their imaginations by their hopes and desires, patterned in one way or another by a reality established before they were born, it is accentuated as soon as they fall in love by visions of their future. The central object in the picture is a house. In their imagination it is furnished with all of the things cach likes best. In the woman's picture there are plenty of clothes closets, so that no one has to share with anyone else. The floor of the kitchen is covered with fine, heavy linoleum, which is easy to clean and always looks neat. There is plenty of electrical equipment-perhaps even down to the detail of an electric orange-juicer. And probably there is one small room brightly papered with an animal or Mother Goose design, and a baby's white bed with flowers painted on it. In the mind of the man different things are probably emphasized. He may be thinking of a special room, too, but perhaps it is one in which he may keep, and read without being disturbed, his books, or perhaps be able to display his guns or fishing-tackle. Or maybe he sees a workshop, beautifully furnished with electrical equipment, in ·yo Marriage And Family Problems which he may have the finc creative joy of turning plain picces of wood into furniture. You may not think, if you are a woman, that he sees in his picture the gay little room for the child at all, for he probably will say less about it than the woman docs. But don't bc fooled by his reticence! I have had too many haggard-faced young men sit before me, pleading for help in thcir cffort to keep their children, cven though their wives Icft them, not to know how much children mcan 10 incn. Though the man's vision of a future home varies in detail from that of the woman, both have fundamentally thic same piciure in their minds. And what a fic picture it is! It is marked by spaciousness and order, by bcautiful colours and clcanliness. In that house of the imagination there is warmth on winter's coldest days. In the stilling hcat of summer-a cool brecze blows through the open windows. Though there may lie striſc and unplcasantness and grinding work in the outside world, there is always peace and happiness and rest 10 bic found hcrc. Even ihough in thc rcal homes which iho young couple know thicy scc quarclling and unhappiness and resilessness, the fundamental righiness of the home they have built in their minds is not changed. Their marriage and thicir lone will be different. It is righe that this should be so. Making a good home s one of the niost difficult and one of the finest accombjichments in the world, a vask which calls for all the hope and courage and energy that can bc summoned. But it iccols comciling larger and more powerful than all of these, nd that is faithfaith in the rightness of the home you re going to makc, faith in the love which you and another car cach other, faith in your joint wisdom and tolerance nd patience, faith in what life has in store for you iſ only ou keep your direction straight, faith in your joint alrility rejeci ile falsc and take the true gifts of life and use cm well. Even though you may never achieve in all perfections of tangible dciail quite the picture of a home rich you established in your mind at seventcon, the ·wife or your New Houses For Old 41 higher and sounder your ideal is, both for your relationship with your wife or husband and for the tangible setting into which you will take your marriage; the greater the probability that you will keep your marriage fine. For the thing that matters in the life you shall live with your husband is the relationship itself, the degree to which you 'can develop understanding between you, the love and friendship which unite you, the companionship and support and comfort which you give each other. And for this achievement you need the highest kind of ideal of the relationship itself and all of the things which will surround it, the highest kind of a mark to shoot at. One of my friends is a man much younger than myself, whom I shall call Fred. I have known him ever since he was a child and I was a much younger man than I am now, We became fond of each other because we found, even when he was very young, that we could talk freely to each other. When he was no more than twelve years old he began to tell me the kind of a house he was going to have when he grew up and got married. In many ways a Hollywood movie'star could not have had more elaborate plans than he. Even the swimming pool was included. One by one he would describe to me the rooms in his house of to-morrow, until my practical mind was engaged by the building cost aloneſ At other times, as he grew a little older, he would talk to me about the kind of woman he would marry and what their married life would be like. Sometimes I would worry about him, for it seemed to me that nowhere would he ever find the paragon of virtues with which he had surrounded his picture of a woman, never would he be able to build quite the house which was in his imagination, and no marriage relationship could quite measure up to his expectation of it. I was afraid that in his comparison of the reality, with the ideal he might find discouragement and frustration that would render him incapable of making the reality what it ought to be. Then he fell in love and brought the girl proudly round ·I 42 Marriage And Family Problems 10 sce ine. As soon as I looked into her clear, honest, laughing cyes, as soon as I saw the love which was in thoni as slic looked at him, and hcard her talk about the home they were to have together-talk with the same cager enthusiasm, the same crcative reaching for the stars which was in his description of the house of his vision, swimmingpool and all, I stopped worrying. Herc was idcalism, yes, but somcthing much stronger and Giner and morc rcal than mere day-dreaming. Here was something to guide them both, to keep their courage strong and their vision clcar. They were engaged for a year and then they were marricdon Fred's salary of £5 a week! Evelyn, who was making £4 a week, was going to work another year, but they were planning to save every cont of her salary except what she needed for car-fare and lunches, because they wanted to have a baby right away, as soon as they could, and her year's salary was going to go for that. And Fred had been promised a better position and a substantial risc in six months. They had nothing to worry about at all, they said! But their baby would need a place with a lot of air around it. They would never put him into a cramped city apartment! (I remembered at this point Fred's claborate descriptions of the spacious house of his imagination.) And so they were renting a house in the suburbs in order to be ready when the baby came. There was something in the courage and faith and boundless good cheer of these two, who seemed little more than :hildren then, which filled me with awe and made me fec! cry humble. It was as though they were rushing head. ong into a torrent with nothing to keep them from being wept to destruction save their faith and maybe the will of ic torrent itself, which was perhaps, after all, morc kindly ian I had fcared it might be. I went to see them in their hornc, of course. It had three oms, four straight chairs, 3 lied, a dresser, somc kitchen stipment, inost of which had heen bought at a chain- ·New Houses For Old 43 store, and no curtains at the windows. That is, there were none the first time I was there. But if there was any adverse comparison in the minds of Fred and Evelyn between this actuality and the spacious picture of their pre-marriage imaginations, there was certainly no evidence of it. They showed me that three-room cottage as though they were exhibiting a palace, marble swimming-pool and all. They were so proud of it that they were almost bursting. A year later, just a little before their baby. was born (for even that came about according to their schedule) Fred had a long talk with me. “You know, John,” he said, “I always expected a lot from marriage. You used to caution me now and then, because you said that if I got my ideas fixed too high, if I didn't get my feet down to the ground, I might be disappointed." He paused, and his face was so serious that I waited a little anxiously, for Fred and Evelyn had been so gloriously happy when they had married and I was so fond of both of them. It was going to hurt if this marriage went badly. Then he looked up, directly into my eyes, and his voice rang with conviction and pride of knowledge as he went on. “Well, I just wanted to tell you now, after a year of it, that you didn't know what you were talking about.” He grinned. “I didn't know, either. I hadn't guessed the half of it. John, being married to Evelyn is so much better than anything I ever imagined possible in this world that I have to pinch myself every day to make sure I'm not dreaming." I looked at him and wished that all the doubters, all those who have no faith in the rightness and the capabilities of marriage, could have seen his face. Then I thought again of the spacious palace of his imagination, and the little house in the suburbs which would have fitted loosely into the reception-hall of that house of dreams, and I smiled. “What about that house you used to talk about?” I asked. He laughed, but it was a good laugh, with a promise and a prediction in it. "I suppose you'll think I'm crazy,” he said. “And don't ask me to tell you what I mean, but we've got it. Oh, we'll D ·Marriage And Family Problems have a larger house some day, with more things in it. Though we've got more now than you've seen. You haven't been out for over a month. Evelyn told me to tell you to be sure to come out next Sunday, because she wants to show you the sofa she picked up at a sale last week. And you haven't even seen the new chair in the living-room yet. Sure, we'll have a bigger house with more things in it and more kids too, I'll bet. But in a crazy sort of way that I can't explain this is the house I was talking about all the time-. only it's a lot better than I ever thought it could be.” He didn't have to explain, really, and it wasn't a crazy sort of way, but one of the finest and soundest phenomena in human life which had made him paint that picture of a palace in his mind and identify a tiny cottage with it later, That finc and beautiful building with long corridois and spacious rooms was a symbol to Fred of the home to the building of which he planned to devote his best faith and energy. But the home was not a mere collection of physical facts. It was something to be established in the love and faith and courage which he and a woman would find in each other. And because he had been fortunate enough to meet and to love and to be loved by Evelyn, that of which the house of his imagination had been a symbol became al reality. Their love and their hope and faith and goodness, their life together, constituted the reality of which the brick and stone and mortar of thcir drcam-house had been symbols. It is of the foremost importance that marriage be entered into in the golden aura of idealism which marked the marriage of Fred and Evelyn. Yet it takes a finc intelligence and a fine sense of balance (which both of them had) to take into consideration the material facts which surround you and to accept and use them rightly. It takes a deep and lasting wisdom and faith to keep from lctting your desire for rcalization of the idcal interfere with your happiness in accepting the reality. I believe that marriage offers both men and women their greatest chance it happiness and constructive living. But I know, too, that this happi- ·. vary with New Houses For Old 45 ness can come about only through recognizing, accepting and working with those less-attractive elements which exist because, if you please, of the frailty of human nature and the limited extent of understanding possible between most people. Some very wise person (probably a woman, though I can: not remember) once said that true marriage was “a cross between a dog-fight and the 'peace that passeth all understanding'.” Well, I should like to see those elements which resemble a dog-fight eliminated from the expectations of everyone about to be married, but I should not like to see anyone married without knowing that there would inevitably be some conflict, and without planning ahead in such a way as to remove most of the stimulations to such conflict. What are those things which will cause conflict, and how may they be foreseen and dealt with? They are legion, and the ways of meeting them will every individual circumstance and with the natures and relationships of the persons involved in them. But there are general principles and general expectations which all may face. There are intellectual aspects. Do you know each other as well as you should? In addition to desiring each other physically and giving each other emotional pleasure, are you sure of that element in your relationship which is composed of pure unselfish friendship? One of the American Indian tribes has a phrase which they use as we use the single word "lover”. But literally translated, it means "friend of my heart". Can you think honestly and proudly and happily of the person you are about to marry as "the friend of your heart” True friends may come into conflict with each other, but their friendship is the flux which brings about renewed understanding and the balm which heals the hurts they give each other. There are emotional aspects. Are you comfortable and happy and strong in your emotional knowledge of each other? Do you want to be with each other so much that .parting is sorrow and absence a pain in your ·46 Marriage And Family Problems hcarts, yet a happy pain, filled with quiet faith and trust in your spiritual closeness to cach other even during physical absences? Have you waited long enough to be sure of these things, yet not so long that you are cndangering the life of this emotional fire? Don't let yourselves exaggerate'the importance of obstacles outside of your relationship itself. Many of them are real, to be sure, and cannot be denied, but if you let them delay your marriage beyond the point of nccessity, long attenuated frustration of your dcsirc to be with cach other and establish your home together may eventually quench the fire that sustains your love and promises you happiness. There arc cconomic aspects, and these are of the greatest importance. Of course you must have cnough to get married on. You must stand on your own feet in order to find happiness in any relationship-even your relationship to yourself. But be sure that you feel the need only of what is actually enough not an exaggerated desire for much more. Your economic responsibility and stability arc not mcrely matters of the size of your income. You may be stablc and secure and responsible on 25 a weck, and completely unstable, completely irresponsible, utterly without security, on £100 a week. For security exists not in a large income, but in that margin between what you have and what you spend. Look to the actual material cssentials of clccení living first. See that you can manage those, and be patient and hopeful as you grow into thc capacity for affording luxurics. Actually thcsc are about the only needs for a matcrially wholesoinc lifc: A cican and dccent house or apartment. Sufficient wholesome food to maintain hcalth. Clothing sufficient for warmth and decency. (A man doesn't have to have six suits, and an inexpensive cloth coat will fulfil the primary function of a coat as well as 12 2600 inink.) A margin of money in a savings account (which will con- ·New Houses For Old 47 stantly increase in normal times) for yearly insurance premiums, medical care and other emergencies. A little more to spend on pure fun-if only an occasional bus ride, or the local cinema. (Don't let your need to save make your life drab.) The financial circumstances in which either or both of you have lived before your marriage need have but little bearing on your life together. No marriage can be expected to succeed, of course, if it is attempted on less money than will provide actual subsistence, but if the characters of both husband and wife are right, and if their relationship is soundly grounded, neither need fear leaving a home, of luxury (or asking the other to leave such a home) for one in which sound subsistence and growth are possible. But there is one thing which I cannot impress upon you too strongly. Do not, in your attempt to make both ends meet, establish your home with anyone else in the worldleast of all with the parents of either of you. I have seen too many tragic ruins of marriages which might have been fine come from this attempt, in which the happiness of a younger generation, a peculiarly intimate happiness, has been subjected to the examination and interference of an older generation composed of fathers and mothers, who automatically felt and exercised proprietary rights. Live in one room if necessary, by yourselves, but unless yours is a very exceptional case do not let the room which covers your early marriage cover either of your parents, save when they come as happy and welcome guests into your home. Give to the legal ceremony which makes you man and wife in the eyes of the world, an importance which reflects the importance of your union. I do not mean that you must have a large wedding, or even that it is necessarily desirable that you should have. But let the ceremony stand for something very special in your minds and hearts. Do not, in a spirit of casualness, walk into a registrar's office and be married as lightly and with as little thought as you would buy a dog licence or pay your electric-light bill. I know a ·48 Marriage and Family Problems man who, when the registrar who married him asked him to stand up for the ceremony, said that he didn't want to bother, that he could be married sitting down. Of course his marriage was a failure--not because he remained sitting, but because his attitude towards his inarriage was such that it didn't seem important enough to him even to stand up for. Try to find out what, in your marriage ceremony, is the symbol of importance to the person you are going to marry, and as nearly as you can, carry that out by agreement between you. If you are a man it may not matter to your whicther a registrar or a minister marries you, yet for ?? woman with a church background a church marriage inay seem of the utmost importance. If this is so, even though you are not a church-going person, hare respect for her wish. Know that it is an indication of the importance which she attaches to being marricd to you. Sacrifice something else if necessary to the need for a few days alone together away from your responsibilities to other people and to work. Have some sort of a honeymoon, cren though you can afford no more than a week-end, with perhaps an additional day borrowed from your work before and after. Go away alone with cach other. Make it a time in your lives which you will always remember with a deep sense of joy as the beginning of a new life for both of you, When you come to furnish your new house do it as well as you can, but strictly within the limitations of your cconomic ability of the moment. If you are in love with cach other it won't much matter 10 you at first what your furniture is like. The joy of being together will be enough. Don't buy things on instalments. Get the bare essentials. if you can afford no more, and save for cach now thing. buying it when you have finally saved cnough. Two boxes set on top of cach other with a curtain in front of them are a better kitchen cabinct than the most claboralc thing you can find in a housc-furnishings shop, if you cannot afford to pay for it. The burden of debt which' instalment Huying crcates can become a mountain under which your ·New Houses For Old 49 happiness and hope and energy may be buried. One of the happiest marriages I ever knew started out with even a smaller expenditure for furniture than that which Evelyn and Fred made. Four chairs bought secondhand at half a crown each and painted, a second-hand kitchen table, which cost five shillings, and exactly the kind of kitchen cabinet I have just described (with a secondhand gas plate on top of it) constituted the joint kitchen and dining-room furniture. That was twenty years ago. The two people who started that way have now one of the most successful marriages (with four fine children) and one of the most beautifully-furnished homes I have ever seen, and they never went into debt a penny for anything they own. They still talk about the fun they had saving for this piece and that. Go into your new home (whether it contains one room or twenty) with a feeling of respect for it as the place which will do much to make or ruin your marriage. Remember always that it is the setting for the finest thing in your life, your marriage. Remember that here you will test your ability to maintain fine human relationships, and ihat the setting you make and maintain will influence not only your relations with each other, but also those with everyone whom you meet. Keep its influence fine. Bring to it those special attentions which you began to show each other when you first fell in love. A woman still likes to be brought flowers after she is married; a man still likes to be told that he is smart and strong. Bring your lover-like attentions into your home with you, do not leave them behind in your memories. Remember, as you cross the threshold of your new home, that you now begin a long series of adjustments to cach other on the success of which your entire marriage depends. You may have adjustments to make between the details of your religious beliefs, adjustments to each other's physical habits and mental peculiarities, adjustments to each other's relatives and friends, to the loss of certain parts of the freedom to come and go without thinking of others, to the ·50 Marriage And Family Problems financial and household responsibilities which your new position brings with it. These will come about naturally if your relationship is right and if each of you approaches them with the willingness and even eagerness' to go a little more than half-way. Do not try, in making your adjustments, to re-make your wife or husband. Often you will find that little things which may annoy you are inevitable concomitants of the very things which made you love the other. Work on your own adjustments, on those new attitudes which it may be necessary for you to build within yourself, and support always in your mate the qualities which are his finest and best, even when they may conflict to some extent with your immediate personal desires. Thus will you help him to make his adjust. ments and build your relationship soundly. Remember the need and the right which each of you has to privacy. There are times when no one can or has a right to pierce the citadel of another's heart or mind. Your husband or wife has the right to privacy in letters, thoughts, person. You should grant it freely without feeling suspicion or distrust in your mind. There are times when such aloneness is absolutely essential to well-being. Do not try to devour this person you love through a desire for complete possessiveness to the extinction of all individuality. There must be an air of personal freedom in your mairiage, to make possible that very process of building your identity with each other. Always look forward. Your marriage is the beginning of a new life. And this is much more important than the fact that it is, in a measure, the ending of an old one. Act always in marriage to build a bright future together, based on a love which (as James Russell Lowell wrote): Can warm the poorest hovel 10 a home Which, when our autumn cometh, as it musi, And life in the chill wind shivers bare and leafless, Shall still be blessed with Indian Summer youth 112 bleak November, and with thankful heart Smile on its ample stores of garnered fruit. :

·The Vorld Slut Out 51 CHAPTER VI The World Shut Out GO INTO any of the world's literature, no matter on what level, from the lowest to the highest, no matter whether it is the “sacred” writing of the world's scriptures or the common lines of the daily newspaper, wherever you will. find the hopes and aspirations, the successes and failures, the joys and miseries, the baseness and the divinity of man, there you will find discussed among the most powerful forces which make his personality whatever it is, that mysterious blending of factors which we try to designate by one word: "sex". In all this vast collection of literature there is one little four-line verse written by an unknown poet of the sixteenth century which seems to me, in its brief impassioned cry, to signify the beauty, the longing, the elemental force and the mystery which surround the physical love of a man and a woman. Apparently exiled by some circumstances for the winter, knowing that he could not return to the woman he loved until spring, he cried in his love and longing: O western wind when wilt thou blow, That the small rain down may raini? O, that my love were in my arms And I in my bed again! Here is the feeling of the new world of early marriage at its finest. Here are the ecstasy, the companionship, the comfort, the support, which a fine physical relationship can give to a man and a woman who love each other. Make no mistake about it. Sex in human life is infinitely more than the means of procreation, and infinitely more than physical gratification or if it is not more than the latter it will not remain even that for long. Enter your marriage with a solemn realization of the potentialities of your ·50 Marriage And Family Problems financial and household responsibilities which your new position brings with it. These will come about naturally if your relationship is right and if each of you approaches them with the willingness and even eagerness to go a little more than half-way. Do not try, in making your adjustments, to re-make your wife or husband. Often you will find that little things which may annoy you are inevitable concomitants of the very things which made you love the other. Work on your own adjustments, on those new attitudes which it may be necessary for you to build within yourself, and support always in your mate the qualities which are his finest and best, even when they may conflict to some extent with your immediate personal desires. Thus will you help him to make his adjustments and build your relationship soundly. Remember the need and the right which each of you has to privacy. There are times when no one can or has a right to pierce the citadel of another's heart or mind. Your husband or wife has the right to privacy in letters, thoughts, person. You should grant it freely without feeling suspicion or distrust in your mind. There are times when such aloneness is absolutely essential to well-being. Do not try to devour this person you love through a desire for complete possessiveness to the extinction of all individuality. There must be an air of personal freedom in your mairiage, to make possible that very process of building your identity with cach other, Always look forward. Your marriage is the beginning, of a new life. And this is much more important than the fact that it is, in a measure, the ending of an old one. Act always in marriage to build a bright future together, based on a love which (as James Russell Lowell wrote): Can warm the poorest hovel to a home Which, when our autumn cometh, as it must, And life in the chill wind shivers bare and leafless, Shall still be blessed with Indian Summer youth In bleak November, and with thankful heart Smile on its ample stores of garnered fruit.

·The World Shut Out 53 and to do your best to establish them, to learn what it means to you both, and to emphasize the constructive elements in that meaning, for whether you succeed or fail in this will go far towards determining whether you will succeed or fail in your marriage. Your first duty towards your mate, yourself and your marriage is to cleanse your mind of any possible false modesty or reticence or disproportionate evaluation of the part which the physical aspects of sex are to play in your married life. Designed by nature for the continuation of the race, sex has come to mean much more than this to the human animal, endowed as he is with creative imagination, aspiration and a delicately-adjusted nervous system. The spontaneous and joyful coming together of a man and woman who love each other and who, through marriage, have accepted openly their responsibilities towards each other, towards the children who may be born as a result of their union, and towards the world, has in it the greatest potentialities of good. Have infinite respect for your desire for each other! Have respect for every expression of that love which drew you together, and keep that respect so high that you will not let your relationshp become degraded by thoughtlessness, inconsideration or indifference. Do not make the mistake of believing that your 'sexual relationship” is confined to the sex act itself. For if this is your conception you will find that this one act assumes vastly too great importance in your minds and by this very over-emphasis will be damaged. No, a part of that creative need within you both is satisfied by every act of tenderness and helpfulness which you perform for each other, by every generosity and every word of sympathetic understanding, by every loving glance which passes between you, by your planning for parenthood, by the spiritual support which cach gives to the finest things in the other. Pay more attention to these needs which you both have than you do to the physical facts of sex and you will be safeguarding your sexual relationship more soundly than you can by any physical act.

·52 Marriage And Family Problems physical relationship with your husband or wife. Learn to understand the qualities and meaning of the relationship and how to make it become one of the most solid and lasting elements in the foundation of your happiness. Your ability to do this will depend first of all upon your attitudes and those of your mate. What does sex mean to you now? It should mean the gratification of a physical hunger to be sure, but unless in addition to this it means, shall we say, the creative force of motherhood and fatherhood, the merging of your two personalities, the adoration of beauty, peace and comfort, you had best reconstruct your attitudes. Learn to consider it in quietness rather than merely in the confusion of the turbulent passions which it stimulates in you, if you would learn to live rightly within your sex relationship. Among the wrong attitudes towards sex which have wrecked many a marriage are these all too common ones: That marriage is merely a licensing of the opportunities for sexual enjoyment. That a sexual relationship is purely for the joint physical pleasure of those who engage in it. That sex is base except when used for procreation. That a "good woman" does not feel sexual desire as a man does. That a woman should be sexually subservient to a man. That there is some definite standard of frequency for the sex act, and that indulgence more or less often than this is harmful to health. These are all false and harmful ideas. A sexual relationship is one of the most-highly individualized matters in the world. No doctor and no psychologist can tell accur. ately and in detail and finally all of the circumstances and conditions which would make the best relationship between you and your wife or husband possible, but he could tell you, as I do, that it is highly important for you both to discover for yourselves what those círcumstances and conditions are, ·- The World Shut Out 55 case see a doctor at once. More often than not, however, the causes are psychic, and often with proper understanding and patience these may be overcome without consulting anyone. Among the most frequent of the latter are clumsiness, untidiness or actual dirtiness, coarseness, or the indifference of the mate, chronic physical fatigue, cruelty, wrong attitudes towards sex, some of which I have discussed above, a lack of love for the sexual partner, a complete selfishness and love of self, an emotional shock of some kind which may have nothing to do with the marriage itself, a disappointment in the character of the spouse, a lack of physical or mental privacy from friends or relatives, fear of anything—including economic insecurity, illness, jealousy of a real or fancied attachment outside the marriage, resentment for a real or fancied offence. It may sound fantastic, but more than once I have helped a wife and husband straighten out what seemed to them to be unsurmountable sex difficulties by the simple expedient of instructing one or both of them in the necessity to use frequently a bath-tub, soap and water. Others I have straighened out by convincing them that troublesome inlaws must leave their house, others by helping them reconcile their religious points of view, others by helping to explain away silly and groundless jealousies and resentments of things long past, which should have been forgotten. Anything which brings about a feeling of physical distaste or mental or spiritual estrangement between husband and wife may be reflected in a sexual failure, which may last a short or a long time, depending upon your joint ability to remove the troubling factor. If you find yourself in this difficult situation avoid impatience and reproach. Do not let the thought enter your mind that, because this relationship is not at the moment satisfactory, it will never be so again, or that you will seek another with someone else. Examine your own attitudes and actions towards your mate and your marriage. Try to discover wherein you may have offended or been in- ·- 54 Marriage And Family Problems Yet the pliysical act itself is capable of bringing beauty and peace into your lives, or bitterness and confusion. Regard that part of your relationship thoughtfully, without too many preconceived ideas as to the details of it. Remember that the impulse of a man towards a woman or a woman towards a man finds many and varied expressions, and do not either of you be shocked at some detail of your physical love-making which surprises you because it does not fit into the pattern which you have been taught to expect. Remember that "love play" is not sexual perversion. Rid your mind of prejudices and look to the feeling behind your relationship. If that remains pure and right its expressions will be right. If, by that rarest of all chances, you are unfortunate cnough to find to your sorrow that you have married a man or woman who, through mental maladjustment, is actually that strangest and most pitiable of creatures, a sexual pervert, talk the matter over frankly and fully with him or hier and insist upon professional advice. But do not be too quick to decide that this is true. Actual perversion is rare indecd and the diagnosis of a layman is always dangerous. More frequent than this, and usually much easier to solve, is the problem of impotence in a man or frigidity in a woman. If it is your misfortune to en-- counter cither of these in your mate the situation will call for the utmost in tact, restraint, patience and kindness on your part. Call these virtues to your aid and do your best to save a marriage which may be magnificent once you have solved this problem together. Often it will need no more than your kindness and tact and patience and love, your tenderness and your quiet casualness about the whole matter. Do not become panicky and tragic about it and act as though your mate had completely failed you. Nothing is more calculated to exaggerate and increase the difficulty than this. Sometimes there is a physical cause which prevents either a man or a woman from engaging frecly in the sex act. If there is any belief in either of your minds that this is the ·Pulling Your Weight :57 been married three years and was the father of two children. Yet he was still living in the world of fantasy which is the legitimate heritage of the adolescent. Nowhere in his consciousness could I find the slightest indication that he had ever really accepted the responsibilities of manhood or of marriage. His wife, he complained, did not love him any more. She greeted him coldly when she came in in the evening (for she, and not he, was working), she prepared the dinner and ate with him in silence, she did not respond to him physically any more. I interrupted to ask him how it happened that she was working and he was not. "I lost my job,” he said. "I had a good job when we were married, but the boss was always picking on me for little things and I got sick of it and told him to go to hell. I don't have to take the kind of things he said to me from any man!” "How long ago was that?" I asked. “A year and a half ago. My wife had saved a little money, but when that was gone and I couldn't find a job she went to work." " "Have you really looked for a job?” I asked. "Sure I have. Anyway I did at first. But what's the good of walking the streets every day when there aren't any jobs? A fellow gets discouraged.” "How is that your wife could find work when you couldn't?" "'She's a stenographer. There are lots of jobs for stenographers." I talked with him at some length, without answering his question as to whether he ought to leave his wife or not, and then I asked him to send her in. What a difference there was in the points of view and aspects of the two! He had come to complain about what he had considered her shortcomings. She sat before me, overwhelmed with sorrow at the distance which was growing between them, but without any trace, of resentment ·adequate, and do what you can to correct that offence or that inadequacy if you discover it. Try to be extra kind, extra thoughtful, extra attractive in your mind and body. Discuss the matter freely and each of you contribute whatever seems in any way pertinentmñot just to the actual sex act, but to your entire relationship. Work it out yourselves if you can, but if you are unable do not hesitate to seek professional advice any more than you would if your difficulty were a recognized and common physical illness. There is nothing shameful in what has happened to you, and nothing unusual . It is a rare sex relationship indeed, which has not had its difficult moments. But whatever the indications are at the outset of such a difficulty, do not abandon your efforts to establish your physical relationship with your mate on the highest and most satisfying plane for both of you. Think of it as something more than either the mechanism for procreation (of which I shall write in another chapter) or sheer physical gratification. If it presents a problem to either of you do not evade it and let the whole matter gradually slip into a grim routine of frustration. Unless you are very unusual persons the whole success of your marriage is at stake in this. Face it bravely and kindly and wisely, and you will come through it to a new happiness and peace and find, in your sexual relation, a gradually developing tie which will give you strength and comfort and peace throughout your lives. CHAPTER VII Pulling Your Weight JANES Y. had come to me apparently because he wanted to get comfort for his wounded feclings and perhaps even support for his cowardly desire to leave his wife and children. In many ways he was one of the youngest men I have cver met. Twenty-eight when he came to me, he had ·Pulling Your Weight 59 chapter) and know that it may result in a strengthening of the marriage tie and a heightening of the beauty of marriage. It was rather innate in the nature of James Y., who refused to "pull his own weight.” No marriage can be established on the efforts of one person alone. It is a partnership to which each must contribute his best effort, in which each must accept full responsibility. In the fundamental facts of the union the husband's and the wife's responsibilities are the same, but there are detailed differences of emphasis which their biological functions, their peculiar capaħilities and custom have dictated. Every husband and wife should at the outset of their marriage have a clear understanding of what those differences are, accept them, make such individual adjustments as their individual marriage and personalities warrant, and learn to carry out the specific responsibilities which are indicated. I believe that the successful husband is still, as he was considered generations ago, the head of his house. I believe that most women want him to be. I believe that even those who will not admit it (and most of them will gladly and openly) actually want leadership from their husbands. The man who refuses to accept this role and the responsibility it forces upon him, the man who says: “Everything is fifty- . fifty in our marriage,” or “I have too much respect for my wife to tell her what she ought to do,” is actually shirking Man is also still the bread-winner, in spite of the wave of emancipation which has swept through the life of women during the last two generations. In most of those cases in which this is not true, at least the wife, and usually the husband also, wishes that it were. This is not because man has any special intelligence and capability which woman does not have, but simply and plainly because woman is the child-bearer and the child-raiser, intended and adapted to this function by nature, and to those related functions of home-making and caring for the father, or prospective father, of her children. his job. E ·1 60 Marriage And Family Problems The wife must meanwhile shoulder equally thosc peculiar responsibilities which her nature and custom have decreed for her. Whether she is employed outside or not she must (save in exceptional cases) take responsibility for the management of the house. This does not mean that if she has a job outside the home the husband ought to expect her to work all day in office or factory and all evening in their home while he sits and reads the newspaper. If she shares with him the task of carning a living, she has every right to expect him to share with her the task of 'making and kecping the home the fine thing they both want. But, as in other things he takes leadership, here she must lead and take the responsibility. If she is not employed outside the home it should be her pride to make the affairs of the household run smoothly so that her husband will come into contact with as few of the troublesome details of household management as is possible. Perhaps he will enjoy cooking a steak or baking cake now and then. If he does he should by all means be allowed to have his fun, but the man who must night after night come home to an unmade bed, or see his wife spend the evening sweeping or ironing or dusting, is pretty sure to be, with justification, an unhappy and dissatisfied husband. Happy is the woman whose husband thinks during the day of the pleasant evening he will spend with his wife, and hurries home at night as to the pleasantest spot hic knows, where detailed decisions are unnecessary to him and where he may fcel secure and happy in the peace and order which a woman has created there. But the responsibilities of neither husband not wife end with these tangible duties, the assumption of these practical tasks. Their marriage is a poor thing indecd unless they married each other for much more than this. Before they were married, while they were in the delightful world of newly experienced love for each other, the woman' found no mcdicinc for wounded spirits so finc and cffective as her lover's words telling her that she was beautiful, that he could not be with her enough, that he could not live without her. She still needs these words after she has married him. She ·Pulling Your Weight 61 needs praise when things go well and sympathy and comfort when they go badly, perhaps even more than she did before she was married, for her responsibilities are greater now than they were before and the chances for details to go 'wrong greater than before. Similarly the man needs from her the same kind of "building up”, the same constant support, the same inspiration to be and do his best. For each this is a part of the responsibility of marriage. This task is a part of the process of “pulling your own weight”. I have explained in my preceding'chapter the important part which sex plays in every marriage. It is the joint responsibility of husband and wife to establish and keep a fine and satisfying sex relationship between them. Too often this responsibility is relegated in the mind of one to the other. Some of the involved theories which I have heard men enunciate to place the blame for sexual failute upon their wives would amaze any intelligent reader, but I have heard statements of the failure of the male made with an equal lack of understanding by women. Any husband who believes that a normal woman is without need of or interest in a physical sex life, or any wife who believes that she can keep her husband faithful to her without this normal interest, is either a fool or woefully ignorant. Whether you are man or woman, think seriously and understandingly of your mate's sexual needs--not merely because you want to gratify your own, but as a part of your responsibility to the one you love and to your marriage. Always remain the confidant, the playmate, the comforter, the friend, the wise and thoughtful adviser, the helper, the physical and spiritual lover, the host or hostess (for no home is complete to which guests do not come gladly and leave, hoping to come again) for the person whom you married. These are not merely the privileges of marriage; they are as definitely your responsibilities once you have become married, as it is your obligation to pay a bill which you have incurred. And you have together, as husband and wife, a larger and broader responsibility which you must discharge if you :.

·62 Marriage And Family Problems are to remain happily married. Before marriage you were two units; now you are one, socially responsible to the world. Keep your self-respect in every contact which you have with the world outside your home and you will add to the love and respect for each other upon which the happiness of your marriage is built. + CHAPTER VIII The Eternal Child If I were asked what single factor in the personalities of men and women contributed most to the difficulties of their human relationships, and especially to the problems of their adjustment to marriage, I think that I would unhesitatingly say that it was immaturity. Obviously I do not mean physical immaturity, but that failure to grow mentally and spiritually into the estate of manhood and womanhood which thinks of responsibilities first and pleasures second, of giving and taking, but with the emphasis upon giving instead of, as in the child, upon taking. It is a common failing of men and of women. The "child wife”, who all her life remains a child in spirit, is only a feminine counterpart of the "little boy grown tall” who never learns what it is to be a man. Unfortunately this malady (for a malady of inadequacy it is) often afflicts the most attractive women and some of the most capable and charming men. For little girls with beauty and little boys with charm are pampered and spoiled by too much attention more often than their plainer brothers and sisters, and sometimes doting parents, uncles, aunts and friends will continue the pampering processes far into adolescence and beyond, turning over finally to a husband or wife the delicate problem of coping with a woman or man who has never become either woman or man spiritually, but remains the cternal child, irresponsible, selfish, uncon- ·The Eternal Child 63. trolled emotionally, expecting to take everything and give nothing in return. All of us have known such men and women. I remember particularly the case of Mrs. J.Y. and her husband, who presented one of the most striking examples of the destructive force of this phenomenon which I have ever witnessed. It was Mr. Y. who came to me in what seemed a last effort to save a marriage which had failed and which seemed rapidly heading for dissolution. His wife, Helen, had been a dolilike type of child, adored by her parents, the centre of attention wherever she went, over-dressed and spoiled. As she grew up her parents continued to lavish upon her the overprotection with which they had surrounded her childhood, furnishing her with luxuries beyond reason, buying clothes for her which would set off her rare physical beauty to exceptional advantage, shielding her from every intimation of responsibility. She was surrounded by men, of course, who paid court to her in the manner of ancient Southern chivalry, as though she were a queen who should be spared the sight or sound of any unpleasant reality. Why she married John I don't know, for he was a hardworking, plain sort of man, intelligent and handsome, to be sure, but without the money necessary to furnish her with the luxuries she had been taught to crave. Probably it was because there was an intense and direct simplicity in his adoration of her, which undoubtedly assured her of his single-hearted devotion. As a matter of fact, he had never modified in his own mind the romantic over-idealization of women which so often marks the adolescent boy thrust for the first time into the mysterious maelstrom of sexual emotions. His eagerness to worship his wife as a superhuman being, instead of making her a partner of equal status with himself, was as serious a symptom of immaturity as was her expectation and placid acceptance of such worship. For the first year or so their marriage went beautifully, Mr. Y. told me. But it was significant that he had taken on much of the household responsibility, because he hated to ·64 Marriage And Family Problems see her working. As Helen's mother and father had neglected to give her the training and the elements of selfdiscipline so essential to maturity, John, in the beginning of their marriage, actually did everything to prolong her immaturity. Then came a time when John's work suddenly increased and kept him at his office evenings three or four times a week. Many of the things he had done for Helen before he no longer had time. to do. And as a result they no longer were done. He would come home night after night and find the house in disorder, with the housework undone. Then came the period when he frequently would not find Helen at home when he returned. For now that he had less time · and energy to give her the adoration she so constantly needed from men, she sought it elsewhere. It was at this period that he came to me. Helen had. asked him to let her divorce him, for no very specific cause, simply because of a general restlessness and an actual inability to be content with the lifelong adoration of one man after having had that of so many. And John, weary and heart-sick over the wreckage of what had seemed so beautiful to him, was about ready to consent without having made the slightest effort to save their marriage by taking the leadership he should have at that point and helping Helen to achieve a more adult point of view. I had several talks with both of them, trying to make them see that divorce would actually solve nothing. Essentially they were beautifully mated' and had all the potentialities of an exceptionally happy marriage. All that was standing in the way of it was the immaturity of both of them. I talked to them at great length about that, and then recommended a marital vacation for them so that they could think it over without the confusing emotional distractions which attended their being together. And so Helen went off for the summer to the home of a friend in New England. It was there that the accident happened which turned out to be the saviour of their marriage. A car in which ·The Eternal Child 65 Helen was driving late at night with the husband of another woman overturned, and Helen was taken to hospital with a concussion, a broken arm and a badly mutilated face. For two days she lay unconscious while John, who had rushed to her by plane as soon as he had been notified, hovered over her bed, waiting almost without hope for a life which again meant more to him than his own. Helen's life was saved, but for weeks her face was swathed in bandages. When the bandages were finally removed, she asked for a mirror (that constantly flattering friend with whom she had always kept her favourite rendezvous), and saw, not the pretty, self-assured, unthinking child who had always greeted her before, but the disfigured face of a badly frightened woman. Sometimes miracles of revelation happen to persons; and one happened to Helen then. In a sudden flash of vision she saw the possibility that she would never be beautiful again and saw, too, how much her physical beauty had meant to her. For days she remained in almost perpetual silence, examining herself for the first time in her life, getting acquainted with herself at last. When John was with her she saw in him no reproach for the past, no bitterly accusing memories, only his constant, surging gratitude that she was still alive. And she began to learn what true and lasting beauty is, to see that it is more a matter of the spirit than of the body. She remembered with a sudden poignant gratitude all of John's little kindnesses to her, and began to realize how much more there is to marriage than simply taking John and Helen are happy together now, and fortunately Helen is no less beautiful than before, for skilful plastic surgery left no scars. Death, hovering near them for a little while, became for both of them the great teacher, showed them what it meant to be grown up. Helen, who came through magnificently in the end, was the victim of a distorted attitude which sometimes grows out of the ideal of chivalry. I know that women want special little attentions which are not given to men, and that men ·66 Marriage And Family Problems want to give them these attentions, to protect them, and soften the impact of unpleasant events for them. I wouldn't rob either men or women of the pleasure and grace which this attitude, exercised in its proper form, gives them. But when it becomes so exaggerated that it makes a woman feel that she has no other function in life save to attract men and be waited upon by them, damage has been done to the woman-and to any man who is unfortunate enough to fall in love with her—which is frequently irreparable. But this is not the only form that feminine immaturity may take. We have all seen examples of the woman who is so perpetually in love with romance that she can never be actually in love with her husband. So long as their marriage is new, so long as his attentions contain for her the excitement coincident with her conquest of him, she will revel in them. As soon as their newness has worn off it ceases to satisfy her, and consciously or unconsciously she will seek (and usually find) romance with other men. This, too, is immaturity and failure to grow emotionally with the passing years. Another typical example of an immature woman is the social climber, the woman who has to keep up with the Joneses and try to catch up with the Smiths, who places the outward evidences of material possessions and surroundings above economic stability and self-respect. There is also the loafer, too lazy to take on the work and responsibilities which wifehood entails; the woman who pities herself, complaining constantly that she has nothing to wear, that she is being made a slave to the house, etc.; the coward and defeatist, who makes herself unhappy and her husband miserable through her fear of poverty, her fear of childbirth, her fear of possible illness, her fear of what people will say if she and her husband do thus and so; the hypochondriac, who thinks she is always sick, who says that she "was never strong"; the super-sensitive woman who, like a child, is always waiting and ready to take offence, and who can brook no criticism, however kindly and just it may be; the ego-centric, who must have everything her own way, ·The Eternal Child 67 ܂ who must always choose the film, the wireless programme, the Sunday-afternoon activity; the contrary woman who, exactly like what psychologists call the negative child, automatically wants to do exactly the opposite of that which her husband wants her to do, who countermands her husband's instructions to the children, or substitutes other instructions · so that the children cannot carry out their father's wishes, who returns to the shop the presents which her husband gets for her so that she can select something else. And there is the obstructionist wife who, like a child unable to bear the sight of someone being, more successful than he is, constantly holds her husband back from achieving his ideals. Many a husband's patience and love are sorely tried by these evidences of childishness in his wife. I have complete sympathy for the man (or the woman when the situation is reversed) who occasionally treats his mate with the mandatory sternness frequently needed in handling recalcitrant children. Sympathy and coddling are needed and wholesome in some situations. “Laying down the law” in no uncertain terms is necessary in others. In cases of habitual lack of co-operation and self-seeking egotism and childish insistence on self-expression, which is detrimental to the family group, the same sort of factual realistic approach which a wise parent would make to the little boy who irisists upon pulling little girls' hair or smashing the furniture is often necessary. The husband (or wife) facing this situation is evading responsibility if he (or she) does not point out with all the candour and force possible exactly what is happening. But there is a phenomenon peculiar to women which frequently produces many of the symptoms of childishness I have been discussing here, yet which calls for a vastly different approach on the part of husbands. That is the monthly change which takes place in a woman's mental and emotional reactions during her menstrual period. I am not concerned here with the obvious physical phenomenon. This is inconvenient and annoying enough: to women. But it is not this which has made women ·6S Marriage And Family Problems vulgarly label that which happens during these few days of every month "the curse". It is something much deeper and more troubling than this, something which actually cause many women (with some justification) to fear these few days as they would the visitation of a pestilence. For in the delicately adjusted glandular system something happens during this period of the month which may, in , completely distort a woman's mental and emotional reactions to her surroundings. She may in some situations become completely irrational at this time. And even though she knows instinctively that this is happening to her, she may be completely incapable of doing anything about it. This is the time when a woman needs all of the understanding, all of the sympathy (expressed in acts more than in words), all the patience and kindness of which a good man is capable. If your wife, during her menstrual period, scems intent on picking quarrels with you over nothing, if she calls you a blundering idiot, if she reproaches you angrily for something for which you are not to blame or even with somcthing for which she herself is obviously responsible--if she sinks into the depths of depression and bewails her lot, exaggerating all of the things which are wrong with it and remembering none of the things which are right, don't take her. words and actions to heart. Don't quarrel with her. Don't reproach or scold her. Don't be angry and impatient yourself. Don't go around the house in silence and with a hurt look on your face and a grieved tone in your voice. If she is cross and unrcasonable with the children don't condemn her as a bad mother. Take the children for a walk, if you can, and get them out of her way. (And when they arc old cnough to have any understanding of the matter · teach them, too, to show their mother special consideration at this time. In this you will be not only helping your wife materially, but will also be giving them valuablc prcparation for their own adult relationships.) If the dinner is burned, or the bed not made carcfully, or ·1 The Eternal Child 69 your wife herself is dressed less meticulously during this time than usual, forget it. Remember that your wife during her menses is not quite the normal woman whom you know during the rest of the month. Do not judge her by the same standards. Treat her with as much kindness and sympathy and helpfulness as you would a child who was crying because of a painfully burnt hand. I know that I am not exaggerating when I say that such treatment from husbands would have spared some women the agony of nervous breakdowns, and in some cases, actual insanity. And I know that many marriages which might have been made happy and lasting for both man and woman have been ruined simply because the husband did not understand the mental and emotional phenomena of menstruation or did not care enough to help his wife with patience and kindness during this time. - But if you are wise, if you are willing to accept this · husbandly responsibility and will learn to discharge it skilfully, you will earn the undying gratitude and love of your wife. Even while she is being unreasonable, even while she is acting as though she has lost her mind (as indeed, in a sense, she may have done temporarily) she will recognize what you are doing for her, and she will not forget it after her difficult period has passed, and her love for you will be strengthened, her distaste for, and perhaps fear of, her monthly period will be lessened, and the whole problem sink more and more into insignificance. And do not forget, if you are a man, that she has plenty to put up with in you! For every evidence of immaturity in women there is a corresponding one in men. Perhaps the most frequent is the attitude which is held hy those men who still cling to the absolute tradition of male superiority. Such a man wants his wife always to be subject to him, almost as a slave to a king. Instead of assuming the leadership of the family he attempts to gain an iron-handed control in which his wife and his children, if he has any, are to be subjected completely to his will and his whims.

·70 Marriage And Family Problems Actually the over-indulgent husband who insists, as John Y. did in the carly years of his marriage, upon treating his wife as though she were a child who ought to be spared all work and all responsibility, and through this perpetuates the false tradition of the beautiful doll, is exhibiting another phase of the same kind of immaturity as the dominating husband. Each incrcases his own sense of importance by a demonstration of his fancied superiority over his wife, instead of establishing their relationship on the plane of adult cquality, which is the only one on which a marriage can be fully successful. A man may exercise lcadership and the gracious functions of courtesy and gentleness to his wife without a feeling of superiority. He cannot dominate her or keep her from the task of assuming her responsibility without, in effect, putting her on a plane infcrior to his own. Sometimes a husband's immaturity is evidenced by the kind of attachment to his mother which precludes the possibility of complete love for his wife. It is normal and right that a little boy should think his mother the most beautiful, the kindest and the best woman in the world. It is not until years after birth that he is actually weaned emotionally from the woman who cared for him during the carliest years of his lifc. But unless this emotional weaning actually takes placc he will remain spiritually a child for ever, carrying over into his adult life so strong an attachment that he will actually feel disloyal to her in marrying another woman and will constantly compare his wife to his mother, cxaggerating in his mind all the latter's goodness and belittling the former. This is a problem which must be met with the greatest of tact and care by the wife. But she will be unable to solve it single-handed. The man himself must find the solution through a searching and honest examination of his own emotions and a reassertion of that faith and love which led him into marriage. Unless he can place his marriage and his wife above all clse in the world he is failing her, himself and socicty. Among the most curious and pitiable phenomena in the ·The Eternal Child 7.1 minds and emotions of men is that which I call the sexually split personality: George W. was one of the saddest cases of this with which I have ever come into contact. George was an unusually brilliant and sensitive boy, a year ahead of his age group throughout his school days. When he went to college he found the work so simple that he finished easily in three years and at the top of his class. Physically and emotionally as well as mentally he developed much earlier than the average boy. That is, he did at first. But this very over-development unfortunately became an impediment to his eventual maturity. When he was fourteen years old a little girl who lived next door began to fill his life with the rapturous dreams of love which mark the dawn of sexual development in all peoples. Alice was a nice little girl, apparently, of a good family and with good training. George put her on a pedestal in his thoughts and emotions and labelled her "Goddess". There seemed to be concentrated in her small person all the beauty and goodness of life. But another little girl moved into the neighbourhood. Elsie's training had been somewhat different from that of Alice's. Elsie saw George, and her feminine intuition sensed his romantic hunger. One day they were alone in a barn and Elsie, easily taking leadership over his sensitive and plastic will, taught him the mysteries of sex in the most direct, way known to the human race—the way which men and women followed before there was even speech between them. Afterwards George felt the most bitter shame, but this did nothing to assuage the gnawing physical hunger which that half-hour with Elsie had stimulated to a fever pitch within him. Day after day his distant adoration of Alice increased, as his physical “slavery to Elsie grew to be an intolerable yet an unbreakable bond. A year later his family, and he with them, moved away, and both Alice and Elsie became memories, but the thing which had happened to him during that first disturbing contact with love stayed with him to torment him and rob his life of direction for years. For during that turbulent ·72 Marriage And Family Problems battle which he had fought with his emotions his mind hảd divided women neatly into two groups. There was the good and beautiful woman, represented by Alice, the woman one would want for a friend and, if one ever married, for a wife. And there was the bad, and sexually desirable woman, represented by Elsie, the woman to whom one went to satisfy that gnawing physical hunger which robbed one of sleep and tormented even his waking hours. For George these two seemed to be totally different kinds of women. Throughout his adolescence and early manhood he found that he could have no respect for any woman who attracted him sexually, and conversely, that any woman for whom he had respect held no sexual attraction for him. At thirty he fell in love, and the woman he loved with him. But the seemingly unscaleable wall of his particular kind of immaturity loomed between them. He had complete respect for her, which amounted almost to worship. I am sure that he would have died happily in her service or protection. He wanted terribly to marry her. But the shock and shame of his earliest sex relationship and the sharp split which it had made in his mind between good women and bad made the thought of a sex relationship with her after marriage intolerable to him. Fortunately he had intelligence enough to face the problem before marriage. He came to me, told me his story, and I insisted as the first step upon having the woman that he loved know the whole story. She came to my office, and the three of us talked about it fully and frankly. I could see that it hurt her deeply, as I knew that it must, yet her love for him was not in any way lessened by facing the truth. In the first session which the three of us had together · I saw her hurt change into compassion for him, and saw all of her fine energy and love converted into a desire to help him. At my suggestion George undertook a course in mental hygiene, in re-education, if you please, a course in which he became acquainted for the first time in his life with the mcanings of his emotions and desires, and the significance ·The Eternal Child 73 of the conflicts he felt. George went scientifically about the job of becoming mature, and to-day he and the woman who loved him enough to wait and to help him grow up are two of the most soundly and happily married persons I know. Now I have been writing about these immature men and women as though they were strange and unusual phenomena, persons gastly different from you and me. But do not be led astray in your own minds by the fact that") have cited extreme cases. In every one of us—in you, in me, , in our best friends—there are elements of immaturity. Do not feel, if your wife or husband shows some of the symptoms which I have described here, that you are unfortunate and to be pitied. Do not decide because of this that your marriage was a mistake and that there is nothing you can do about it. Such a feeling is of itself one of the greatest evidences of immaturity. Remember that there are few marriages in which at least some of these difficulties do not arise' at one time or another. No marriages are quite perfect—if they were there would be little of the joy of challenge left in them. No man or woman may be con- : sidered completely mature—if this were not so, husbands and wives would be robbed of the joy of their spiritual growth together. Welcome the discovery of immaturity in yourself as an opportunity for growth which you share with each other. Examine yourself more rigorously than your wife or husband for signs of immaturity which endanger your joint happiness. And if you find in either of you childish traits which need adjustment and correction, meet them with faith, love, patience, the golden rule and wise self-discipline. If you do this , those things which have seemed stumblingblocks will become stepping-stones to a greater happiness than you have dreamed, and you will say with St. Paul: "When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known.'

·76 Marriage And Family Problems she first canze in increased to terror. "Oh, he's still living in the house with me—but he's left me as surely as if he'd gone to China." "Come," I said. “You're contradicting yourself. If he's living in the same house he hasn't left you.” I knew what she nieant, of course, and I know how terrible and how seeniingly irreconcilable an emotional separation between two people can be, even when they are close to each other physically. But I wanted to make her consider the inatter in its actual physical aspects as an antidote for the poison of doubt and hopelessless which was robbing her of all will. There is probabīy no problem in the relationship between a man and his wife which does not have both its physical and spiritual aspects, and I always believe in facing the physical aspects first, for they are more easily catalogucd. In this case the physical aspect was that Mrs. J. and her husband were still at least living in the same house. This seemed to me a hopeful fact, something to begin with, something to work on. "It's almost worse than if he'd moved out," she sobbed. "We live like strangers to cach other-and he's got another woman." Her last words came out in a rush--something she had to say and wanted to get over with as quickly as possible. “I helped him all the time he was so poor, and now that he's making more money he doesn't need me any more--and wants a younger woman." Something had to be done to get her out of her fit of weeping, so I scolded her a little. "Madam," I said, "you aren't helping yourself—or your husband now, by being so terribly sorry for yourself. Of course I don't know why your husband has turned to another woman if, as you say, he has. But I do know that no man goes from his wife to another woman simply and solely because he is earning more money. And I know that no man.would lcave you for another woman simply because the other was younger. Why, you just told me that you were only thirty-one years old! 'No' a man docsn't Icave a thirty-one-year-old wife, and especially one who has as much ·more than The Other Woman 77 natural charm as you have, because he wants a younger woman. Perhaps he even needs a woman who is older in some ways than his wife. Sometimes a wife, by acting like a child, makes him seek a woman who is more grown up, one who takes a more mature point of view, who is perhaps a little more tolerant of his human foibles, who is willing and eager to help him emotionally and spiritually, just as you helped him financially by working. I don't say that this is true in your case, for I don't know. You haven't told me the whole story yet. But I'm sure that the reason is not that he wants a younger woman than you. . "Let me ask you a question, please. I don't want to seem unkind and I don't want you to be hurt by what I am about to say. But has it ever occurred to you that just possibly your husband has been more greatly wronged than you have? Or that perhaps he needs your help right now even you need mine? Have you stopped to think that perhaps, by taking the attitude you have in which everything seems hopeless, you are doing him as well as yourself - the greatest injustice possible? You say that you were happy together before this happened. You tell me that you have done everything you could to make your marriage a good - one. But if you fail your husband now, when he is in the midst of what must be a terrible conflict for him his love for you (because he still loves you; I'm sure that that is true) and his desire for another woman-you have not done everything you could. How serious is his affair with this other woman? Do you know that he has actually been physically unfaithful to you?” "Yes,” she said. "I'll tell you what I saw with my own eyes." I shan't go into the details of that terrible night when by chance she had discovered her husband and a woman, whom she had always counted among her friends, in a situation which could leave no possible doubt in her tortured mind. There was no question of her husband's technical infidelity, nor of the fact that he had been habitually seeing the other. woman away from their home.

·eye she So Marriage And Family Problems the bottom of that deep well of knowledge which is every woman's heritage, she knew it. She must have looked in her mirror before she had left home that morning-if only for a fleeting glimpse—and seen there the dejected, unattractively dressed person she was. And in her mind's must have seen beside her the vision of a sprightly, carefully dressed woman, gay and vital and sympathetic-the woman whom she had asked to tea that afternoon to tell her what she thought of her. No wonder she was frightened. “Would you take your husband back now?" I asked, "If he were to leave the other woman and tell you that he loved you, would you forgive him whatever has happened and try again?" ""Yes,” she said in a low voice. "I would now. I didn't know it until after I'd phoned him this morning and his voice sounded so tired and sad. I can't get along without him. It was bad enough when I only thought he was having an affair with another woman. And now that I know, it's worse. But I know now that the worst of all is the prospect of completely losing him.” “And are you a good gambler? What if I ask you to spend some money? How far are you willing to go to make it work?" "I'll do anything,” she said. “I don't know what you mean by money. But I've got over £ 100 saved towards the last £200 we owe on the house--and I'd spend every cent of it gladly if it would help. Neither it nor the house is any good to me without him!” ""That's fine,” I said. "You're on the right track, if you fcel that way. And you must keep your appointment with your husband and the woman this afternoon. We don't have to decide now whether it was wise for you to make it or not, because you have already inade it. Now you must keep it-but not looking and acting the way you are now. And of course you mustn't say or do any of the things you planned to say and do when you get there." Quickly I outlined my plan to her. First I sent her to a bcauty parlour conducted by an extremely skilful woman ·The Other Womanz 81 who had helped me before. Then I sent her to a very special sort of person I knew in a women's specialty shop, to be outfitted from head to foot in new clothes especially chosen to accentuate her natural attractiveness. From eleven-fifteen until four-fifteen the outward person whom the world could see as Mrs. J. went through the process of being made a new woman. When she came back to my office for final instructions before keeping her appointment, I would not have recognized her if she had not been announced before she came in. And the change was not only an outward one. The things which had happened at the beauty-parlour and the shop had done more than give her a different appearance objectively. There was a new light in her eyes, a new firm carriage to her shoulders, a lift of her head, which bespoke new courage and vitality, a new point of view towards her husband and the whole world. I looked her over critically, pronounced her perfect, and then gave her a little cautionary advice. "Remember," I said, “that you are to act as though there were nothing whatever unusual about you thrée having tea together. You are to say nothing whatever about the thing which made you ask them to tea in the first place. It's just such a fine spring day that you're celebrating a little, that's all , and you thought it would be nice to have tea together. You are to talk gaily and interestingly, and when you can't think of anything else to do, smile! Remember every minute simply that you are a hostess with two guests whom you have asked to tea. See that they have a pleasant tea. Afterwards, if your husband insists upon talking about the past, let him know as gently and kindly as you can and with as few words as possible that he is forgiven, that you know that you were somewhat to blame, and that you love him. But if, as I suspect he will do, he simply begins to make love to you, for heaven's sake be a woman, forget everything except that you love this man and that you are his wife. And remember, too, that this is only the beginning. To-day TË you are taking emergency measures in an emergency. you win this afternoon-as I know you will--your next step ·S2 Marriage And Family Problems is to examine yourself more honestly than you ever have before in your life, and be those things and do those things which it is your part to be and do in order to keep this situation from ever recurring. You must really forgive your husband---not just say it and harbour resentment towards him. If he comes back to you, as I think he will, you must never let the past be a stumbling-block to the future. Come back to me in a few days, tell me how things are going, and I'll help you." Mrs. J. did come back, several days later, reported a glorious victory over the tea-table, told me blushingly and happily that she and her husband were on their second honeymoon”, and together we went into her attitudes and those of her husband. Mrs. J., who had worked so hard at the economic details of marriage (and quite rightly), began working now at some of the all-important emotional details which she had neglected, and their marriage became a better thing than either of them had ever dreamed that it could be. I know that most women can't afford to spend £20 on clothes in a day in order to recapture a wandering husband and bring him home again. Mrs. J. could, and it seemed the quickest and most effective way to act under all of the circumstances. And I know, too, not only that it was only the beginning of the reconstruction of her marriage, but that in some cases it wouldn't work. But the important thing in her case is the important thing in the many, many cases like hers which make marital chaos out of honeymoon bliss. It was absolutely essential, before anything could be done for her, first of all to conquer her sense of unreasoned terror over the fact that her husband had regrettably done what many another married man has done before him and will do after him, that she examine the situation as objectively and intelligently as she would any other, and most important of all that she examine herself to see wherein she had failcd her husband and what she could do about it. For no decent normal man is seriously unfaithful to his wife unless, in some way, she has failed him. I know that hc may have failed her, too-may have failed her miser- ·The Other Woman 83 ably. And I know, too, that there are many men so unreasonable, so utterly selfish, so unco-operative themselves, that no woman could possibly make them happy. But it requires only the simplest kind of reasoning to see that no intelligent man will seek the complications, the worry, the trouble, which an illicit love affair is bound to bring him, and that when he finds himself in such an affair it is because consciously or unconsciously he was seeking something which he needed terribly, something which he did not find completely in his own home. And I don't mean by this "something which he needed” simply what we think of as physical satisfaction by any means. For sex, to any normal decent man, means much more than that. It means excitement, spiritual companionship as well as physical, nervous release, escape from the immediacy of the troublesome world, and therefore comfort, the constant strengthening of his self-confidence through the reassurance that he is still attractive to women. It may even mean for him compliance with the demands of his confused conception of the ideal of chivalry. Many a man has been unfaithful to his wife because he found himself in a situation from which he mistakenly felt that no gentleman could retreat! It may mean many other things to him, toomat its best it is one of the many expressions of his deep spiritual love for a woman and fatherhood. At its worst, for a man who has never gained a true and wholesome conception of the place of sex in life, it may mean a shameful act of guilt, no matter who his sexual partner is. Such a man, of course, is actually a man with a sick mind and needs the attention of a psychiatrist. But whatever it means to him it is, next to his instinct for self-preservation, probably the strongest drive in his entire personality. You do not have to take my word for this. Nor do you have to go to any scholarly work on psychology or physiology. History and the daily newspapers are crowded with proofs. Nature, concerned only that life shall go on, has planted in man an instinct to breed which will not be conpletely denied. It can be controlled and regulated, as it is ·84 Marriage' And Family Problems by every decent man, but for the average man there is a point beyond which he will not go in adapting himself to the conventions which society has imposed upon him. The average man fits himself to the social order in this respect much more closely than critical women would have you believe. This is so not only because he wants to live according to rule, because he wants to be fair and not hurt anyone, but because he actually prefers a conventional to an unconventional sex life. His sense of relative values has made him see that a strict monogamy is the most desirable state for him. He wants a stable, orderly home, made glorious by the woman he loves. His desire is towards her, and he does not want to feel desire for any other woman. He wants constantly to feel the support which her love and loyalty give him. D. H. Lawrence, in one of his letters, once wrote: "I have always needed a woman back of me. So does every normal healthy man. And all the complicated details of love and trust, tact, graciousness and courtesy which this need involves are among the things which constitute a man's sex needs——things which are in addition to and go far beyond the stark physical act of which we usually think when we use that little, that powerful, that so often misunderstood word, "sex". Yes, a man's sex needs are varied and many and terribly demanding. And as firmly as he may know that monogamy is best, his need to satisfy the demand of his entire personality that he "have a woman back of him” is stronger than his knowledge. He wants his wife to satisfy these needs, but if she does not he will either consciously or unconsciously keep seeking for their satisfaction elsewhere. Has it ever occurred to you to think that "the other woman" in a triangle, the woman whom you may have called a hussy, or worse, the woman by whom you may hare thought the man had been consciencelessly entrapped, was perhaps a woman who had given the life of the inan grace and meaning, the woman who may have restored his lost confidence and direction—things which his wife had every opportunity to do and in which she failed?

·. The Other Wornan 85 If you are a wife who knows, or has reason to believe, that her husband has sought another woman, or even if you have no such suspicion but are a woman foresighted enough to want to take steps now to insure your marriage against that calamity, let me ask you several questions, or better, ask them of yourself. Examine carefully and thoroughly. and honestly your own attitudes and position in your marriage. If you can honestly answer yes to all of them and you know what you are talking about, I would bet anyone in the world, ten to one, that your husband is faithful to you. If your answers to any of them are no, a task is indicated for you, whether your husband has yet been unfaithful to you or not an honest, intelligent effort to correct failings within yourself before you place all the blame upon your husband for bringing your marriage to the dangerpoint. For, let me warn you, women's failures to make the answers to these questions yes in their marriages are responsible for more male infidelities than most women are readily willing to admit. So here you are. Get your pencil and paper. Ask your husband to help you if you really want to be honest and thorough about it. His point of view may vary from yours on some of them—and may be nearer the truth than your own. 1. Do you always keep yourself as attractive physically as is practical and reasonable? (This means, above all, are you always clean and neat? Careful selection and wearing of such clothes as your husband's economic position justifies is important, but infinitely more important is that he always finds your body the sweet and lovely thing which troubled his dreams when he first fell in love with you.) 2. Do you honestly feel that you understand your husband's need for affection, sympathy and physical sexual satisfaction? Do you welcome this need in him and feel proud that he has come to you with it? 3. Have you taken your share of the economic responsibility of your marriage fully? Have you kept your personal ·36 Marriage And Family Problems and household expenses within limits which are in accordance with his salary, or if need has arisen, have you been willing to earn money yourself? 4. Are you and your husband in complete agreement as to whether you want children or not? 5. Do you (and this is more important to the question of his physical fidelity to you than you may guess) always support and encourage the finest part of his nature, his aspirations, his desire to deal justly and honestly and kindly with everyone, his effort to live "the good life"? 6. Have you resolved, to the satisfaction of both of you, any differences in religious belief which there may have been between you? 7. Would you honestly rather sleep in the same bed with your husband than alone or with any other man in the world? 8. Have you kept pace intellectually with your husband? Can you discuss the things in which he is interested in a way which makes of your conversations an intellectual stimulus and encouragement? Just the other day a friend said to me: “I'd rather talk with my wife than with any other person I know!" And I thought: "What a lucky man! And what a wise woman, who has made this truel And what a happy marriage they must have!” 9. Are you at ease and pleased when your husband enjoys the conversation of another woman? Do you have women friends in common and make them genuinely welcome as guests in your home? Have you completely conquered the monster of casual jealousy which may be in every woman's heart? 10. Do you make the interests of your own home and your husband of paramount interest to you, rather than those of your mother, father, sister, brother or other relative? 11. Are you always glad to see your husband when lie comes home at night, and do you let him know it? 12. If your physical relationship is not everything you think it should be, have you given your part in it the direct ·The Other Man 87 and honest thought that you might to some less important thing such as a broken arm, for instance? To put it quite bluntly, have you tried to be a good lover for your husband? If there are any physical difficulties about it, have you seen a good doctor, or asked your husband to see a doctor, or both? 13. Do you know that no sexual relationship is perfect at all times, that any man and woman go through periods of adjustment to each other, and that a temporary failure of such a relationship is nothing to get excited about? 14. Do you love your husband enough so that, if he were unfaithful to you, regretted it, and asked your forgiveness, you could continue to be a loving wife? 15. In every aspect of your relationship with your husband, do you live according to the golden rule? I know that these questions are asked from a. man's point of view. And I do not mean to say that if your answers are no you are necessarily to blame. Perhaps your husband has made it impossible for you to conduct your married life so that you could honestly answer .yes to all of them. I only want to make you see that, before you blame your husband completely for real or potential infidelity, you must make sure that you have actually filled your own place as a wife. CHAPTER X The Other Man I HAVE often been asked whether I believe in the so-called "double standard" of morality. Well, that's a little like asking me whether I believe in flood and drought and earthquake. I believe in the existence of these things because they always have existed, they exist now, and doubtless always shall. I regret the pain, the tragedies, which these natural phenomena, so cataclysmic to human life, cause. I would ·88 Marriage And Family Problems lend my support to every effort which is made to mitigate their power to cause human suffering. But to deny their existence simply because I don't like them would be absurd. My point of view towards the human attitude which is willing to forgive and forget in a man the same kind of moral dereliction which it would utterly condemn in a woman is similar to my point of view towards flood, drought and earthquake. Certainly I think that a man's responsibility to his wife is as great as hers to him. Certainly I think that he is under as strong an obligation to find satisfaction for his romantic and sexual needs solely within their marriage as she is. Yet in the eyes of the world there is bound to be a difference in the blame which will be accorded to an average husband and that which will be heaped upon the average wife for the same offence of what we call infidelity. There are a number of reasons for this, all of them soundly grounded in fact. No act can be judged solely by itself. In considering it there must be taken into account all of the surrounding circumstances, the stimulation to it, the degree of resistance which the individual may have to that stimulation, and the actual or potential results of the act. Typically, all of these things differ greatly between a mari and a woman. Normally, a woman is less easily aroused sexually than a man. (The male's constant readiness to be stimulated sexually is nature's way of seeing to it that the race will not die out.) She has less insistent sexual demands and, if she is living the life of the average housewife, has normally less opportunity for infidelity than has her husband. And she has an especial responsibility as a potential mother. Certainly the paternity of her children should not be in doubt. And that most unfortunate phenomenon of sexual relationships, the frigid wifc--or at lcast the wife who finds herself incapable of participating fully and joyously in the sex act-is much more frequent than that of the impotcnt husband. And so when I hear of masculine infidelity it always seems casier to explain, more to be expected, per- ·The Other Man 89 .haps even a little easier to condone, than that of a wife. Yet, this is not, by any means, the whole of the story. No one with intelligence and a desire to see the matter straight could approach thé problem of a wife's infidelity with any save the spirit of understanding and sympathy which he gives to the problem of a man in love with a woman other than his wife. For actually, in greater or lesser degree, many of the same forces which urge a man to leave the path of complete fidelity to his marriage, and some which belong peculiarly to the state of womanhood, are at work in the mental and emotional drives of the wife and must be taken into consideration before she is judged for what may seem a dereliction. And just as I have said in an earlier chapter that no normal and intelligent and decent man who is completely satisfied by and happy in his marriage relationship would seek an illicit love affair, even in lesser degree would a woman who is completely happy with her husband be willing to risk her happiness and the loss - of her reputation in order to find romance and sexual satisfaction with another man. And so I would advise who suspects his wife of too emotional an interest in another man, to examine his own personality and conduct first of all for the cause, and seek to remedy anything which he finds wrong there before placing all the blame on her. Let us examine first, if you please, those things which sex means to women. As with men, it means many things, and different things to different women. Primarily, it means motherhood, for the parental urge is greater in women than in men. But it means many things which may seem to have nothing to do with the desire to bear children. It means the way to hold her husband, for one thing. Deep within the consciousness of every woman is the knowledge that man's sexual need is one of the strongest influences in his nature. An old Hindu proverb-says: "Every book of knowledge even that which the gods know-is well implanted in the understanding of women. Women know intuitively the sex needs of man and use that knowledge in their desire to hold their husbands. any man ·Marriage. And l'amily Problems 11, 07: 21h 13 of surrender as part of what ::% 181C3%, sis woman's 1910re 111 give in love, 19) 6,11] Mer Beruf 111 112 113 bers, Trungh, this stu: linds a freep spirituai unin will lim, fast irgound the persical aspects 11,6ry, isit, T},sustains ar: natural and rizbie od wholesome, While % 13 14-5x: things 11 : O91), while these, mabibby strombuir primary sze, 5384. Stigliori within her marriage, she will have no virsirr 11. veir satisfaction saw, Mis won the 5.1% 1 bustes for her 11); compliance with the cus of vitaly duty, won it. bu:- We a permisity for freep cover though 2016 (and perhaps bo husband's 31111sofre 10 3019) loan killed all love of an desire for him in bep heart, big boliglul in change into sedon and discus1, 190 the % 3ct Dues a shameful and ricerading, shing, 10 which she submits lycansa soffres be must, It is then that her fidelity is strongly trio! if she i sziyan any opportunity i repari from it.'li is then that her dopoaruir frossi lloc martw posle of strjri monogamy 1111151 1 borced upon will, morro ping and sympathy than blame, This dos 1304 means that I condone wild's indicry. But ! 1 weary of the son and inflexible jugement which 11110rly comélemns a woman for that for which a thousand are found worn a man in the offerter, "links for a moment of the dral life of the Joyelesa wife, All of her dreams of romance haya con shattered in the disappoiming, reality of marriage 10 a man with whom she fines no spirima and perhaps no physical companionship: Alicad of her for the rest of her life the years sect 10 stretch looked forward so eagerly. She ecce ved be approaching, opy, and desolate, lacking in most of the joy 10 which she relentlessly, she wrinkled' checks, the sagring breasts, Iloc thinned and yreying, hair of a woman no man will desire! and 10 be desired luy :1 man is the life of the Wcary and hearisick and lonely, she reconciles bersel 10 average wom:11. what scems the inevitable, And then chance throws hier in the way of another man C%C01SAS * ·The Other Man 91 whom she admires and respects, and a mysterious spark is lit between them. That which her husband has found undesirable this man finds desirable. That which her husband killed in her this man brings to life again and nourishes. And suddenly she sees what this may be like: to know the freshness and passion of a fine man's newly-expressed love again! To feel the unspeakable ecstasy of a first kiss once more! To hear ardent words of love for her come from the lips of a man who has never spoken them to her before! If you cannot understand what these things mean to her, then you have forgotten the ecstasy of love, you are less than human, you are incapable of approaching fairly the age-old problem of feminine infidelity. It would be impossible in the space of a single book to discuss all of the forces which may influence a wife to violate her marriage vow. Actual desire for another man seems to me to be only the last link in a chain of circumstances. The important questions always are: Why has she allowed herself to desire another man? Why are her heart and mind open to her desire? Usually (though not by any means always) the answer may be expressed in terms of the husband's personality or acts or both. The cause may be an impotent or sexually indifferent husband, a husband who is far too old for his wife, a husband who is crude and clumsy in his sexual approach to his wife, a husband who is physically or mentally cruel, a huband who is dominating or habitually morose and silent, a husband who is incapable of gentleness and tenderness, a husband who is sloppy, physically dirty, coarse in mind and body to an extent which revolts the sensibilities of the woman who married him without knowing him, a husband to whom the word romance is something to laugh at, who settles into the routine of marriage as an everyday, drab affair, with no thought for the little graces and attentions to his wife which give life meaning and loveliness, a husband who shows no sympathy for the problems of his wife and is always bored or annoyed when she tries to talk of them, a husband who never takes his wife into his confidence about G ·92 Marriage And Family Problems anything, a husband who, because of his work or desire, is away from his wife for long periods at a time, a husband who is so absorbed in his work that he seems scarcely aware of the existence of his wife, a husband who has been, or is being, unfaithful to his wife, and so makes her feel subconsciously the need to restore her own lost pride through retaliation. These and many more are the sources of stimulation to a wife's infidelity which may be found in the husband. But there are others with which the husband has little or nothing to do, causes which are the peculiar problem of the wife. And one of the chief of these is the failure of a leisureclass woman to fill her leisure time constructively. Many a wife has allowed herself to fall in love with another man through a sheer sense of boredom. Here I find my sympathy for the woman less strongly felt. Time and time again I have had wonen come into my office, asking for help in the adjustment of an estrangement between them and their husbands, and have found after careful questioning that there is another man seriously in the background-or even more insidious than this, a group of men with no one of whom the woman has had a serious love affair, but each of whom contributes casually and meaninglessly to a satisfaction of her desire for relief from boredom, to the inflation of an cgo which she has done nothing to keep whole and vigorous. And the reason in such cases is that the woman has allowed herself to become a useless, idle creature whose whole function in life scems to be to dress well and spend her husband's money. I pity such women. But if her marital happiness is wrecked through a sudden ill-considered love affair with another man, or even without such an affair, she has really only her blindness and inertia to blame. Every woman, no matter what her society and economic status, has a life to live and a body and a mind with which to live it. These fine tools, of which her mind is the chicf, were not given her to waste in idleness. They crave activity: crave the wholesome joy of exercise, or service 10 oihers, of .

·The Other Man 93 constantly being sharpened and refined through use. The fiction that this is a man's world has long since been exploded. It is a man's world and a woman's world. It is a world which needs the best that every individual, whether man or woman, can give to it, a world in which no one can find happiness without giving his or her best to it. And the woman who would find happiness, who would like to live her life in fairness to herself, her husband, her children, if she has any, and society, will find a way to fill her days with interests so vital that she will not need the romantic attentions of men other than her husband to vitalize her being. I know that this is easier to say than to do. I have said earlier that I do not recommend a wife's working full time outside the home unless economic circumstances make it necessary. But this does not mean that I think a woman should spend every hour of her life with the problems of her household. Certainly, if she engages competent help, who will do nine-tenths of the work and leave most of her time devoid of interesting activity, she must look outside her home for interests with which to fill her life, If you are such a woman, find constructive use for that spare time which you have. Do not let your life be wasted in constant bridge-parties, the theatre, even in constant reading of books and magazines, which do not really contribute anything to your life. Keep these things in their proper proportions and give the major part of your time and energy to constructive work of some kind. Interest yourself in the welfare of your community, and those activities which make it a better place for you and your children and the world. Learn as much as you can about your husband's business, and you will find countless ways in which your woman's intuition and wisdom will help him. Give if you have any, more time than the woman, who must earn a part of the family income or conserve it by doing all the housework herself, has to give hers. And if you have no children have some, either in the usual way or through adoption. Your leisure is an opportunity to engage in exciting your chijdren, ·94 Marriage And Family Problems and productive activity--not an excuse for boredom, loafing and a justification for finding romantic satisfaction with men other than your husband. And if you find that your love life with your husband is not what you looked forward to in the romantic days of your dawning love for him, do not be too quick to condemn him, or to abandon the relationship, or to seek one elsewhere. Remember, my friends, that the path of woman's sex life is by nature a less simple and direct one than is that of a man's. It is a regrettable fact, perhaps, but one which must be taken into consideration, that thousands and thousands of wives never find in a physical relationship with their husbands quite the same stimulus and pleasure, or the same release from nervous tension which men find. And the fact that by far the largest number of these women go on calmly and happily in their marriages, year after year, is proof that women typically find it an easier matter to adjust themselves to a sexual deficiency in their marriage relationship than do men. And remember, too, that a failure to achieve complete sexual happiness is more often than not a lesser misfortune than the loss attendant upon a broken marriage, or the complications and pain attendant upon an extra-marital sexual relationship. But if you are a man I should like to approach the matter from a different angle in advising you. If there is any.question in your mind as to your wife's actual or potential infidelity to you, cxamine carefully and honestly all of your own attitudes towards her and towards your marriage. Even if you know that, driven by circumstances too powerful for her to overcome, she has actually indulged in icchnical infidelity to you, do not feel that this automatically makes it impossible for you to continue with your marriage. Show her the same tolerance and understanding which you would expect from her if the situation were reversed. Be as ready to forgive her as you would want her to be to forgive you. Look well to your own conduct and personality before you begin to blame her. Examine the causes for sexual failure which I have listed carlier in this chapter, and sce whether ·- 1 Taming The Wolf 95 you can honestly say that you have contributed none of these causes for your wife's conduct. But try, before there is any circumstance which may make you suspicious, to see that she has no desire to be unfaithful to you. Try to understand all of the complicated and mysterious things which your whole marriage relationship may mean to your wife. Try, within the limits of reasonableness, to make her so happy and satisfied within your marriage that the question of departing from it, even emotionally, will never enter her head. If you can do this, if you can remain always the man of whom she thinks as her lover, the chances are ten to one that you will never have to worry about another man. CHAPTER XI Taming the Wolf Love in a cottage is a beautiful ideal, and hate will make life intolerable in the most magnificent castle which fancy can paint, but it is rarely that love can stand for long the constant assaults of hunger, cold, habitual indebtedness, constant drudgery, ill-health due to poverty, and fear caused by insecurity. Wealth is no essential (and may often be a detriment) to marital happiness. And poverty is not merely a matter of small income. For, as I have said many times and feel that I cannot say too often, you may be better off on £5 a week rightly managed than on £100 a week which you do not conserve and handle well. But whether you have a very little or a great deal of money, a sense of security and financial responsibility to the circumstances of your family life and to society are of the utmost importance in building up and maintaining a successful family life. This is a task which wife and husband must accept together. The man may take fully the responsibility for earning the money necessary to family support.

·96 Marriage And Family Problems but he cannot fully discharge the obligation to manage it in all details. Marriage is a joint business partnership, as well as a partnership in every other way. Full knowledge of financial status must be shared by both, but it is likewise necessary that both show their fitness to have this knowledge and to use it properly. The secretive husband, who never lets his wife know how much he is making and furtively doles money out to her, pound by pound, for household necessities, is not only driving a wedge into their understanding of each other which may push them far apart emotionally, but is inevitably stimulating in his wife a state of indifference towards his financial problems and an inability and lack of desire to help him solve them. On the other hand, the foolish and irresponsible wife who shows that she is unfit to take any financial responsibility, even to the extent of knowing how much money is available to the family budget, is paving the way to their joint financial instability and estrangement from each other. I believe in family budgets. I don't mean that every penny has to be neatly ear-marked for one purpose and one only, that every penny has to be accounted for and that there can never be any use of a part of a fund set aside for one purpose for purpose. But I do mean that the known family income should be roughly divided into rent money, food money, clothes money. savings money, insurance money and fun money. I do mean that reut money or food money or clothing money or insurance money or savings , money must not be used for a new car, simply because the old one looks shabby (or even because there isn't any old one), and that food and clothing must not be kept below a proper level necessary to good health and decency, in order to live in a morc fashionable suburb or a better neighbourhood in town. Feed and clothe yourselves decently within the proper limits of your income. Put a roof which does not lcak over your heads in a neighbourhood in which your rent is no more than a fourth of your income, see that you are putting aside a proportion of your salary to mect the insurance premium when it falls duc, and a little more any other ·Taming The Wolf 97 for emergencies. And then, if there is anything left, put that, if you like, in a special savings fund for a car, or a summer holiday trip, or whatever your hearts most deeply crave, but don't go into debt for these things. And don't, through spending money for things which you can get along without, find yourself on the day the insurance premium is due, or there is sickness to face, without money to take care of these obligations. I have every sympathy for the man who, because of misfortune which he could not prevent, finds himself penniless in the face of a pressing financial obligation. The man who, in spite of his best efforts, cannot find, a job, the man who has been called upon to pay longcontinued hospital bills, who has been ill himself and unable to work, deserves only help, and certainly no censure when he cannot pay his debts. But the man who drives a fine car and lives in a high-rent neighbourhood, or the man who makes no real effort to find a job when he has lost one, and then makes excuses for lapses in his rent and insurance premiums, reaps only the harvest he has sown if he loses his marriage and the respect of his fellows. Ought married women to work, in this competitive world where the compilation of and adherence to a marriage budget is so important? Unfortunately, this question is frequently less pertinent than this: “Where can they find jobs?” The economic task of mankind in modern civilization has never been an easy one. Every married couple and every individual must answer such specific questions as that himself, in the light of all of the peculiar circumstances which surround the individual case. When the husband is struggling along on a low salary, when there are no children, and when the wife is peculiarly adapted, through training or temperament or both, to some particular.job, the answer should not be a difficult one. When the wife can find no contentment in household tasks and can find it in work outside the home, she may even contribute (through dispelling her own restlessness) to marital happiness by taking a job. When the husband is unfitted through ill-health to work, or cannot, for all his looking, find a job and the wife can, her ·98 Marriage And Family Problems responsibility is clear, for she is, after all, a financial as well as an emotional partner. In any situation in which the husband's income is below a subsistence level for the family, there can be no valid argument against the wife's shouldering as much as she can of their joint responsibility. And when this becomes necessary she ought not to feel imposed upon or set aside from other women. One-third of all working women in America over fifteen years of age are married women. Most of them, though not all, are working because their husbands' earnings are not large enough to support the family decently. Any woman who takes a job to-day joins a large army of responsible, self-dependent, selfrespecting women, who are doing their marital and social jobs in the same way that fine men have always done theirs. They have a very great deal to be proud of in this-certainly nothing to be ashamed of. And the rewards in selfsatisfaction and respect for one's ability and dependence upon one's self are very large. The matter becomes questionable only when a wife without any special talent and with no special economic need leaves her household responsibility and takes a job outside the home solely to escape the less exciting obligations of her housework, or in order to purchase luxuries with the extra money which she earns, or for the opportunity to prolong her period of adolescence in which she is thrown into contact with and attracts men. In such cases she may be actually shirking her greater responsibilities for the satisfaction of her ego, and may do irreparable damage to her marriage. She should always remember that her earnings are never pure gain, for out of them will usually come bus fares, lunches and extra money for clothes and perhaps for help at home. She will also lose through the less efficient management of her houschold, and perhaps through the lessening of the incentive which her husband would othervisc fecl as the solc breadwinner. I never advise a woman to work outside the home unless it is financially necessary. I do advise her to give all her energy, all her intelligence, all her love, and all of her ·Taming The Wolf 99 creative imagination to the exciting job of making her home the most beautiful and stimulating spot in her and her husband's world, so long as she has the divine opportunity. When she goes to work because she must, then I say God bless her, and may she find in discharging that responsibility the deep peace and happiness which she deserves. And I would like, if you please, to say this to the husband of such a woman: If you have honestly done, and are doing, everything you can to discharge your own responsibility, don't feel ashamed when you see your wife put her shoulder to the wheel. Don't keep her from this dignified expression of her own sense of responsibility, of her own character Honour her. Give her the satisfaction of knowing that she is appreciated. Spare her all the work that you can at home. And redouble your own efforts to find a job. I have a friend whose name is Mr. A. He has never been a client of mine, for he and his wife solved together one of the most difficult problems which marriage has to face. Tony, as his friends call him, is a writer now, and a very successful one. But it took a near economic and marital tragedy to direct his ability and energy into the field where they belonged. After he and his wife Susan had emerged from their difficult period he wrote the story of their problem and how they handled it, and it was printed in a popular magazine. With his permission I am going to quote a part of that story, just as he wrote it, for it is one of the most effective analyses and accounts of this particular problem which I have ever read. "If anyone had told me ten years ago that I would ever let my wife support me,” he wrote, "I think I would have called him a liar to his face. I could have borne the implication that I might steal, cheat at cards, forge a cheque even - there are sometimes emergencies which mitigate, even though they do not excuse these things. And while I think I would starve rather than do any of them, I would not become angry at anyone's opinion to the contrary. But there was one thing which seemed unspeakable to me--that a man should allow his wife to support him.

·100 Marriage And Family Problems "I know now, as I look back, that a fairly easy life, in which I had had a great deal of happiness and comfort, and case of living, and no real trouble, had made a snob of me. Jobs had come easily to me, I had always made a fair salary, and I had the unconscious egotism which most men in that position feel—that I was a superior sort of person who made things happen to him through his intelligence and industry, and that men without jobs had neglected their opportunities and had only themselves to blame.” He goes on to tell how, when the publishing house for which he worked collapsed and he found himself unable to secure another job, he began to learn that the matter of earning a living was not always as simple as that. For several months he looked for another job in the same business, but without success, while the savings account dwindled almost to the vanishing-point. "It was then," he writes, "that I began to take things a little seriously. I knew how bad the publishing business was that year and knew that practically every firm in town had waiting-lists of old employees whom they had to let go in order to reduce their staffs. I began to be afraid, and now and then I would surprise a look of worry, which was almost fear, on Susan's face. "But this was very seldom. For the most part she maintained a constant state of good cheer, and when I became especially morose she took it upon herself to pull me out of it. I remember especially one night when I sat, sunk in the deepest dejection, in a chair in our living-room, and Susan, seeing me there, came and sat on the floor, putting her chin on my knees and looking up into my face, her cycs filled with tenderness, even while her voice scolded me. "'You look as though you'd lost your last friend,' she said, “and maybe your wife to bootl' "It's no joke, Sue,' I said a little crossly. 'I've no more idca than a rabbit where I'll find another job. Even in these few months things have got worse in publishing.' *Then shall we just hang a nice picce of crêpe on the door and give up!' she tcased. Then, growing serious, she ·101 Taming The Wolf went on. 'Listen, darling. Anything is sort of a joke if you make it one. We're both of us too darned fat and healthy and could do with a little starving, you know. All you've got to do is show your face around town and you'll have offers, if anyone's got any sense at all. But even suppose I'm wrong-suppose you never get a job again—we'd do something—and we'd darned well be happy, too, so long as we love each other. We could raise potatoes in the backyard, for instance, and live on potatoes. And think of the grand long sleeps you can get in the morning. now. Poor darling, you need more rest. Is there any sense in your putting on a long face just because, for the first time in years, you're getting a chance to sleep late in the morning?' "That was the way Susan was about it. That was the way she was about everything-faith in her husband, hopefulness, good cheer and courage. All the more reason why I shuddered inwardly when I thought of the possibility of not finding a job right away.” Mr. A. tells in some detail then how the days dragged on, one after the other, without his finding a job and how, when he discovered Susan typing some letters, he suddenly sensed that she was trying to get a job as a stenographer (she had been a very efficient one before her marriage), how he protested with a rising sense of dismay and shame and how, when she finally found one, he sank into the deepest dejection and silence and felt actually degraded by the fact that his wife had taken on the job of supporting him. “But what could I say?" he writes. “The only thing which would have made any sense was an announcement from me that I had a job and a salary to pay for our rent and groceries. And I knew that I had no more prospects on the day that Susan began to her job than I had had on the day that I lost mine. There simply were no available jobs in the publishing business, for which I had been trained. “But my heart was filled with pain, and my mind with dark, unspoken reproaches of myself. I had failed in mi responsibility and let my wife take it over. We had come ·102 Marriage And Family Problems down in our food from steaks to baked beans. Our cash resources had come down from what had seemed security to practically nothing. And I had come down, in my attitude towards myself, from self-respect and assurance to a feeling of degradation and worthlessness. And I was able to do nothing about it. There must be something terribly wrong with me, I thought. I must be weak and incapable. I must be a failure! “For the first time next day this conviction crept into my efforts to find work. I saw, or thought I saw, a new coolness in the attitudes and speech of the men with whom I talked about jobs, and I suddenly realized that I was actually going about with a hang-dog look. I hurried home after my second interview, flung myself on to our bed in the house that was so empty without Susan in it, and cried like a baby-cried in self-pity, in mortification, in a complete sense of defeat. “Susan found me that way when she came in, and when she asked me what the matter was I turned loose a torrent of whining words. “ 'I've proved that I can't support you, I guess,' I said. . 'I'm a complete and utter flop. I'm just good for nothing!" "With a little cry of pity and love Susan knceled by the side of the bed and took my head in her arms. * Darling,' she said, 'you mustn't ever, so long as you live, say or think a thing like that again. It isn't like that at all. It's just chance, and the fact that you're so good no one would think of offering you a little job, and your particular kind of business is on the rocks just now. But all kinds of businesses need stenographers, and so it's casy, to find a job if you're one. Can't you see that it isn't anything against you, dear, and that it's just silly to mind my doing something about it at last? After all, I've been living on you for five years, you know. This thing's fifty-fifty, isn't it? You and me, I mean. Are you going to kecp me from doing what I can? Would you love me if I didn't want to?' "Of course she was right. Of course she was doing what a finc person would want to do, but it hurt to the quick and ·Taming The Wolf 103 made me feel futile and weak and less of a man than I had ever felt in my life.” Here Mr. A. touches upon one of the most serious hazards inherent in the situation of which he is writing--the loss of șelf-respect which a good man may feel when, through unfortunate circumstances, his wife is working and he is not. A man needs a woman like Susan then, one who can understand the torture in his heart and can find a way to ease it with her graciousness and strength and tact and love. I can think of no other situation in which the basic friendship on which every good marriage relationship must be founded is more essential than in this one. Mr. A. tells then of the weeks which followed, in which he did the house-work, had dinner ready for Susan when she came home, said good-bye to her in the morning as she started off to work. His whole world seemed topsy-turvy, in reverse, and he seemed to himself to be out of step with every other good man in the world. He sank more and more deeply into his sense of futility and failure, spent less and less time looking for a job, and more and more in hopeless brooding. It was Susan who, in that period, turned his interest back to creative writing, showed constant faith in his ability to succeed in it, helped him with criticism and suggestion. But Tony was so confused by the events about him, so lacking in self-confidence, that nothing he could write seemed to make any sense. One after another his manuscripts came back from the editors to whom he sent them. "What I wasn't up to realizing then," he writes, “was that any creative writing requires a degree of peace of mind and a great deal of self-confidence; neither of which I had just then. But this interval in which I had been trying to do something other than find a job in a publishing house, suddenly made me see that there was one approach to my problem which I had not made at all. I suddenly thought: You can't write any more. There aren't any jobs in publishing houses. But must you be either a writer or part of a publishing house in order to be a man?'

·104 Marriage And Family Problems "Then I started looking for a job in earnest. I didn't say anything to Susan about it, but I went into grocery stores, walked through the mud of an excavation on a huge construction job to find the foreman, applied to building superintendents for a job as lift man, called on a dozen snackbar proprietors. And then, a week later, I found a job in, of all places, the jewellery department of a department-storc. I was to sell, or try to sell, articles of personal adornment which seemed to me to belong almost to another era. It had been so long since I had been able to buy Susan the least expensive kind of a present. I was to get £3 ros. a week and commission, and the best part of it was that it was really only a part-time job. I was to work from ten-thirty in the morning until four in the afternoon. I could still take care of our flat, and I wouldn't have to tell Susan anything about it until I had tried it out, for I would leave the house after she did in the morning and get back in time to have dinner on the table when she came home. "I'll never forget that first pay envelopel It contained nearly £6--£2 nos. in commissions for three unusually lucky salcs I had made. My hands trembled as I opened it and counted the money. But I can't try to describe that moment. It was too painfully joyous, too great a release from a hell in which I had been confined too long. “As soon as I could control my voice I phoned Susan at her office, telling her about it, and asking her if she would mcet me down-town for dinner and a show. “ 'Oh, Tony darling!' was all that she could say for a moment, and I heard a sob in her voice. Then, on a higher notc: 'Cet good scats, will you? Let's go in the stalls.' Not a word of restraint or suggestion that every cent of this first pay should be spent on necessities. We would celebrate to-night and be thrifty tomorrow. For us this was a necessity, a raising of the colours again over a camp which had stood long sicge and had been almost deserted by one of its dcfenders. "No one will ever know what I felt when I paid that dinner checkina big onc, for Susan had ordered with I ·Taming The Wolf 105 glorious recklessnessmpaid it with my money, masculine money, money which a man had earned to feed his wife-. · or when I led her to a seat on the aisle in the second row of the stalls. There were tears in her eyes, tears of joy and pride, when she took her seat and smiled up at me, thanking me. It was a night which I shall never forget—the night of the day when I came back to life after long death. “And now it is all in the past, and I'm not selling jewellery any more. With the help of Susan and adversity I've found the work in which I really belong. But we don't forget, and our memories are on the whole far from unpleasant. We know each other as we never did before, and I have come to see that when a woman supports her husband it is not that fact, but what is behind it which counts—why she is doing it, and what the two persons involved are like, and what they mean to each other is infinitely more now than it was before I ran into misfortune and Susan pulled me out of it with her strong and loving hands and mind and heart. And so I often wonder-was it misfortune after all?" For Susan and Tony, the wolf at the door, who seemed for a little while to growl menacingly and threaten the cxtinction of their happiness, turned into a friendly beast whom they have come to love, because they met him on his own terms and civilized him. That is the secret of the matter. You have heard all your life about keeping the wolf away from the door. I say to you, go to your door and greet your wolf! Invite him into house and make a watch-dog of him. Welcome him as a friend who issues a challenge which, well met, will strengthen the respect and love which you feel for each other and cement your marriage relationship. Let him make you more conscious of your responsibility to keep your expenses below your income so long as you have an income. Make him help you to remember the fine old New England proverb: "Eat it up, wear it out, make it do!” There is soundness in it. There is the basis for a stability without which you will not find happiness. Instalment buying and getting into debt are justifiable only for absolute your house ·106 Marriage And Family Problems essentials-never for luxuries. Live and plan for the essentials, and the luxuries will come with your economic growth. Tame your wolf, domesticate him, become acquainted with him in all his aspects, and when he growls and shows his teeth, meet him bravely, showing him that you are his master, and you will have done much to assure yourselves a happy marriage and a place of respect and usefulness in society. CHAPTER XII The Future of the World Vera L. came to me with one of the oldest and most insistent problems known to women. She wanted a child, and circumstances were preventing her from having one. Now, most of the situations in which women cannot have babies are clearly defined and may be approached with at least some knowledge of many similar cases. Most of the women to whom I have talked about that problem are unmarried. or, if married, are prevented from bearing children by an abnormal physical condition, or economic insufficiency may have kept them from taking an additional financial respon. sibility, without in any way diminishing their emotional need and desire for parenthood. But for Vera L. none of these was the rcason. She was married to a man whom she loved dearly and who, while tot rich, made more than a comfortable living for them both -ample to provide the best of medical care and to bring pa child comfortably and well. But there was one thing hich he did not have, and that was enough faith in life. cep within his consciousness was the conviction that aman life was compounded of misery and frustration, and at the world was rapidly becoming a worse, rather than Octter place in which to live. Feeling this way about it, ·107 expense of anyone else. The Future Of The World he was unwilling, he said, to take the responsibility of bringing another child into the world. "How do you feel about it?" I asked Mrs. L. For a moment she looked away, her clear- brown eyes troubled by thought. It was plain that she considered things as carefully as did her husband, and that her sense of responsibility to any children they might have was as great as his. She was not one to rush blindly into any event, least of all one as important as child-bearing, without having thought through all of the circumstances and conditions surrounding it, without having taken into account all of the results from the point of view of everyone concerned. Hers was no desire for purely selfish gratification at the "In a way, everything he says is true,” she said at last. “But in another way it's all cock-eyed. He talks about bringing children into the world to go to war. Well, I don't want any child of mine to go to war, either, and maybe he'll have to if I have one. And I know how bad things can be, even in this country. I know how many people are out of work, and how much crime there is, and what emotional difficulties persons in modern life get into. I'm no optimist and I don't kid myself about things. But there's something more ' important than all of that. In the first place our child would have a better chance than most of the people for whom life is so difficult. Who's going to bring up children who will fight for peace and to make things better, if we all give up having children ? That's what I want to do. My husband is one of the finest men who ever. lived, Mr. Anthony. He would give any child of his better standards, better ideals and better equipment for life than most people could. I'd be willing to bet that any son or daughter of his would be glad to be alive no matter how bad things got for him. “As a matter of fact, I think that's true for most people even people who have much less chance than our child would have. People like to be alive. And I don't know faith how to say it—but it seems to me that if you have any you don't worry so much about the future. I mean, life seems essentially right to me, and the fact that we can . at all ·106 Marriage And Family Problems essentials--never for luxuries. Live and plan for the essentials, and the luxuries will come with your economic growth, Tame your wolf, domesticate him, become acquainted with him in all his aspects, and when he growls and shows his teeth, meet him bravely, showing him that you are his master, and you will have done much to assure yourselves a happy marriage and a place of respect and usefulness in society. CHAPTER XII The Future of the World VERA L. came to me with one of the oldest and most insistent problems known to women. She wanted a child, and circumstances were preventing her from having one. Now, most of the situations in which women cannot have babies are clearly defined and may be approached with at least some knowledge of many similar cases. Most of the women to whom I have talked about that problem are unmarricd. or, if married, are prevented from bearing children by an abnormal physical condition, or economic insufficiency may have kept them from taking an additional financial responsibility, without in any way diminishing their emotional need and desire for parenthood. But for Vcra L. none of these was the reason. She was married to a man whom she loved dcarly and who, while not rich, made more than a comfortable living for them both ample to provide the best of medical care and to bring up a child comfortably and well. But there was one thing which he did not have, and that was enough faith in life. Decp within his consciousness was the conviction that human life was compounded of miscry and frustration, and that the world was rapidly becoming a worse, rather than a better place in which to live. Feeling this way about it, ·107 expense of anyone else. The Future Of The World he was unwilling, he said, to take the responsibility of bringing another child into the world. "How do you feel about it?" I asked Mrs. L. For a moment she looked away, her clear: brown eyes troubled by thought. It was plain that she considered things as carefully as did her husband, and that her sense of responsibility to any children they might have was as great as his. She was not one to rush blindly into any event, least of all one as important as child-bearing, without having thought through all of the circumstances and conditions surrounding it, without having taken into account all of the results from the point of view of everyone concerned. Hers was no desire for purely selfish gratification at the "In a way, everything he says is true,” she said at last. “But in another way it's all cock-eyed. He talks about bringing children into the world to go to war. Well, I don't want any child of mine to go to war, either, and maybe he'll have to if I have one. And I know how bad things can be, even in this country. I know how many people are out of work, and how much crime there is, and what emotional difficulties persons in modern life get into. I'm no optimist and I don't kid myself about things. But there's something more important than all of that. În the first place our child would have a better chance than most of the people for whom life is so difficult. Who's going to bring up children who will fight for peace and to make things better, if we all give up having children ? That's what I want to do. My husband is one of the finest men who ever. lived, Mr. Anthony. He would give any child of his better standards, better ideals and better equipment for life than most people could. I'd be willing to bet that any son or daughter of his would be glad to be alive no matter how bad things got for him. “As a matter of fact, I think that's true for most people even people who have much less chance than our child would have. People like to be alive. And I don't know how to say it—but it seems to me that if you have any faith at all you don't worry so much about the future. I mean, life seems essentially right to me, and the fact that we can ·IOS Marriage And Family Problems bcar children scenis to me to mean that we ought to bear them, and not be too afraid of what will happen to theni so long as we give them the best we can.' She paused and I hastened to reassure her. "I wish all women felt that way,” I said. "Of course you ought to have a child. Everything you've told me about both yourself and your husband makes me sure that you are right." "But there's something else," she went on, "and I know that's completely selfish, but I can't do anything about it. Oh, I've tried, because I love my husband so much and I want to be the way he wants me. I want things to be right for hiin, as well as for myself. But I can't be and feel the way he wants me to about this. I want a child so much that I think I'll go mad if I don't have one. I want a child so much that I'm ready to leave him and try to find another man who will let me have one, unless I can change my husband's point of view. I know that's wrong, but I can't help it." Here was a difficult situation. I could see in the determination reflected on her face and intoned in her words that she meant what she said. I knew that unless something were done to change cither her husband's point of view or hors she would leave him. And I felt that it would be a great mistake for her to leave him. Nor did I want to change her point of view. Furthermore, I don't believe that I or anyone could have done so, or would have had any right to try. This was as much a part of her, as much a part of all natural womanhood, as her need for air to breathe and food to eat. "Madam," I said, "the only thing wrong about it is your thibking it's wrong , if you do. Why, there's nothing more right than the way you feel. You must stop, first of all, blaming yourself for somcthing which is fundamentally a part of you-and of all women-as arc cyes. You must stop regretting it in any way, even though it docs soom at the moment to be cseranging you from your husband. I know that it need not separate you, but rather that it can hring ·+ The Future Of The World 109 you more closely together. I know that you are right and that his well-meant reasoning is false. He must be brought to, shall I say, a healthier point of view, a point of view which is more in accord with the facts, the realities of the situation, a point of view that is a little more optimistic. "Remember this, for I know it's true. Your husband's opposition to your having a child comes from something : much deeper than the reasons he has given you. I don't know what the cause is, and he undoubtedly doesn't, either. But somewhere, buried deeply in his emotions, is an impediment which probably a child itself would do more than anything else to clear away. I advise you to insist upon having a child, madam. But first I should like to talk to your husband and see whether I cannot discover what is the basis for his objection and whether I canot help you to change his point of view.” The next day Mr. L. came to my office. I liked him immediately. Serious and honest, he faced me straightforwardly "My wife told me what she said to you yesterday, Mr. Anthony,” he began, “and what your advice to her was. I love my wife very dearly and want her happiness and our marriage above everything else on earth, but I believe you both put a false importance upon her necessity to bear a child.' I shook my head. “I assure you we don't,” I told him. "I have seen women like your wife before—women who know instinctively that, blessed with a supremely happy marriage, they must bring that marriage to its highest fruition if they and their husbands are to continue to gain the peace and fulfilment which their marriages have provided. It is the very beauty of her marriage which your wife needs to express biologically, as it were. It is the highest compliment which she will ever be able to pay you, that she desires your child so much that she feels without it your marriage is barren. Count yourself lucky that your wife is so much a real woman that bearing a child, fulfilling her woman's function, has become the most important thing in ·112 Marriage And Family Problems ment possible to a man and woman without children, or to be able to live in greater material luxury, without the added expense of children, or to perpetuate the physical appearance of youth, which a woman who bears children loses to some extent, or because the woman is afraid of the pain and risk of child-birth. These are all bad reasons for not having children. In nature the fundamental purpose of sex is procreation. Although human beings, endowed with imagination and knowledge far beyond that of lesser animals, have brought to the union of a man and woman many other qualitiesphysical release from tension, comfort, spiritual companionship--the need for parenthood is still, and will always be, the basic need inherent in the sex urge. It is a wellestablished fact that for the natural woman the sex urge is never completely gratified without motherhood. In a lesser degree this is also true of men. The physically sterile marriage, which remains forever childless, is in grave danger of becoming spiritually sterile, and completely without satisfaction for either man or woman, for in refusing to follow the natural path of life, in turning aside from the functions of parenthood which are so deeply a part of their needs, they are refusing to accept one of the most richly gratifying aspects of their natures. The vital common interest which a inan and wife have in their child or children is one of the strongest of all marriage ties. One of the American Indian tribes has a proverb which says: “How can any woman expect to keep a man without little fingers to hold him?" And many a woman, of all tribes and races since the history of man began, has sighed with rclicf and happiness when at long last she has found herself pregnant after she had almost given up hope and perhaps had found her husband growing cool and indifferent towards her. However, it is not only falsc reasoning but bitterly unfair to an expected child to believe that the merc birth of a child will bring about peace and happiness in a marriage which is irrctricvably lost before thc child is born. Actually the ·any other The Future. Of The World 113 possibility of a fine relationship between you and person in the world is within the hearts and minds of you two. No other person, least of all a child, can actually change your personalities or mend in you that which is broken. The professional advice of an adult can help point out the way to you. But this is not the function of an innocent and helpless child. If you bring such a one into the world he will look to you for constant support, for the peace and happiness and security which are his due. You have no right to thrust him into an atmosphere of quarrelling, and misunderstanding, jealousy, and perhaps even hatred, nor will his coming into such an atmosphere automatically change it. Make sure that your marriage is on an even keel, that you and your wife or husband can work constructively and in harmony for the good of the child before you take the grave responsibility of giving him life in an environment which you, not he, create. And when you have done this, and when your child lies before you, laughing in the sheer joy of being alive, or cry. ing petulantly for his delayed dinner, you will learn to know the joy which comes from a wholesome increase in your respect for yourselves and for each other, the joy of the selfless love of parenthood, the satisfaction and pride which come from seeing a bit of yourself newly created in the world, getting ready to carry on the burdens and experience the joys of life where you shall lay them down. One word of caution. Do not put off the beginning of your family too long. I know how important it is to be stable financially (both for your own sakes and the sake of the child) before you take on this additional expense. But it is so easy to over-estimate financial needs. And it is so easy to fritter away, in the restlessness which is the inevitable concomitant of a childless marriage, the money which could be spent in bearing and raising a child. Those who wait too long may find that they have grown away from each other, or that the wife has become sterile through advancing age and the use of contraceptives. On the other hand, those who go into marriage with ·114 Marriage And Family Problems eagerness to have children as soon as they can frequently have that priceless opportunity to grow up with their children and perhaps become grand-parents by the time they are fifty. How often have you hcard it said of a young mother, seen with her eighteen-year-old daughter: "You'd think they were sisters"? When you hear that said, you are hearing of a happy and a proud woman, one who is fulfilling her destiny in a way that must make her pity those of us who are middle-aged before our children are born, and feel the greatest compassion for those of us who are forever childless. Go into parenthood joyfully as soon as you are physically, financially and spiritually capable of being good parents. And men, remember this: when your wives become pregnant they need and deserve special consideration. See that they have the best of medical care immediately. Learn all that you can of prenatal care. Excellent books have been written about it, so make use of the valuable instruction available to you. Let nothing be more important to you than this event which you will probably look back upon as the grcatest thing which ever happened in your life. For in your children you will see the miracle of creation, of life taking form and achieving mcaning--your life, cxtended and enlarged, an opportunity to make up for those lacks which you felt in your own carly years, the chance to live again and perhaps to live more wisely and beautifully. CHAPTER XIII When the Bough Breaks One of the saddest and most perplexing problems of modern life, and one with which I am faced most frequently in approaching marital difficulties, is that of rcal or apparent ·When The Bough Breaks 115 sterility. In its present aspects it is a phenomenon of the twentieth century, along with the radio and the aeroplane. · When your great-grandmother married your great-grandfather there was probably no question in the mind of either as to whether they should have children. Unless they were among the rare exceptions to the general rule, they wanted a family or they would not have been married. More likely than not they made no plan nor attempt even to limit the number of children they would have much less to maintain a perpetual state of childlessness. The birth of a child was a "blessed event”, the child, a gift 6f God. Nor was there probably any thought that either one of them would be physically incapable of producing a child, for such a state was relatively infrequent in those days, and hardly to be included among the common possibilities. Of course there were childless marriages, but they were exceptions like malformed children or persons .afflicted with mental disease. To-day the situation has changed. In America alone there are over two million childless couples, part of these childless by choice, but many of them without children because of failures in their attempts to have them. That this was not true in our grandparents' day, and that it is not now true in such countries as India and China, leads inevitably to the conclusion that a large part of the answer lies in our more “modern” industrialized way of life. "But what are we to do?” I hear you say. “We want a child. We have tried to have one. Something is wrong." Exactly. Something is wrong. In the old days women made pilgrimages to temples and shrines, to plead with the gods who were withholding fertility. And to-day inany childless women and men plead in much the same way, blindly, in the depths of their fears and their disappointment, instead of saying to themselves that something is wrong and trying to find out what it is. To such a person I always say: "Go to a doctor—a good doctor-and pursue this phantom until you have found out what it is, or until you have at least exhausted present-day science's power tn ·16 Marriage And Family Problems find out what it is. In a great many instances--in incrcasingly more of them--you will be able to name the spectie and hence in one way or another to overcome it." For especially since 1900 doctors have been learning more and more about the workings of reproduction, and hence more about the possible causes of failure to reproducc. Indecd, knowledge of the actual processes of reproduction is almost as recent as the telephone and the motor-car, for it kas not until 1875 that it was proved that conception takes place through the entry of sperinatozoon into ovum. Since then "the odyssey of the spermatozoa", as Dr. Sam G Berkow calls it in his magnificent book, Childless (from which inany of the facts in this chapter are taken), has been traced in great detail, and many of the reasons for its failure have been discovered through this new knowledge. It is a fascinating journcy which the spermatozoa make, and onc worth our taking time to trace for its own sake as well as because it will help us in our approach to our problem. This journey is entered upon by the tiny cells svith all the carclcssness of waste that marks nature's other attempts at reproduction. The dandelion, full blown, its ball-like, snowy hcad loaded with thousands of secds, only onc or two of which may ever produce a new plant, thic birch-tree, hung in the autumn with thousands of catkins, each of which you can break down with your fingers into thousands of tiny birch seeds, cxhibit nothing like thic prodigality nature shows in the sccd of man. For in a single sowing of that seed by a virile man there may be over two hundred million spermatozoa. And the ovary of a nei! born girl child has been found to contain from thirty tholisand 10 two hundred thousand immature ova. Once cach lunar month (not necessarily during menstruation, more frequently than not mid-way between two menstrual periods) a ripened orum, or egg, is released into the pelvic cavity of cvcry normal adult woman by one of the ovarics. Rapidly, and with a sure direction, it makes it way through the intervening space and into the open end of one of the Fallopian tubes. These rise, one on cach side, from ·When The Bough Breaks · 117 the uterus to a place in the pelvic cavity close to the ovary. · Slowly the ovum begins its journey down the tube towards the uterus, ready for the single spermatozoon, which will make it possible for it to become a new human being. Meanwhile the spermatozoa' are struggling to do their part. Starting in the vagina, the tiny, tadpole-like creatures propel themselves upwards, millions of them being killed by the normal acid secretions they encounter. Those which are left squeeze their way into the uterus through the tightly. closed cervix, which often is blocked by a plug of mucus, . or made inimical to them by disease. If any survive this passage there is still the long journey to be made through the uterus, where tiny waving hairs repel them. Millions more are lost in this difficult stage of their journey. Finally, though, if they are successful, a few of them complete the trip, enter the Fallopian tubes, and if one of them-only one out of two hundred million—reaches the ovum, it burrows its way into it, and the ovum, embracing it closely, continues on its way down the tube into the uterus, where it imbeds itself in the soft wall there provided for it, and a new life has begun. But this is not the whole story. Behind the driving force of the spermatozoa and the patient persistence of the ova lie the endocrine glands--tiny bodies which constantly produce chemicals named hormones, that flood through the blood stream, "influencing every bodily function, acting as regulators to all the body's activities, restraining here, encouraging there. And whereas it was originally believed that the ovaries in women and the testes in men were the only glandular systems involved in reproduction, it is now known that the normal functioning of these primary glands of reproduction is partly dependent upon the smaller and less understood thyroid, parathyroid, thymus, pituitary and other endocrine glands which, when working normally, send forth their constant supply of hormones into the blood; and that once their functioning is interrupted or distorted, the workings of the entire body, including the primary sex glands, are also interrupted or distorted.

·any other part of 118 Marriage And Family Problems "It is complicated," you may say, “but why in our case has the machinery got out of gear, when for others it works perfectly?” And my first answer is I do not know why it is. But do not be discouraged, for there are hundreds of possibilities which you probably do not dream of, not only in what may go wrong, but in cures for what has gone wrong. Go to a doctor, as you would go if your body failed to function properly, for he has at his disposal both the knowledge and the equipment to solve the problem in many cases to convert what seems to be sterility into normal fertility Most gynaecologists to-day begin with the husband and satisfy themselves of his complete physical ability before they begin an examination of the woman. For actual physical disability, physical barriers and lowered number or vitality of spermatozoa are quickly discoverable, the treatment in most such instances being either slight operations or, much more frequently, treatment for general health perhaps including a change of habits, of diet, exercise, relaxation. Turning his attention to the woman, the doctor may very probably find some physical malformation, displacement or obstruction-perhaps one which can be corrected by a minor operation, by inflation with gas of the Fallopian tubes, thus cicaring them of obstructions, by simple manual readjustmonts--but perhaps, on the other hand, one requiring more delicate treatment. But whichever it is, if the obstacle is a purely structural or mechanical one, at Icast your problem is localized to that extent, and you are well out of the quagmire of ignorant uncertainty and on the way to tackling your problem intelligently. And if the trouble is not so casily located if after such initial examinations it remains still an undefined obstrucrion to your desire for children-you have all the more reason to pursue your investigation. For an incrediblc amount of any trouble is taken care of by thc mcrc act of attacking it with all the knowledge and courage at your disposal. It is this fact that has turned the inost bitter dis- ·When The Bough Breaks 119 coveries into victory for certain intrepid men and women throughout human history, The first examination may, of course, have revealed one of the “social diseases” as the cause of your sterility, either in you or in your mate. Here again both knowledge and treatment are available, and a scientific attitude on the part of a growing number of persons has helped to dispel the sense of shame and secrecy that has formerly accompanied such discoveries. The growing tendency to cure rather than hide is one of the healthiest signs of our age. .. Or-and this is a difficult fact to face-it may be discovered, if you are a woman, that in your previous attempts not to have a child, in the careless, indiscriminate use of contraceptives or even through an abortion, you have injured the delicate reproductive mechanism to the point where it will be very difficult, if not impossible, for you to have children, now that you have decided you are ready for them. This is one of the most incontestable and widespread causes of the rapid increase of frustration in efforts at parenthood, and though it is far from my intent to frighten unduly those women who for good reasons find themselves very possibly among this group, surely the dangers cannot be too strongly stressed in an age when the careless use of both contraceptives and abortions are named by physicians as primary causes for our civilization's increasing sterility. Ör further physical examination may disclose that some disease only indirectly related to the sex mechanism has temporarily or permanently impaired its workings. In men, even a case of mumps in early life may be responsible. And for both men and women such diseases as anæmia or tuberculosis may have lowered the sexual ability to the point of at least temporary sterility—wisely enough, in many cases, for nature does not look with favour on the production of children who will inherit the weaknesses of unhealthy parents. Even occupational exposures to X-rays, radium or lead may have caused low fertility or destroyed it entirely. But in addition to these more obvious causes are all the possibilities of glandular disturbances—failures in those .

·1 20 Marriage: And Family Problems regulators of the work of the reproductive system. And it may take considerable time to discover this more remote type of deficiency in your body. The thyroid gland may have become enlarged, and the "goitre” thus produced may be the direct cause of childlessness in the woman, for it represents a serious disturbance in one of the most important energy-promoting glands. Indeed, the thyroid hormone is so important. in energizing all the body's cells that it has been called “the bellows that rejuvenate the fire". A deficiency in the pituitary gland (located in a bony cage back of and between the eyes) may be behind a person's failure to attain sexual maturity, or, indeed, to attain physical maturity in any respect, as in the case of dwarfs. In them the signs of such a deficiency are readily perceived, but in cases of lesser derangement the person affected may not know until tests are made that herein lies his trouble. Tumours in these endocrine glands may cause strange aberrations or inadequacies. In 1925 Dr. Gordon Holmes published the record of a woman who had been his paticnt. for eleven years. When he first saw her she was twenty-four years old, and for seven years had not menstruated.' Two years after her periods had ceased, that is, when she was nineteen, her body began to take on some of the scx characteristics of a man. She began to grow a beard, and hair appeared on her legs and arms and chest, while her breast became flat and inconspicuous. She lost all normal erotic focling, and lost completely her sense of modesty before men. When a tumour in her right suprarenal gland had been surgically removed her appearance changed rapidly. Her breasts became larger, the distribution of hair on her body became that of a normal woman, menstruation returncd, she showed the normal responses of a woman to men, and found it difficult to bring herself to expose her · body cven before malc physicians. In such an extreme casc thc effect of the glands can be clearly demonstrated. But in milder cascs thc cffcct is just as inevitable even though not so noticcable, and many less ·When The Bough Breaks marked disturbances have been corrected by operations and the person concerned thus restored to his or her normal patterns of feeling and behaviour. Even more often less drastic treatment has worked miracles. The use of glandular extracts--the injections of those hormones in which a person's system is deficient, is in an experimental stage, and in the actual treatment of sterility has so far yielded very disappointing results. But there is a slower, more basic treatment which has been remarkably successful, and that is the treatment through dict, based on the discovery of vitamins and their direct iclation to the hormones the glands are able to manufacture. In other words, though hormones do the work of regulating the engine's running, they draw their own energy from the food we eat, and if, for instance, your diet lacks vitamin B. the activity of your pituitary gland may suffer as a result. and as a consequence of that your ability to have children may lessen. And the consideration of food leads us also into the problem of rest, for one of the great causes behind the lowered general vitality that results in lowered sexua! vitality is chronic tiredness. Sometimes a release (rei?? great work strain will put an end to apparent sterilir. A vacation or even a change of work is often the 'oest i prescriptions. Exercise too exerts its influence, fanning the lir cellular activity, imparting vitality to both meat ?**? 1:47ama Or, if it is indulged into excess, sometimes building bodyčcells at the expense of germinal cells, and st. 17, n a hindrance. Nowhere is the classic mi?! indicated than there. From all these suggestions made lur ?" I s given particular study to the probleau of' stylist clear to anyone that what afiets fris miti :41:*: 'n also his reproductive powers; sed it ilir sisters and storelli you go looks at your teeth. You' (V PRE 111, 's" apparently irrelevant questions about lille landet.lul de and living, do not think he is normai noi sol llo 118.40 ·122 Marriage And Family Problems He is merely going about your problem in the most thorough way he knows. For the possible causes and possible curcs on the purcly physical side stretch out in every direction like an endless, only partly explored web, once you get into them. And because every year's research adds to our knowledge of these deeply interlaced causes, every year heightens your chances of solving your own particular problem of apparent sterility-if it is largely a physical problem. Even if it is not largely physical, the prospects of cures arc increasing constantly with increasing knowledge. You may belong to that growing group of men and women in whom psycho-physical disturbances are at work to prevent reproduction. It is this phase of the problem that is most modern”, for the nervous and cmotional strains of our highly industrialized life have injured not only hearts, kidneys and minds but, through these and other parts of the human machinery, reproductive systems as well. And the fact of a rapidly spreading condition of human sterility in the more industrialized countries is terrible proof of this relation between the industrial tempo and lack of fertility. Of course many of the purely physical causes already named are a direct result of this highly organized life of ours. Bad housing, poor food and bad working conditions among large portions of our city populations, poor economic conditions that drive women into frantic efforts not to have children these are the product of what we boast of as our progressivc civilization, But the nervous strains and emotional disturbances connected with this way of lifc cxtend their effects far beyond the obvious physical toll they take. For nerves and cmotions affect the glands and all the body's functionings, and can bring about chemical changes in the physical system that profoundly change the body itself and all its workings. It is a known fact that many animals, naturally fertile and prolific in their wild state, are incapable of breeding in captivity, or breed but poorly. What wonder then thai human hrings, if hurled into a civilization where they live ·When The Bough Breaks 123 in fear, uncertainty or anxiety find themselves sterile. And in our modern, industrialized, "jazzed-up” world there are many persons whose sterility is so induced. If examination fails to show any physical basis for your childlessness you may yet be able to find the solution by consideration and treatment of some psychic factor which is preventing your glands from functioning fully, which is keeping you from that relaxation of mind and spirit so essential to any kind of creativity. Perhaps fears are consuming you-fears about money, losing your job, fears about your marriage, or even about sterility. There is no worse obstruction than fear, whatever your problem may be. Every religion in the world, as well as every scientist, will endorse this statement-wiil say that you must remove fear before you can hope to achieve the result for which you wish. One of the most frequently noted examples is that of the childless woman who finally adopts a child, is relaxed by its presence into her own femininity, and shortly afterwards conceives and bears a child of her own. Or perhaps a late marriage or a long engagement has overstrained the whole psycho-sexual system, and it will take time to build up again what was laid waste in an overlong period of waiting. Or maybe selfishness or undue ambition has or is eating up your energies--concentrating your strength on goals less rewarding than children would be. Or perhaps the emotional dislocations of “modern” lifethe carelessness of fundamental emotional values, the "hereto-day-gone-to-morrow" attitude towards human relationships--perhaps this kind of irresponsible living is draining your emotional and physical energies. In no other realm of life is nature more anxious that you should not "have your cake and eat it-too”, for children need more from you than what is left over from perpetual dissipation. But in all this doleful story of things that may go wrong with the grandest adventure in life, I would like to leave this thought with you. Never in the history of the world ·124 Marriage And Family Problems has the childless couple had more justification for hopefulness than to-day. If you are an average childless couple take yourself to a good doctor. Enter eagerly with him into the fascinating realm of microscopic search which marks the contemporary approach to sterility. Think of it in this way: with him you are privileged to explore the most fundamental, the most deeply hidden mysteries of life. It is a grand opportunity which modern science offers you; grasp it. Do not gire up in a weak acknowledgment of defcat. Plan to have children, and if nature seems reluctant, take the help which science offers you. The chances are excellent that it will help you. And remember this always: you can have children. This is true, regardless of whether the medical sciences are successful in your case or not. For cren if they fail the social sciences have provided a way to parenthood for you. That way I shall discuss in the next chapter. CHAPTER XIV Children by Choice OFTEN frustrated prospective parents have come to me with the same story and the same question: "We have always wanted a son or daughter. But we haven't been able io have onc. Yes, we know all about the Reubens test and all of the other approaches to the problem of sterility. We've gone through them all and there have been no results. Is there nothing clse we can do?” The answer to that question is always an emphatic yes! If you are among those persons who have not been blessed by children of your own bodics, and if you have exhausted the knowledge of medical science without success, you have available to you one of the most exciting and gratifying experiences possible to a man and a woman-that of adopting a child. For there are hundreds of thousands of beauti- ·Children By Choice 125 ful and helpless children in the world who, through the accidents of circumstance, are not being raised by their natural parents. These need the care and the security which you can give them, and you need the joy of parenthood, which they can bring to you. I am amazed at the hesitance with which many childless men and women approach the question of adoption. The questions which they ask themselves and others are natural enough, yet in the light of foster-parents' experience they are shown to be worries about nothing. Would we be able to love an adopted child as much as one of our own? Would we give it the same care, the same advantages? Would others have as much respect for it as they would have for a child born to us? Would bringing a child into our home and calling it ours really make it seem ours, really fill the need of parenthood which we feel so strongly? If there are any such doubts in your mind go to a fosterparent, or to any number of foster-parents, and see them smile as you ask them. To those who have had the joyous experience of raising an adopted child from babyhood these questions become perennial absurdities. They probably had the same doubts themselves before they learned the truth from experience. Now they know that parenthood is only incidentally a physical phenomenon. That which happens when a woman is delivered of a child is only the beginning of, I might even say, the preparation for parenthood. The physiological experience of child-birth sinks into unimportance in the greater experience of caring for a helpless and affectionate child. True motherhood and fatherhood come about through the association of parents and children. In the stricteșt meaning of the word all parents must be adopted by their children before true parenthood is achieved. This process of making children your own and of their making you their own has nothing to do with the source of the children, but is completely a matter of your relationship to them as vital, existing individuals. Indeed there are some especial features of foster-parent- ·126 Marriage And Family Problems hood which may, through an intelligent approach to the peculiar emotional situation involved, be turned to distinct advantage. Many children are damaged by what psychologists call “over-protection” from their parents. The natural parent too often completely identifies himself with his child, thinking of the child as a part of his or her own body and pampering him as he would himself. Such seeming unselfishness often is actually a subtle and most damaging selfishness, for in serving the child, such a parent receives a gratiſication similar to that which he receives from scrving himself. And the damage which is sometimes done a child by this process, commonly called "spoiling", is frequently irreparable. The child goes finally into the world where he must depend upon himself and is not cquipped for self-dependence, because his parents have always kept him dependent upon them, have given him an cxaggerated idea of his own importance and a sense of superiority over everyone else. To be surc, the adoption of a child does not make it secure from the dangers of spoiling, for frequently a fostermother, frustrated in her original desire for children, will over-compensate for this frustration in the attention which she pays to her adopted child, and the process of spoiling may be carried to even a greater extreme than if she had expressed her need to be a mother physiologically and with less of the soul stress which accompanies biologic child- Icssness. This is to be greatly guarded against. It is another and a no less serious problem. But the intelligent foster-parent will perhaps be able to feel a greater sense of objectivity towards the adopted child because she is less closely identificd with it physically than she would be with a child of her own body. This modificd objectivity, when it can be achieved, works for a much more wholesomc relationship between mother and child. The child who is brought into a home from the outside perhaps stands a grcater chance of being regarded as arr individual from the outsct and trcated with the re- ·: Children By Choice 127 spect and consideration which is the right of every other individual. Do not fear the outcome of adopting a child. Welcome this possibility with the same joy that you would feel in looking forward to a child of your own, for indeed if you go about the business of adoption intelligently the child will come to be your own with breath-taking rapidity, once you have held him in your arms, felt his fingers on your cheek, heard his hungry mouth cry for food. But be sure that your attitude is right before you bring another new human being into your home. Especially must your attitude be sound about children born out of wedlock, for a large proportion of the children available for adoption are what we call “illegitimate". What an absurd word that is when you come to think of it. How could anything be "illegitimate”, which is so naturally a product of the forces of life, so in keeping with nature's fundamental law that life shall go on, as a newly born child? In nature there can be no illegitimacy; all is according to law, and there is no difference between the child born out of wedlock and that which comes into a family sanctioned by a legal marriage ceremony Since the beginning of the human race there have been and, so long as the human race lasts and men and women love each other, there will be children who do not wait for the words of a pastor or a registrar to be born. Do you think that these children are in any way inferior to any others? Then think of William the Conqueror, who civilized and settled England, of Napoleon, of Nancy Hanks, hallowed in the memory of America as the mother of Abraham Lincoln, and of thousands and thousands of other men and women whose parents were not legally married, yet who became among the great and noble souls of the world. Have they been any the less worthy because their parents were not married? Remember this: even though you may share the nonetoo-charitable attitude of society in general towards the mothers and fathers of children who are born out of, wed- ·128 Marriage And Family Problems lock, do not let your mind include the helpless children in your blame of the parents. I wish that we all were a little more kindly, a little more understanding, a little morc help. ful, towards those poor girls and women who, loving "nor wisely but too well", bear children before having been legally married. But remember this: in nature the act of marriage consists not in a legal document, not in the words of a pricst or preacher or rabbi or registrar, but only in that very act of union between male and female which results in procrcation. When, as a natural result of that act a new being is born, the act itself, the relationship between the two persons who cngaged in it, and the child, all in the plan of nature, assume a natural dignity and worth and bcauty for above that which they had before. Let this be the content of your attitude before you seek to adopt a child who may be the fruit of such an unconventional and socially un. approved union. Rid your mind of any pre-conccived attitude of blame and shame which may be there. Think only of this, that at some time a man and a woman have conic together in the most important and most vital functioning which Nature has included in her mysterious programme for the continuation of life, that a baby, a potentially bcautiful and fine man or woman, is the result of that coming together, and that you, perhaps, are going to be privileged to play a part in that growth of an individual, that you, perhaps, are going to have the indescribable joy of standing by to help and watch while a hclpless tiny body develops into strong straight back, swift fccr, nimble, skilſul hands, while a mind, vague and only fractionally aware at birth, becomes kccn and cager and wise, ready to take on its proper burden of scrvice in the solution of the many problems with which the world is afficted. That is what adoption means. That is the process which can be no better if the child whom you adopt is the product of a legal marriage, or no less fine if he is the fruit of an cxtra-marital union. Lot inc tell you the story of one adoption in which I was privileged to play a small part. I tell it bccausc thc woman ·Children By Choice 129 who bore the child who was later adopted remains in my mind as one of the finest women I have ever known. She came to me five months after she had become pregnant, heart-sick with the thought of the sacrifice she was about to make, yet determined to do the thing which would be best for the child she was about to bear--not the thing which she wanted for herself. A look of determination was the first thing I noticed about her face when she came into my office. She was unmarried. The father of her child was married and the father of two other children by his wife. She wanted to find a way to see that her child, when it was born, would get into a good home where it would be well taken care of, raised well and properly educated. "Wouldn't you like to keep the child yourself?" I askeď. She looked away from me with tears in her eyes and had to control her desire to cry before she could answer' ine. "I'd rather have this child than anything in the world, Mr. Anthony,” she said. “But what can I do? I have to earn my own living, and I don't make more than enough to support myself. I could never take care of him properly. And he would always be known as a 'fatherless child'. He night come to hate me for that. No--the very best thing I can do for him is to see that he gets a good home, if I can, where he can get the kind of family life every child needs." “I think probably you're right," I said reluctantly, for I was thinking what a magnificent mother this woman might have been, and what a tragedy it was that circumstances were robbing her of the right to have her own child. "I think I can help you see to that. But first I should like to talk to the child's father." Immediately I saw the look of determination, which I had noticed when she first came into my office, return to her face. "You can't do that,” she said emphatically. “I couldn't allow that." "Why are you so determined about it?" I said. 2 ·130 Marriage And Family Problems She looked at me with a steadfast declaration of purpose in her eyes. "Mr. Anthony, he knows nothing about this child," she said. "I have never told him that I am pregnant. I've got a little money saved and I've left my job and come away from my home town before he or anyone else could know that I'm going to have a baby. I love this man with all my heart. What happened was my fault—not his. I loved him so much that I couldn't help it. And I gave him a little peace and happiness for a while.” She said this last proudly. "But I know how fine he is. I know what a strict sense of responsibility he has. I know how much he loves his children, and that he can't leave his wife. I'll not have his life more complicated than it already is by telling him about this child. He must never know." Now I am not going to comment on the moral aspects of this woman's relation with another woman's husband. I want only to say this: seldom in my life have I met anyone who showed such unselfishness, such a high sense of responsibility towards not only her own child; but all of the other persons who might have been affected by her bearing of that child, than this woman who by her own statement had been part of an adulterous union. Whatever censure she may or may not) have deserved for that relationship, shic mct the responsibility which it placed upon her with a high sense of self-sacrifice for the good of everyone affected by it. Do you think that a child with the heritage which she had to give him would be an inferior child? Well, I happen to know exactly what he is like, for I know him now, and know his foster-parents, though they do not know that I know the story of their dearly beloved son. For I sent the woman who was about to bear him to one of the host adoption societies which I know, and I followed up his history later, made the acquaintance, by chance, of his foster-parents, and saw the boy himself, now ten years old, just the other day. And I can assure you that nowhere among my friends and acquaintances, who have achieved ·you bring into Children By Choice 131 their families in the more conventional way, is there a finerlooking, finer-acting or finer-thinking boy. If he does not turn out to be an unusually fine man, I shall begin to lose faith in my own judgment of youngsters. And his parents' (they would resent being called his “foster-parents”) happiness and pride in him is an example for everyone who has doubted the wisdom of adopting a child. The parents of that foster-child are unusually fortunate in the heritage of their son. But you, if you are about to adopt a child, can take the same precautions as those which they took and have at least as good a chance as they had to bring a fine heritage into your family through the child whom your home. The heritage of no one is perfect. There are probably no families who (if they knew all of their heritage) could not find some hidden taint in some ancestor or other. Few individuals know very much about their families for more than the three generations preceding them, and the best adoption societies now investigate the ancestors of the children whom they place for adoption as far back as this. If you go to one of these for your child you will probably be able to learn as much about his heritage as you know about your own. Nowadays, adoption is carefully supervised by law, and excellent machinery has been set up to safeguard .the interests of natural parents, foster-parents and fosterchildren. But be sure that you know something about the child you are going to take. Be sure that there is a reasonable and scientific basis for believing that he brings with him no hereditary insanity or disease. This may seem cruel to you, but unless you are very wealthy -and willing to devote some of your money to the care and cure of such unfortunate innocent sufferers for the illnesses of parents, , your home is no place for them. You have the right to expect in your adopted child the same physical and mental vigour which you would expect in one which is born of your own bodies. And I advise you strongly not to take a child unless his ·iga Marriage And Family Problems natural parent or parents are in complete ignorance of your identity. Nodern adoption societies see to this. When ther handle an adoption case neither the natural parents nor the foster-parents know the identity of the others. Again this mas scem cruel to the natural mother, who will never he able to see the derelopment of her child. Actually it is kind. There have been too many heart-breaks caused by natural parents trying to claim their children after they have been raised by foster-parents, too many splits in the loyalties of the children involved, too many sadly broken homes. A child must have allegiance to one set of parents and one home for his best derelopment. Another question which I am frequently asked is: What shall we tell the child whom we have adopted? As to whether he should be told the truth or not there is only one possible answer. Of course he inust be told the circuni. stances of his having become a part of your family. But there is a good war and a bad war to tell him. There are ways of stating a truth which, beautiful and good in itself. make it seem ugly and bad. And there are ways which rereal all its beauty and goodness. Let me tell you tiro stories illustrating the two extremes possible to the situation. One is of a child who was not told the truth at all, another of one who was told in the right way. llary T. was adopted by a rell-meaning but unintelligent fariner and his iife in the l'est. Earls in her life sho conceived the idca that she had been adopted (as so many children do even when it is not true). But her parents, fccling cibarrassed bp their own natural childlessness, and not knowing how to tell her, always denied that she was anything but their own child, as other children were the sons and daughters of their parents. Bit by bit the conviction increased in Mary's mind, and with it grew a sense of shame based upon her parents' vigorous denials. When she had reached the difficult stage of adolescence she secretly rent and scarched the birth records and found confirmation of her belief. Nor that she knew that licr fcars were ·Children By Choice 133 true her parents' denial must have stood before her like a horrible condemnation. What a hideous and shameful thing it must be to be adopted, she must have decided in frightened agony, else why wouldn't they have told her! On the trip home the horror of her new certainty must have increased; her heart and mind pitifully confused and helpless in an agony of degradation and fear. That night she did not appear at supper-time. Her mother and father called in vain, then began to search for her. It was long after nightfall that they found her, when her father's highheld lantern revealed by its yellow light her body, hanging dead at the end of a rope in the barn. Mary's pain had been too great for her. Life had become intolerable through the terrible force of what was doubtless a well-meant lie, and she had hanged herself. Contrast with that poor suffering child the case of Ellen Y., who was more fortunate in her foster-parents. Ellen, taken as a two-weeks'-old infant by an intelligent and emotionally sound man and woman, had her natural questions answered naturally and honestly from the time when she was able to talk. When she was four years old she asked the age-old question about where she came from. Her mother, without making any special issue of it in any way -any more than she would have in answering the child's questions about how a sewing-machine worked or how the water, got into the taps—told her first the story of human reproduction “But not all women can have babies that way," she went on, "and so there is another way to get them, because some women who can have them can't keep them, for one reason or another. So those who can have them and can't keep them, take their babies to places that are called adoption societies, and those who can't have them and want them come there and get them. And that's a very nice way to get a baby, because if you have one that comes out of you, you have to take what you get, but if you go to an adoption society you can choose one that you know you'll like. That's the way we got you, dear. We went to an adoption society ·134 Marriage And Family Problems and picked out the nicest baby there, and that was you." This mother had the indescribable gratification a few days later of seeing evidence that the child found satisfaction, rather than pain, in her newly gained knowledge. A playmate, following the instinct of thoughtless cruelty which seems to be innate in all children, was shouting at Ellen in a scornful voice: "You're adopted! You're adopted?” With a proud lift of her head, Ellen turned and flung back: "Yes! Your mother had to take what she got, but inine picked me!” I know of another case in which the same technique was used in a family in which there were two adopted children and two which were born in the family. A few days after the mother had told the foster-children the story of their adoption the two adopted children came to her saying they'd like to find some way "to make it up to Joan and Alicc." Joan and Alice were the two children born within the family. The mother, completely puzzled, asked what it was that they wanted to "make up" for. "We're so sorry for them," one of the adopted children said, “because thcy weren't adopted. It isn't their fault that you and Daddy just had to take them and you could choose us, so we'd like to do something special for them!” They actually felt that adoption was an especial honour, as indeed it is. No, there is nothing to be ashamed of in adopting a child -quite the contrary. And there is no reason why a child should ever feel any sense of inferiority to others if he is told the story in the right way and with the right emphasis- If you arc childless do not be afraid of entering upon this fascinating and richly gratifying experience. I have yet to know of a foster-parent who has found anything less than one of the most rewarding experiences of his life in bringing the child of another into his home and making it his own. But there is more than the immediate self-gratification of parenthood in it. All human beings in thc world are one large family. Thesc unfortunate children, whoin chancc has made inotherless and fatherless, and who need the normal constructive influence of family life, arc the ·As The Twig Is Bent 135 responsibility of all of us. Any man and woman who has taken one of them has actually carried out an extension of family responsibility, will have followed the basic law in family relationships which brings the greatest satisfaction of all, the law which says that you shall do unto others as you would that they do unto you. CHAPTER XV As the Twig Is Bent SEVERAL years ago I sat one day in the office of a man who has the complicated and difficult job of directing one of America's state prisons. By training and inclination he is somewhat different from the traditional prison warden. He is a doctor and a psychiatrist who went into prison work out of interest in and sympathy for the poor broken souls who have tried futilely to follow the road which leads nowhere save to failure the road of crime. Before he had become famous as a prison superintendent, he was known as a criminologist who had approached the problem of crime from the psychiatric point of view. As many others had done before him, and as many have done since, he had written treaties listing the psychological causes of crime. He showed me one such list, which he had made a long time before. "But now," he said, “after spending years in close contact with the men themselves, after hearing their stories intimately and gaining first-hand knowledge of the kind of training they have had, I know what the principal cause of crime and failure of individual human lives is. These men, whom I have to keep locked up here, were never given the proper standards. They never were were given proper training as children. 'As the twig is bent, the tree is inclined. How many times I have thought of that as young or the parents of young people, or both, sit before ·136 Marriage And Family Problems remember David N., brought to me when he was thirteen, His mother, a hard-faced, scifish woman, said she could do nothing with him. He wouldn't come home nights; he was constantly seen in the company of a tough gang of boys his own age, who wcrc suspcctcd of being guilty of many minor thcfts and, during the period just before she had brought him to mc, he had been scen many times with a girl of cighteen, who had the most uncnviable reputation of any in the town in which they lived. And Mrs. N. was sure thar he lied to her. Something had to be done, she said, or she would go mad. Now it was significant in this case that Mrs N. thought first of all of the fact that "she would go mad" if someuring were not done. Obviously, the inconvenience and discomfort which David's questionable conduct gave her, was of infinitely greater importance to her than the fact that it might be ruining her son's future. Not what happened to him, but what happened to her, was the thing which matrcred. I talked to the boy alone and to Mrs. N.'s husband, and Icarned that the child had grown up not only with no moral instruction whatcvcr, which was bad cnough, but in an atmosphere in which no training could have licen effective. The woman had marricd without love, purely as a way to live a life of casc at the expense of her husband. The boy had been turned over to one nurse after another during liis infancy (for no scrvant cver stayed long with Mrs. N.), and later to a succession of governcsses. Early in his liſć he found that his presence was only an annoyance to his mother and father, and so he had avoided them as much as possible. In adolescence he had Icarned that the allowance which he was given for spending moncy, bought him casy chirancc into a group of boys who lived morc freely than lc had cver known it possible to live. In rcvolt against his cntirc cnvironment hic cast his lot with them. I'lis totally uninterested parents had found no time or inclinaiion io give him instruction in matters of conduct. The boys has both time and inclination, and were teaching him ·As The Twig. Is Bent 137 with breath-taking rapidity--only they were teaching him the wrong things. I saw to it that David was taken out of his home as. quickly as possible, and sent to a good school. . I managed to keep in correspondence with him, too, and have been fascinated by the eagerness with which he has assimilated the instruction, both technical and social, that the masters there are giving him. David is receiving, at long last, the training in decent standards which the superintendent of the prison, whom I.mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, said had been missing in the lives of those broken men who are now his charges. I have had many young men and women in similar circumstances come to me, and many older women and men who have somehow missed the happiness which is every human being's right, through the dereliction of their parents, who never gave them the proper direction when they were children. The hunger for love and wise guidance is the strongest drive in any child's life. When this need is not satisfied in a strong, wholesome relation between children and parents, lifetimes of misery and maladjustment may be the result. When you bring a child into the world, or when you take into your home one which has already been brought into the world by others, you are taking on the gravest responsibility which you have ever been called on to face. I have always recommended parenthood where it is possible and practical, and shall always recommend it, as the wisest and happiest completion of a life which for the average adult person is being only half lived without children. I recommend it as a source of personal gratification, as a fulfilment of the most deeply felt hopes and aspirations of all living beings, as a part of the way to happiness for which there is no completely satisfactory substitute. But it is vastly more than that. There is no privilege in the world which does not bring with it a corresponding responsibility. And this greatest of all privileges, this in- ·138 Marriage and Family Problems csumable blessing which comes from a baby's fingers clasping your own in dcpendence and trust, from a baby's cycs laughing into yours, from directing a baby's mind and body as ulicy grow into the most beautiful of all creations, a finc man or woman, is a privilege which brings with it the gravcst and deepest responsibilities to the child itself, to both husband and wiſc and to society as a whole. Fifteen or twenty ycars after your child is born (and in a lesser incasure sooner than that) you will send him forth into a world which wants, which cxpects, which nccds, only fine men and women to face the many diſlicult problems which arc tcaring the world to bits. You have no right to give the world any less than a fine man or woman. And whcthcr your son will be a ſine man, your daughter a fine woman, is largely in your hands. And whether you findi happiness or biticr grief through parenthood, depends largely upon how well you meet your obligation to build your children's physical and incníal health, to give them ile kind of characters which the world needs in its inch and women. There is not space in onc chapter 10 pass on to you the knowlege of child life and child training which you must have in order to do your job as a twenticth-century parent properly. I can only give you a few guides, and urge you to read further in the many excellent buoks which you can find in any good public library. For memories of your own childhood and your own training (even though your memories are accurate and your training was good for its time) are not enough to guide you. You are living now in a different world from that in which you were born. Thic circumstances which surround your child are vastly different from those which existed tvcnty-five, or thirty, or forty years ago, when you were born. And nowhicre las scicntific knowledge increased morc rapidly or wiili more constructive clicct, than in the knowledge of child training. Make this new knowledge yours. Equip yourself for this most important job in your liſc morc carcfully than you would for any other jobs.

·As The Tsis Is Berit 139 Just as in all other matters of family relationships, or any human relationships, the golden rule must be the basis of your approach to the matter. The child must be iegarded as a person, as an individual for whose rights and peculiar needs you must have as much respect as you have for those of any adult in the world. In order to grant him the free exercise of those rights and to satisfy those needs, you must learn to look at all the questions which affect him from his point of view, as well as from yours, and that of the others who make up the family, and the world of which he is a part. You must learn to knowv, first of all, what a child is like. A child is very much like yourself. He wants food; he wants good health; he wants protection against the cold of winter and the heat of summer; and he wants, and must have—if he is to develop into a happy and useful man or woman-love, a love which will never fail him, a love on which he can count in every hour of stress and fear and weakness, a love which can bear all of the irritations which the child himself will furnish in the natural process of growing up, a love which is above pettiness, which puts the happiness and welfare of the loved one above self, a love which is so eager for knowledge of the one who is loved, that it will spare no pains in gaining that knowledge. If you have that kind of love for your child you are on firm ground. It will do more than any books to teach you what he is like. It will make you understand that it is natural for a baby to find its first pleasures in the purely physical sensations of muscular activity, eating, being fondled. It will give you understanding and tolerance of the self-love of early childhood and the inevitable lack of consideration for others which grows out of it, and will help you to guide that self-love (which is nature's way of impressing the instinct of self-preservation on all of us) into channels of selfless service to others. Your love for your child will make it easy for you to see clearly why it --hat a boy in his adolescence will adore his father or ot?

·140 Marriage And Family Problems heroes, why your daughter at this age is apt to have "schoolgirl crushes”, and will give you the ability to guide them safely through these difficult periods. And your love for your child will create within you, the sympathy and understanding and co-operation with him which he will need so badly when he falls in love with one of the other sex. These are the three stages in the normal emotional development of every person which psychologists now recognize. Wisdom and understanding are necessary as the child enters each phase. You must not be worried if you find that at a certain age your son has a great interest in other boys and none in girls, or if your adolescent daughter pays no attention to the nice boys who want to take her out, but seems to be "in love" with a girl a little older than herself. This outpouring of feeling in a young person towards one of the same sex, is a normal stage in emotional development, a preparation for the mature love of one of the other sex, on which happy marriage is based. Remember always that actually a child is being prepared for marriage--the most important event of his lifc-from the day of his birth, and that you, as his parents, will do more to make the preparation good or bad than anyone else can. The little girl, when she cares for her dolls, is getting ready for motherhood; the little boy when he plays shopsor even when he plays cops and robbers-is getting ready to support her. Even later, when the attention of your adolescent children is absorbed by members of the other sex, and you are worried about thcir conduct with cach other, remember that thcir "love play” (so long as it is natural and does not go beyond ihe bounds of cmotional and social wisdom) is necessary to the success of the mature love relationships which will come later. If, before they have reached adolescence, you have implanted in their minds and hearts a sound and wisc and beautiful attitude towards love and high standards of social conduct, you will have little need to worry about their conduct with cach other.

·As The Twig Is Bent 141 How successful you will be in giving them such standards for social conduct , will depend largely upon your own ability to live by fine standards yourself. You may preach to a child in words alone; you can really teach him only by acting in your own life according to the principles which you enunciate to him. There is an old saying: "Your actions speak so loudly that I can't hear what you say.". Its implications are sound. You cannot expect to teach your child respect for the law if you drive through red traffic lights and evade your taxes, or to make him unselfish and considerate of others if you habitually furnish him with examples of selfishness and lack of consideration. The effective teacher is the one whose instruction consists more of example than of words. This is true in respect of all of your teachings concerning honesty, kindness, industry, and all the other staunch social qualities by which a man or woman is enabled to live a happy and constructive life. But it is very especially true in the matter of the marriage relationship, that most important of all experiences for which your child must be prepared. His attitude towards marriage and family life will inevitably be determined by what he sees and understands of his parents' marriage, and of the life of the family of which he is a part. Actually, you and your wife or husband will, through the influence of your own marriage upon your child, influence that child's marriage as greatly as will the other partner to it. And so, as parents, your responsibility to keep your own marriage relationship on as high a plane as is humanly possible, becomes vastly greater than before. See to this first of all , when you are considering the matter of bringing up your child. It is the first essential of successful parenthood. In a very important way; your child will test the soundness of your marriage. For you will find, as he begins to grow up before your eyes, that he is rapidly establishing three relationships. First of all, there First of all, there is the relationship which exist between him and his mother and father jointly, almost as though they were one person. But there are also, ·142 Marriage And Family Problems as secondary parent-child relationships, that between him and his mother, and that between him and his father, So long as there is not too great a split between thesc lase two relationships, and as long as the primary relationship between him and Mother and Father as one is the strongest of all, the family union is a sound one. As the difference between his feeling about his mother and his feeling about his father increases, and the two feelings approach the state of actual antagonism to cach other, the danger of emotional damage increases. Obviously, then, it must be the object of both parents to maintain a harmony of feeling between themselves, and particularly in regard to their attitude towards the child, if they are not to rob him of his right to a feeling of peace and security and the prospect of healthy emotional growth within his family. Harmony, or lack of harmony, between the parents, wil be evident in all of the instruction which the child is given And that instruction which is given the child in his home will be even more imporant than anything which he learn at school. For the school can seldom do much through its teaching save increase his knowledge of factual matters unless you, in the home, have discharged your difficult and important responsibility of helping him build his character. It is you who must answer his profound and direct questions about social conduct, about religion, about sex, and about thc joys and sorrows which lic ahead of him in adul lifc. And to meet his need you must be completely truthful and completely candid with him. I have little patience with parents who answer their children's questions with: "Don't bother mc now," or, "You're not old enough to know." When a child asks you a question and you know the answer, give it to him directly in detail , with complete honesty, whether the question is about the making of bread, the way to use a tool, the processes of human reproduction, the reasons why you do or do not go to church, or the planting of an apple-trcc. I am amazed whenever I sec cvidence that there is still an argument over whether or when to tell the children the ·As The Twig Is Bent 143 truth about sex. Yet I know that there frequently is such an argument. Periodically, a mother and father come into my office to settle it. One maintains that the child should be told "the facts of life”, the other feels that the telling will set the youngster's mind to thinking too much about sex and tend to ruin his morals.. Actually, of course, there is nothing so calculated to make any child's mind dwell in an unhealthy way upon, any subject as evasions and secretiveness and deceit about it. One of the most profound, one of the most healthy, one of the most natural questions which you can ever be asked, is that which a normal child will inevitably ask some time (unless he has been discouraged in asking questions): "Where did I come from” or, more directly and generally: “How do people make babies?" You must answer this question as accurately, as directly, in as much detail, and with as little self-consciousness as you would expect a good teacher to answer his questions in arithmetic and geography At least, someone must answer it in this way. Unfortunately, some parents' attitudes towards sex are so twisted that they are actually incapable of giving the child honest sex instruction in the way that he should be given it. If you are in this situation, and you are wise enough to know it, then you will do better to let your family physician or a good friend, whose mind and emotions are more at resť about this all-important matter, instruct your child. To be you are forced by your own twisted attitude to send him to someone else, you will be giving your child second best, for he has the right and the need to expect that his parents are fitted to give him knowledge and instruction in the most intimate and important facts of life. And how badly he needs such instruction and guidance! How deeply he wants it! What depths of fear he may know if he does not receive it! I think it was Sidney Lanier, the great American poet, who wrote these wise and stirring lines: sure, if ·144 Marriage And Family Problems Thou ship of earth, with death, and birth, and life, and sex aboard. And fires of desires burning hotly in the hold, I fear thee, 0, 1 fear thee, for I fear the tonguc and sword At battle on the deck, and the wild mutineers are bold! A pilot! God, a pilot! For the helm is left awry. Meet this need of your children for guidance. Do not be misled by a misinterpretation of the modern theory that the child must find self-expression and must not be inhibited. Of course he must find self-expression-infinitely more than the sternest disciplinarians of earlier generations allowed their children. And, of course, his constructive impulses, which work for his own good and the good of society, must not be inhibited. But remember that the minute you begin training him to use his pottie you are inhibiting him; the moment you teach him not to hit his littlc playmates on the head with a hammer you are inhibiting him; the moment you teach him not to stcal and not to lie and not to interrupt you when you are talking and not to take all the playthings away from smaller children, you are inhibiting him, and rightly so. The process of growing up, the process of becoming civilized, the ways by which anyone Icarnis to live a life which will make others love and respect him, are a constant succession of wise, well-planned inhibitions. Somctimes it is difficult to teach them to a dearly loved child in the face of his natural rebellion against them. But in later life he will never forgive you if you have not taught them to him, and neither will society, and both hc and society will bless you I do not agree with the dictatc of Solomon, who said that you would spoil the child if you spared the rod. I do not believe in using a "rod" on a child. I bclicve in spankings only under very rarc circumstances (such as icmper tantrums-in which the spanking is not a punishment but if you have.

·As The Twig Is Bent 145 a physical stimulation which will probably bring the child back to normal more quickly than anything else) and only for very young children. But I do believe, in fact I am sure, that if you neglect to teach a child the absolutely essential lesson of self-discipline through disciplining him in his early years, you will have contributed to the potential ruin of his entire life. And do not think that he will resent your discipline if it is just, and if he knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that you love him. These two are the essential requirements, and the latter is of even greater importance than the former. For a child will forgive quickly and freely even occasional injustices which he recognizes as such, so long as he knows that never-failing love is waiting for him at all times in the parent. He knows instinctively that parents get tired and cross and unreasonable sometimes, and he can forget the unreasoned results of this fatigue. But he can never forget evidences that he is not loved; he can never be satisfied and happy and grow healthily, with mere cold, unfeeling justice. Love is as essential to him,as the food he eats, the air he breathes, the sleep of night, which refreshes him and makes him ready for a new day. Give him this love. And give him those other things which you would expect to give and receive from those adults who mean the most to you. Give him respect. Give . him the right to privacy, a room of his own, the right (when he is old enough to write and receive letters) to a correspondence which you do not ask to see, to private times with his friends upon do not intrude, to a home of his own after marriage. Do not live with your married children. Give them the all-important example of the best marriage relationship you can possibly establish, of a home which will furnish a high ideal for them to seek to attain when they later pattern their own homes on it. And give your child a better education in his social responsibility than you can expect any public school to give him. Make him see how fortunate he is, at a time when so much of the world is in chaos, to have been born which you ·146 Marriage And Family Problems into a land in which he may cnjoy the blessings of ciemnocracy. Tcach him the responsibilities of democracy which we must all discharge if we are not to lose its blessings. Make him rcady for his difficult and important job as a citizen of this great country of which he is to be a part. And when you sce him take his place in the world, doing his part for the social good, being respected and loved by those who know him, you will reap a richer reward than you have found in anything else you have ever donc in your lifc. CHAPTER XVI The Lonely House Mrs. F. canic into my oſlice almost furtively. A nervous restlessness was evident in cvery movement of her ſluttering hands, in every turn of her cycs, which flashed quick, jerky glances from one part of the room to another, as if sho were looking for something, the presence of which she almost ſcared. When she scated herself shc sat on the edge of the chair, as if ready for immediate flight, and spoke in a rush of bitter words, words which seemed to be accusing me, her listcncr, who had never seen her before that inomcnt. "Mr. Anthony, I am fifty years old," she said. “Oh, I know I don't look it, but I am." It was truc that she didn't look it. Her hair was coal black, though perhaps one morc expert than I am in such matters might have guessed that it liad been dyed: her face, under the ministrations of a skilful beauty specialist, was quite without wrinkles: her excellently selected clothes could have been worn as fittingly (yet no better than Mrs. F. wore them) by a woman of thirty. Only a certain air of renseness, a certain look of the kind of fear which some women have of old age, gave any hint that one could not judge her age by hier general outward appearance, ·. The Loriely House 147 "I have been married for thirty years," she went on, "and I have two children-two sons, who have meant more to me than anything else in the world. We had the loveliest family life you could imagine. We were all so happy together- She paused and seemed about to cry. "You say 'were happy together"?" I said. "What has happened to them?" "They've both left me,” she said in a low voice, heavy with a note of tragedy. “They've both got married and left their father and me alone, and neither of us can seem to get liold of anything worth living for any more. We need your help so badly." To those of you who quite properly look forward eagerly and happily to the marriages of your sons and daughters the story of Mrs. F. may seem unbelievable, yet I assure you that in one form or another her story is repeated every day all over the world. Mrs. F. and her husband, too, I learned later in talking with him, had never been true parents, had actually never become true adults. They had failed in two of the most important requirements for maturity and parenthood. Their children had never been individuals to them, but simply mediums for their own pleasure. They had thought more of the joy of having their children with them than they had of the good of the children themselves. Both of their sons had married secretly without their parents' consent or approval, because they knew that they would never be able to get it, and both Mr. and Mrs. F. felt actually that their sons had treated them shabbily by doing this. This attitude towards their children (through which they had failed both the children and themselves) had grown out of their other fundamental failure as persons, their failure to build their own lives in such a way that they would have ample intellectual and spiritual resources with which to face their declining years alone. If you have properly used the opportunities which life has offered you there is nothing to fear in those last years of life which come to all of us after our children have established ·148 Marriage And Family Problems homes of their own and we are left to the quietness and peace of advancing age. As a matter of fact, the afternoon and evening of life may contain the richest and most re. warding years you have ever known, if you: will make them so. I have little patience with men and women who complain against the "fate” which has condemned them to a lonely old age. For actually we make our own fate. I happen to have a number of friends among old people, for I like them. Most of them (though not all) have been fortunate in the matter of families, which they have raised well and happily. and which are now married. Some of them have grandchildren, and these are the happiest “old people” of all. have put that phrase in quotation marks because often it seems absurd to me to call them "old". In the sense that they are wise and mature it is a true word. If, when you use it, you mean that the person whom you call old is letting go of his hold on life, is lonely, is to be piticd, then you cannot justly use it to describe these friends of whom I an thinking There arc Mr. and Mrs. T., for instance, who are only ten years older than Mrs. F., though to look at them you might think there was thirty years' difference in their ages. For beside Mrs. F's unwrinkled face and coal-black hair, Mr. and Mrs. T.'s wrinkles and grey hair and the slight cldcrly stoop of Mr. T. would stand out in marked contrast. But when you looked in their cycs (flanked by "crow'sfect” wrinklcs which much laughter has put there) you would see the light of eternal youthful vitality of spirit which Mrs. F. has completely lost. For Mr. and Mrs. T. are living as they never had time to live when they were busy twenty-four hours of crery day in the magnificent task of raising their five children. 'They are reading the books, secing the plays, doing the modest travelling, which they never could manage bcforc, and having again with a decper sense of peace and knowlcdgc of cach other) those quict crenings together which they had Icarncd to love before their first child was born in bring ·The Lonely. House 149 what was then welcome destruction to their complete privacy with each other. And in their nine grandchildren they are living again the joys of parenthood without the work, the worry and the ? responsibility which were attendant upon the job of raising their own.children. They have found a happiness which I wish every young person could see. They are an inspiration to me every time I see them together. They are an example of what joy and peace a fine life well lived can bring into Look forward to those years! Prepare yourselves for them by living fully and vitally and well and storing up in your minds and hearts treasures on which you can draw in those days when you will really have time to enjoy them. Just as the years of adolescence must be spent in preparation for your life as a mature individual, so the years of your prime maturity can, and should be, spent'in such a way that you are preparing for the climax of life, those less active, more thoughtful days which will crown your years. If you can so spend your adult life you will say joyously with the great poet, Robert Browning: old age. , Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in his hand Who saith "A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!” Youth ended, I shall try My gain or loss thereby; Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold; And I shall weigh the same, Give life its praise or blame: Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old..

·150 Marriage And Family Problems CHAPTER XVII The Broken Cord WIEX se consider the drama of human life we usually think of it as a series of crises through which a man or woman passes—wo of the most dramatic, birth and death, common to us all, and a third, marriage, almost as usual. To those a fourth, divorce, has in modern times become increasingly frequent; more and more it has been accepted as a rather-to-be-expected crisis in human experience. The average man is born, learns gradually to live with his fellows, works, loves and is married. He begets children; he accepts the changes which come with advancing age; he sickens and dics. He loves; he hatcs; he suffers and he is happy. From cach new cxperience, with cach twinge of pain and moment of bliss, he learns a little more about the process of living. To some of us an additional crisis is added to the list of crises through which we all pass sooner or later-a crisis no less diſficult, no less agonizing and in far the larger number of cases totally without peace and happiness. Divorce, by its advocates, is often described in if not glowing, at least rcassuring terms as: "A clean hrcak”, "a fresh start", "an honest decision". But what so many of us don't understand and never realize until it's too late is that because divorce offers "a clean break” lcgally, it cannot promisc "a cican break” emotionally. “A fresh start" is not possible in the sense that that which has gone before docs not contribute to that which comes after, and too often I have found in my studies on divorce problems that what seemed to be "an honcst dccision" to one party in the casc scems anything but honest and fair to the other partner. Before we decide whether divorce is typically the best way out of marital diſficulty, let us cxamine the most frcquent causes of broken marriages. They are many and ·The Broken Cord 151 complicated, of course, but those most frequently cited are infidelity, impotence, frigidity, sterility, cruelty, desertion, incompatibility, neglect to provide, conviction of felony, bigamy, insanity. Obviously I do not deny the prevalence of these phenomena, nor do I think it strange that any one of them would disrupt the harmony of a union between a man and his wife. The point to remember, however, in considering any one of these causes, is not the condition or the act itself , but the reasons for it, the things which have contributed to it, the basic causes behind it. John complains because he suspects Mary of infidelity, if not in her acts, at least in her desires, because she is frigid, because (since she has not conceived) she is sterile, because she is cross and silent with him, because she does not understand him, because she takes no interest in preparing his meals and caring for the house, because she “acts queerly" at times and he thinks maybe she is a little crazy, and so he wants to divorce her. The chances are that some of these things are true of Mary, but there is also the very great probability that much of the cause of Mary's inharmonious actions and attitudes lies in John himself, and that by divorcing her and marrying another woman he will accomplish nothing, for he will automatically infect his second marriage with the diseases which killed his first. If, on the other hand, be were 10 approach the difficulties which he sees in Mary from the point of view of the stimulation to being a good or a bad wife which he, as a husband, furnishes, analyse himself as critically as he has analysed her, and try to enter with her a joint campaign in which each would try to re-adapt himself to marriage, the need and the desire for divorce might quickly vanish. Even if the matter is not so definitely a joint failing as this, even if in the conduct of his daily life John is a thoroughly exemplary husband, and the failure in temperaments points of view, actions, is completely Mary's, there is still much to be done before that last resort of all, divorce, is sought. If Mary had pneumonia John would not consider divorcing her, simply because during the period of her ill--

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·The Broken Cord 153 It is a truism that no human being is perfect, and in relatively few, if indeed any, cases of marital discord is one partner completely blameless. Often both husband and wife are totally unconscious of the underlying facts of their sonalities which make for their unhappiness in marriage perand, each blaming the other, they seek to rid themselves of those particular ties, believing that a change of partners is all they need to establish a successful and happy marriage. What they fail to realize is that not only do they take over into their new marriages the same personalities which did not fit into the old (sometimes, to be sure, somewhat modified by experience), but the very experience of the divorce itself has left them with new and little-understood emotional difficulties, and painful and lasting scars. Regardless of the greater acceptance by a larger part of society and a gradual removal of the stigma formerly placed upon the divorced person, his place in the social group is inevitably a difficult one. The aura which surrounds the idea of marriage is (no matter how falsely) still one of happiness and romance. Its dissolution, divorce, therefore, is unavoidably accompanied by an instinctive feeling of unhappiness and failure. No matter how rationally one may approach the idea of divorce, how necessary, how morally and spiritually and physically healthy we sometimes know it to be, nevertheless this unconscious emotional stigma is always present: The divorced must expect some difficult and painful adjustment to his new condition; breaking the marriage ties, regardless of how irksome and disagreeable those ties have proved to be, is a heart-breaking and soulshaking experience. If there are children concerned the problems involved in the severance and the following adjustment are of course increased a thousandfold. There are many happy second marriages, but too often the divorced person takes into a new union those very impediments to successful human relationships which marred the first and so forecasts the failure of the second. Divorce is first and foremost the admission of failure, and as such is a social evil and a personal tragedy, even though ·154 Marriage And Family Problems we recognize its necessity and admit occasional iruly beneficial results. Some of the most bitterly unhappy persons I know, the most unsuccessful and miserably adjusted men and women with whom I have worked, are single as a result of divorce or married the second, third and even fourth time no more constructively than the first. There is no situation in life which is all good or all bad. Discarding a bad thing does not assure us of finding a good thing to take its place. Several years ago a young woman came to sce me who found herself after a blissful first year of marriage bored and unhappy and miserable with her husband. "Marriage isn't at all what I thought it would be," she complained to me. "What did you think it would bc?” I asked her. "Well," she said slowly, “I suppose I thought it would be romantic and gay and exciting, that my husband would always scem thrilling to me, like a hero' in a book, But instead it's mostly a round of washing dishes and going to the pictures, and my husband complaining that he's tirca and snoring over his paper at night!” “You are doing yourself and your husband great harm," I warned her, “because you fooled yourself into belicving that life is accurately portrayed in romantic novels. Only the immature want to experience life on that level alonc. You wouldn't want to live on a dict of cream buns and chocolate eclairs, would you? Why, then, would you want to live in a perpetual atmosphere of ecstatic romance? Life isn't sct on a Hollywood stage or keyed to the tempo of a Broadway musical cxtravaganza. If it were, thosc things which make life truly exciting would ncver have occurred. The strides that man has made to civilize and improve his world haven't come out of artitudcs like yours. She shook her head stubbornly. "I don't care what you say, Mr. Anthony," she insisted. “I don't want to spend the rest of iny life with a man whose idea of a happy marriage is sining around the house every night and reading the football results or digging in the garden!"

·The Broken Cord 155 "Is he good to you?” I asked her. "Is he kind and generous?". She shrugged her shoulders. "Oh yes,” she admitted. "He's kind enough. And I haven't any complaint about money, except that he wants to save every penny he can get his hands on to buy a house in a few years.' “That's fine," I interrupted her, "to buy a house. Don't. you want a home of your own?' A own?' A place where you realiy belong and that belongs to you? You ought to be extremely thankful that he wants to do that—that marriage means permanency and stability to him.” I found that I was talking to her as I would to a child, for indeed that it what she was, and my words had about as much effect on her as they would have had on a very recalcitrant young daughter. "Yes, of course," she_admitted. "I want a house some day. But I'm young, Mr. Anthony, can't you understand that? I want some fun and excitement and a chance to see new places before I settle down." I talked to her for several hours, and completely. convinced myself that divorce would be no solution to her difficulties, for the difficulties were not a part of that specific marriage, but arose from her inability to take an adult-part in any marriage. I knew that any marriage into which she went without first having changed her own points of view, without first going through a process of, shall we say,-reeducation, would fail just as this one had. I tried to convince her of this. I tried to make her hold on to her marriage while she was receiving help in achieving a better point of view. But she had, over a period of months, worked herself up to such a pitch of hysterical self-pity and disappointment with her lot that she refused to accept even in part another point of view. Before she left I asked her to send her husband in 10 see me, thinking that perhaps by explaining to him his wife's emotional need for a morc romantic marriage, they could be saved from the final break that I was afraid I saw in the immediate future. I worked with them both for several months, and though ·156 Marriage And Family Problems the husband was quite willing to attempt somewhat to modify his life and she agreed to try to approach their common problems more rationally, she refused or was unable to give up her romantic and unreal conceptions of life. They drifted farther and farther apart, and one day she told me she was in love with another man-aman, she said, who understood her need for gaiety and with whom she knew she would have the kind of thrilling and romantic life she was certain was her duc. "I've asked Bert for a divorce,” she said. “And Tony and I are to be married right away. I didn't know what kind of man Tony was, but by this time I was so sure that she was actually mentally sick, at Icast mentally immature—the child éternally chasing the rainbow—that I felt confident that Tony, too, would be unable to live up to her unreal standards. Her husband, Bert, I had learned to respect and like, and I know the shock of losing his wife whom he loved decply would be a terrible one for him. I feared, too, for her. She was like a child who would burn herself horribly before she learned that fire was painful as well as beautiful and exciting. "Remember Tony is a lover now," I tried to warn lier. “Husbands are bound to become prosaic, you know. Bert was exciting to you once. He's just your husband now, but Tony will be a husband, too." "No, you simply don't understand," she insisted enthusiastically: “Tony will always be Tony." Shc had no knowledge of how prophetic that description was, poor soull She went away from my office aglow with now love and she subscqucntly carried out her plans. She and Bert were divorced and she marricd Tony. Only by chance did I find out the end of the story. I was walking along the street one morning when I met hier quito by accident. "I was shocked by her appearance. She had aged ren years since she had said good-bye to me two years before in mny office. "Come and have some ica with mc," I said. "I want to hear all about you."

·The Broken Córd 157 She glanced at the watch on her wrist. "I'm having my lunch-hour," she said in a tired voice, “but I have a half an hour.” We went into a near-by restaurant, and with very little urging she told me what had happened to her in the last two years. My heart sank when I saw the sad look in her eyes, the tired lines around her mouth and the drooping head which she had once carried so proudly. But my heart really ached for her, and in a way for Tony, too, when she told me her story. To make that long story short, I shall give just the bare facts, for no words could describe the hours of agony and despair and disillusionment which she had experienced. Tony had indeed been always Tony: Light-hearted, irresponsible and childishly heartless, he had refused to accept the responsibility inherent in any marriage, no matter how romantic. Her story was a long recital of unpaid bills, collectors at the door, nights in which Tony came' home long past midnight, if at all, quarrels and recriminations, poverty and misery and pain. "I finally took à job,” she said. “I had to if we were going to eat. And now sometimes days go by and I don't see Tony. He's off on somie wild-goose chase or other, scheming and planning how he's going to get rich quick over night. She smiled wryly. “He says only the mediocre slave at petty jobs, that romance is in the adventuresome things. But I notice it's my weekly salary which I get as a stenographer that pays his rent and feeds him.” We sat in silence for a moment. "And Bert?" I asked her gently. “Do you know what has happened to him?" The most pitiful expression of despair flashed for a moment across her face and then was quickly gone, but not before it told me that she still loved her first husband and had found it out too late. "He married just a few months ago," she said quietly. “Someone told me she's a beautiful girl and they're very much in love." She broke the silence that followed almost as though she ·158 Marriage And Family Problems were talking to herself. “Bert bought a house for her. They moved in just last week.” My heart was 100 full for words. What was there to say to a woman who had had to learn by experience, the most terrible and painful way humans learn anything that life is not at its best froth and romance and a succession of thrills? Too late she had found out that her own inadequacies, her own childish selfishness and adolescent standards had made her ruthlessly discard a potentially fine marriage for one that offered none of the peace and lasting happiness and quiet joy that is possible for two adult persons to find in a shared and common life. It seems to me as I deal day after day with variations on the same theme, marital unhappiness, that human beings confronted with their daily problems do try to solve them. To the best of their abilities so many times they attempt a solution, but they go about it awkwardly and ineſſectually. Then having failed in their initial attempts, they say, in effect: "What's the use of trying, there's always divorcc.” The process of divorce and what will happen after divorce they seem not to question, or if they do they are inclined to assume that because the marriage is bad the divorce incvitably must be better. That is absolutely false rcasoning. Nowhere is the adage: "From the frying-pan into the fire”, more often applicable than in this situation. Loneliness, a sense of failure and defeat, an exclusion to some extent at Icast from a familiar social group, a changed sex life which often results in a breakdown of established sex habits, the difficulties of preserving children, if they are involved, from the scars left by a divided home, financial strain-some of these and many more will be present in any divorce situation. More often than not I believe it is only trading one set of uncomfortable and unpleasant conditions for another sct no less uncomfortable and often cvcn less hearable. If cvery person unhappy and dissatisfied in his marriage could honestly and unemotionally cvaluatc what his life would be after the divorce and apply to making his marriage ·The Broken Cord 159 more satisfactory as much energy and courage as he would have to apply to making his life a success without it, I think there would be fewer broken homes. There are indeed many persons who are willing to make just such an effort, but often because of the fact that they are the persons involved, they are unequal to the task. Then a prófessional person, equipped by special knowledge, experience, and aided by his very disinterest; may prove to be of greatest-help. Certainly no effort that can be made should be disregarded, for those most closely concerned with divorce problems, psychologists, sociologists and lay persons, who have had personal experience, unanimously agree that the effect of divorce on the individual, the home and society is in the main deplorable. I hear stories hour after hour and deal with case after case of badly adjusted, desperately unhappy ir:dividuals whose troubles and neuroses I can account for instantly because of divorce. Children, torn by the divorce of their parents, their emotional lives so unbalanced that they carry a handicap to the end of their days. Adults, separated from wives or husbands who seemed unbearable while they shared the same house, lost and foot-loose, prey to a hundred fears and frustrations, seeking for help in a strange world. Men, who have fallen victim to their own need for romantic love, having divorced a faithful and loyal wife in order to capture a moment's ecstasy, betrayed and disillusioned by their act. Women, who have left their husbands in moments of pique or jealousy or boredom, weeping as they face an empty world. I know divorce. I meet its victims every day. Yet with all my knowledge of the evils of divorce, of the insidiousness of the perils, frustrations and desperate unhappiness that accompany it, I know there are times when no other way is possible, when even its dangers are preferable to a marriage that from all points of view is intolerable. Then, when all efforts possible at a successful reconciliation have failed, when the situation is by all honest standards impossible of adjustment, I say sever the marriage lies by ·160 Marriage And Family Problems divorce. But do it recognizing as clearly as you possibly can the complicated emotional and social dangers inherent in the divorced state. For by recognizing them and preparing for them they can at least in some measure be overcome. Ignorance and a refusal to face facts are among the most destructive attitudes in the world, and in divorce they can do the greatest damage not only to the two persons directly involved, but to others who may be closely identified with them. Try to face honestly your own inadequacies and shortcomings which have contributed to the situation, and resolve that you will overcome them in addition to changing your way of life. Realize that any human relationship is 2 most delicate thing and plan to give your utmost to any relationship you establish in the future. Don't lct yourself belicve that any marriage is a bed of roses; lcarzı to understand that even the best marriages must be constantly guarded and worked at with intelligence and a will to make them succeed. Remember that human beings are much alike, prone to faults and weaknesses as well as virtucs and strength, susceptible of kindness and rescntful of criticism, cruelty and unfairness. Believe, for it is true, that love and the tics it knits are very strong and often hold long after we have tried to discard them; that love can bc uusted, for it is often strong cnough to last through a hundied arguments and misunderstandings. Don't throw love away becausc it has disappointed you. Make sure first that the failure has not been your own. Be sure first that you have done all you can to make yourself able to meet the demands that love must make if it is to be a firm basis on which to build one's life, ·The Valley Of The Shadow 161 CHAPTER XVIII The Valley of the Shadow Many years ago there was a daily feature called "Little Benny's Notebook” in the newspaper that I read. Every day it contained bits of homely but often profound wisdom, which drew its readers back to it day after day for years. One of the sentences which made a deep impression on me was this: "There are two kinds of troubles, big ones and little ones. The little ones are the best, for they make you förget the big ones.” I often think of little Benny when I see some poor stricken soul who has been robbed by death of that which he holds. most dear- husband or wife, a son or daughter-one who is dearly beloved, one who has filled life with joy and meaning and purpose. Sometimes in a feeling of helplessness I have almost wished that I could fill the lives of these people with the kind of "little troubles” Benny had in mind, when · he wrote that these made us forget our big troubles. But I don't ever really wish that, for I know that forgetting is not the way to overcome the destructive force of grief. I know now that, of a truth, the big troubles may be made the best, for they make it possible for us really to know ourselves. I know what a crushing sense of utter defeat the death of a loved one can bring with it. I know how the very sun can seem to lose its brightness, how the air can seem poisoned by death, how the mind, in passionate protest against the cruelty and seeming injustice of this pain, may wish that the aching heart, left to suffer in loneliness, might cease beating. I know how bitterly unfair it may seem when one in the full vigour of life, whose heart beat high with hope, whose mind was firm and fine in purpose, whose eyes and arms and lips were eager in their response to love, becomes suddenly a lifeless body in which that divine fire that made the human being, the gracious one, ·162 Marriage Anil Family Problems the beautiful one, the loved one, has been extinguished by thic bitter breach of death. I know of no lonclines and crror greater than those which death can crcate. But the way 10 conquer that loneliness and that tcrror is not through itempring 19 deny the reality will, which the cternal forces have brought you into contact. There is onc way and one way only to deal with any truth, with any fact, and that is so faccit, in accept it, ro cxaminc it carefully and find the way to make its force a part of the constructive force of There is comfort in a linowicige of the universality of any truth. If death has robbed you of a loved one know that that corrow which you feel has been ſele bcſorc by millions and millions of others before you and will be felt by millions and millions of others after you, and that they have sur vivert, and many of them liave become bcuier men and women through their prici. I was impressed by this recently in reading a cautiful story from the Budilhist Bible which tells how Gorama Buddha comforice a young woman whose only child was dead. I wishol, :s I read is, that all who are suficring in corrow could have it laid before them. And so a part of it I give you here: your own liſc. Kiragolami gave birth 10 a con. When the boy was able 10 walk by himsell, he dicd. The young girl, in her love for it, carried the dead child clasped in licr bosom, and went about from house to house asking if anyone would give her come medicinc for in. Wlien ihe ncighbours saw this, they faid: "Is the young rirl mad that she carrics about on lier hreat the rad locy or hos 30n!" But a wise man iliink:- ing to himn elf: "Alast this Kisagotami does not understand the law of scath, I must comfort her," said 10 her: "My food girl, I cannot niyrell give medicine for it, but I knovi of a doctor who can arrend 10 i1." The young girl said: "If to, 1c11 no who it is." The wire main continued: "Goianna can give melicine, you must go to him."

·The Valley Of The Shadow 163 Kisagotami went to Gotama, and doing homage to him, said: “Lord and master, do you know any medicine that will be good for my boy?" Gotama replied: "I know of some.” She asked: "What medicine do you require?" He said: “I want a handful of mustard seed." The girl promised to procure it for him, but Gotama continued: "I require some mustard seed taken from a house where no son, husband, parent, or slave has died.” The girl said: "Very good," and went to ask for some at the different houses, carrying the dead body of hér son astride on her hip. The people said: "Here is some mustard seed, take it.” Then she asked: “In my friend's house has there died a son, a husband, a parent, or a slave?” They replied: "Lady, what is this that you say! The living are few, but the dead are many.” Then she went to other houses, but one said: "I have lost a son;" another: "I have lost my parents;” another: “I have lost my slave.” At last, not being able to find a single house where no one had died. from which to procure the mustard seed, she began to think: “This is a heavy task that I am engaged in. I am not the only one whose son is dead. In the whole of the Savatthi country, everywhere children are dying parents are dying." Thinking thus, she acquired the law of fear, and putting away her affection for her child, she summoned up resolution, and left the dead body in a forest; then she went to Gotama and paid him homage. He said to her: "Have you procured the handful of mustard seed?" "I have not,” she replied; “the people of the village told me, 'the living are few, but the dead are many'.” Gotama said to her: "You thought that you alone had lost a son; the law of death is that among all living creatures there is no permanence."* That is the first approach to healing the pain caused by the death of a loved onethe realization, the acceptance the fact that no phase of any life is permanent, that through- * From The Bible of the World, edited by Robert O. Ballou in collaboration with Friederich Spiegelberg and with the assistance and advice of Horace T. Friess. New York, the Viking Press, 1939. of ·164 Marriage And Family Problems out the universe life is a constant succession of changes and that death, which comes to all living beings, is one of these natural changes. It is a natural human weakness to be more conscious of our desires for the things we do not have than of our gladness about and gratitude for the things which we have. For we are grasping and greedy by nature, passionately determined that we shall have what we want. But to kccp on wanting something which no amount of wanting or effort can give you is to corrode your soul with the acid of frustration. When you are struggling with gricf caused by the death of a loved one, think more of the happiness you have known together than of your futile desire to restore life to onc whom it is beyond your power to bring back to your living world. Robert Louis Stevenson has one of the characters in his story, "The Pavilion on the Links”, express this thought beautifully and cffectively. In speaking of his dead wife, he says: "I think of our loving kindness to cach other and the deep honesty and affection which united us, and my present loss is a trifle by comparison." The most constiuctive influence in helping anyonc establish this point of view is busyness, and especially busyncss in helping others, as Mrs. R., the charwoman whose story have told in the first chapter of this book, Icarncd. Another case of which I often think in this connection is that of Gertrude M., who came to me, loncly and desolate, several ycars ago. When Mrs. M. was forty-three her husband died, leaving her with one child, a dcarly loved daughter. Six months later the daughter left her to accept a finc position which necessitated constant travel. For ycars every thought and desire of the wife and mother had been centred in her husband and child. For years their happiness had been licrs. Now, in the short space of six months, her world-her comfortable, dcarly loved world-had been completely shattcrcd. 1 ·The Valley Of The Shadow - 165 In her first lonely, empty hours she was too stunned to do more than exist; there was only one dull wish in her heart, one repetitious thought in her mind--to follow her beloved husband, for she had been left, it seemed, to emptiness and futility. Hour by hour she could feel herself drawing closer to the point at which she would wire her daughter to leave her position and return to her, demanding that her child give her back her sense of usefulness. But a tiny spark of courage still burned in her soul. Before she would do that, she promised herself, before she would be responsible for ruining her daughter's career and burdening her with a mother who had lost her usefulness and ability to solve her problems for herself, she would take the more final and drastic measure. When she came to me it was because she was actually afraid of herself. She had enough sound intelligence and integrity to know that she had no right to take her own life, yet she was afraid that she might do so in a moment of weakness. She was desperate, she told me, in her need for a helping hand across the abyss of her pain and uncertainty, for someone, something, to give her courage and help to find a way out of the darkness: We had several talks together, and bit by bit she began to rebuild her life. Before many months had gone by she had filled her house with new life and new interests. Living close to a large school, she had taken in four young girl students. She petted and fussed over them-saw to it that they had good, nourishing food, listened to the hesitant yct ecstatic stories of their love-affairs, went with them now and then to the pictures—and had the satisfaction of knowing that she was necessary to their lives. Even though she was actually busier than she had been for years, she told me she had found time to join a local club and to map out and follow a course of study that she had planned for years. She was doing more than she had ever done, and much of it quite new and strange to her long-accustomed pattern of living, and she found tremendous satisfactions every moment of her day.

·166 Marriage And Family Problems This all happened years ago. But Mrs. M. still comes to scc mc now and then. The last time she came to my office she showed me a picture of her daughter and tiny granddaughter. For the daughter has married and, though she lives many miles away from her mother, there wasn't a frown or the slightest sign of regret on Mrs. M.'s proud face or a sigh because of thc fact that those so dear io her must be so far from her. "My daughter's coming home this summer with the baby," she said happily. "I'm greatly looking forward to that." **Looking forward!" What a beautiful phrase that is! If we could all only have those two words as our guiding philosophy. Hope and expectancy and optimism and a youthful spirit arc all cmbodicd in that phrasc. But so many of us spend our precious store of hours looking backward-living in the past--using up our energies and abilities in futilc reminiscence. I know a man whose bcloved wife and child dico in onc terrible, tragic moment, taking with them, hc bclicved at the time, all his hopcs for usefulness and happiness, all his bclick in a just God, all his sanity and peace and desire to live. In desperate need to find a way to keep his rcason and case thic terrible pain that gnawed day and night at his aching heart, le forced himself to work among the children in a squalid section of his city. There night after night as ho fod the hungry, visited the liomes of the sick, played games in the vacant lors of that pitiful part of an otlicrwise beautiful town, he gradually began to case his personal pain as hc bccauic friend and counscllor to those who were so much worse off than hic. Hc bcgan, too, to sec the fine results of his work there grow before his eyes. More play. grounds sprang up due to his efforts; a pool which lic finrınced gare needed comfort in the long, hot summier days: children grew fat and healthy because of the milk supplied by a fundi which he was instrumental in raising. And he realize that all his life he had wantce to spend his time working at just that particular job. He gave up the jobs ·The Valley Of The Shadow 167 which he had worked at without much interest for many years, and now he is a successful man-happy and at peace because he forgot his personal tragedy in the service of those less fortunate. So long as he lives he will not cease to be conscious of the loss of his wife and child. But more than this he is conscious of the beauty of their lives, of the love they bore each other, of the meaning of this love which united them, and of how he, now that he has lost their tangible presence, can express that meaning in helping others, in giving to others soine of the happiness in which his marriage had made him so rich. I know a woman, now well past eighty years old. I think she is fundamentally the most feminine person I have ever known. By her own story, and because I know her nature, I know how she depended upon her husband, how she clung to him, counted on his strength in a none-too-easy life (for they had little money). I know, too, how she loved him with that strength and singleness of devotion which is given peculiarly by those who love once only, and then for ever. When she was thirty-seven years old and the mother of eight children, the youngest of whom was a babe in arms, her husband was killed in an accident. There was no insurance, and the little money which was in the bank was scarcely enough to pay for the funeral. No one can ever guess what terrors life held for that dear woman as she stood beside the cold, unfeeling coffin which held the body of her strength and happiness. But she never faltered in all her fear and loneliness. She never gave up. She never wasted a moment in self-pity or resentment against the force which had taken her husband from her. Single-handed, asking no help from any save her God, she took up the task her husband's liféless hands had dropped. That great and precious responsibility, which she and her husband had assumed together when they had brought eight helpless children into the world, she now assumed alone. For over a quarter of a century, until the youngest child was educated, she worked ceaselessly, trained her children to take responsibility as soon as possible and ·168 Marriage And Family Problems succeeded in the Herculcan work of supporting her large family, raising them to be finc citizens, and sccing that they all received a good cducation. I happen to know that she had more than onc chance to remarry and thus to case greatly her financial burden. But in the light of licr traditions and her deep and never.dying love for her first husband, the thought was intolerablc to her. She chose instcad 10 carry the load herself, and she did so magnificently, Now, as her life is drawing to a close, she is one of the happicst persons I have cver known. When I am in the same room with her I fecl almost as though the room were illuminated by her presencc. I have heard her say that she is the most fortunatc woman in the world, and I know she mcans it. For she has lived a liſc so rich and full that there has been in it no room for pettincss, no time for sell-piry, nothing to dim the great love which she and her husband felt for cach other and which has lived through rhc ycars in her heart and in the lives of the children who arc the tangible result of that love. Fatc is what you make it. You may not be able to hold your family intact against the assaulis of death, but if your love and faith and courage are strong enough, you may find in your sorrow' a knowledge of greater depths of love ihan you have ever suspected, a grcater faith than you have ever known, a higlier courage and the assurance thar, having faced the most painful truth which life can reveal to you, and conquered your fcar, you can withstand whatever assaults time and forcunc may offer you. This is the great thing which gricſ can give you. CHAPTER XIX The World Your Family RECENTLY I read in a magazine article ihc story of a Russian girl whose lover was killed in the Revolution. Throwing her- ·The World Your Family 169 self on his casket, she cried: "Bury me, too! What do I care about the Revolution now that he is dead?” In commenting on her act, the author of the article wrote: "She understood, though she might never have found a phrasc for it, that the family is greater than the state, babies more important than battleships, that devotion and loneliness sink deeper into the soul than political fortunes or economic strife, and that in the end our happiness lies not in wealth or power, but in the gift and return of love." In this one sentence lies a strange mixture of understanding and a failure to understand the basic implications of human life. Wealth and power? What are they indeed by comparison to the gift and return of love? But to say that "the family is greater than the state" is to say that one cell of the human body is greater than the body itself. For the many, many families of which the nation is made up are like the individuals in a family or like the cells in a human body, each depending on the rest. In the same article I read: “If democracy deserves to survive it must find within its own framework the means of restoring health and order to marriage and the family.” In this, of course, I completely agree with him, but I would go much further than that and say with equal seriousness: If the family, as we in this country know it, believe in it and want it, is to survive and remain the constructive force it must be in civilization, it must find a means of strengthening democracy, of building health and order within this nation and throụghout the world. I have written this book about the individual personal problems which you are likely to have to face as a result of living the family life--the life in which fullness and richness of living may be achieved. These problems of which I have written in the preceding chapters are the problems which occur within the walls of your own home, which come about as a result of husband and wife, brothers and sisters, parents and children, living together under one roof These are the primary problems. "the most importan; problems, of every human life. Their solutions are the .. 1 ·170 Marriage And Family Problems first responsibility of every human being, for until they are properly and constructively solved neither individual human happiness nor the welfare of society as a whole can progress. But your "family" responsibility and your search for individual happiness cannot end with the relationships which are encompassed by the walls of your home. In this day of telegraph, telephone and wireless, news correspondents in every corner of the world and newspapers which penetrate our smallest hamlets, of fast ships, fast trains and faster aeroplanes, in this era when nations are persecuting members of their own societies because of race or religion, and killing them or driving them out to scek refuge in friendlier, saner countries, where the family idcal of brotherliness still exists, the whole world is your family. The democracies to-day constitute a large and important part of that world family group. If we are to find happiness, if we are to help to build up instead of to tear down civilization, you and I and every one of us must accept this larger responsibility to our world brothers and sisters wherever they live, must extend the eternal law of the golden rule far beyond the walls of our own homes, must help to establish the conditions of happy family life through out the great nation of which we are parts. This is a large order, I know. It is a task to which the finest men of all the world and of all times have devoted their lives. The Jewish prophets of the Old Testament, Jesu Christ, the singers of the ancient Vedic hymns of Hinduism, Gotama Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tze, Zarathustra, Mohammed - these founders of the cight great living religions which have been guides to mankind thioughout the centuries--all spent their lives trying to make men and women learn that they must live together as brothers and sisters. In every one of these cight religions which have ruled the spiritual life of the entire civilized world you can find the golden rule. In every one of them you will find the idcal of good family life expressed--but family lifc cxtended to include all mankind.

·The World Your Family 171 On July 4, 1776, fifty-four determined, intelligent, honest men met in what is now called Independence Hall in Philadelphia to establish a new kind of family life on the continent of North America, a kind of life by which millions could live in peace and harmony as one great family. In the document which they signed to establish that family are these immortal words: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” These courageous and wise statements of the Declaration of Independence are statements enunciating the principles of good family life, and are further stated in the preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America which announces to the entire world that: “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Since that day when John Hancock signed his name to the Declaration of Independence in letters so large "that the King of England could read it without his spectacles” we have come a long way in our attempt to extend the principles of good family life to the life of a nation based on the democratic principle. And in our day that principle for which our ancestors fought and died, that principle on which our happy family life, both as individuals and as a nation, is founded, has had enemies which threaten its destruction. Poisoned by war, many of the most powerful governments of Europe have ruled not by the consent of the governed, but by force of arms. While this state of affairs is effective there can be no soundness in national, family, 93 ·170 Marriage And Family Problems first responsibility of every human being, for until they are properly and constructively solved neither individual human happiness nor the welfare of society as a whole can progress. But your "family" responsibility and your scarch for individual happiness cannot end with the relationships which are encompassed by the walls of your home. In this day of telegraph, telephone and wireless, news correspondents in every corner of the world and newspapers which penetrate our smallest hamlets, of fast ships, fast trains and faster aeroplancs, in this era when nations are persccuting members of their own societics because of race or religion, and killing them or driving them out to scek rcfuge in fricndlier, saner countries, where the family idcal of brotherliness still exists, the whole world is your family. The democracies to-day constitute a large and important part of that world family group. If we are to find happiness, if we are to help to build up instead of to tcar down civilization, you and I and every one of us must accept this larger responsibility to our world brothers and sisters wherever they live, must extend the eternal law of the golden rule far beyond the walls of our own homes, must help to establish the conditions of happy family life throughout the grcat nation of which we are parts. This is a large order, I know. It is a task to which the finest mon of all the world and of all times have devoted their lives. The Jewish prophets of the Old Testament, Jesus Christ, the singers of the ancient Vedic hymns of Hinduism, Gorama Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzc, Zarathustra, Mohammed - these founders of the cight great living religions which have been guides to mankind throughout the centuries-all spent their lives trying to make mon and women learn that they must live together as brothers and sisters. In every one of these cight religions which have ruled the spiritual life of the cntirc civilized world you can find the golden rule. In every one of them you will find the idcal of good family life expressed--but family lifc cxtended to include all mankind.

·1 The World Your Family 171 On July 4, 1776, fifty-four determined, intelligent, honest men met in what is now called Independence Hall in Philadelphia to establish a new kind of family life on the continent of North America, a kind of life by which millions could live in peace and harmony as one great family. In the document which they signed to establish that family are these immortal words: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain .unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” These courageous and wise statements of the Declaration of Independence are statements enunciating the principles of good family life, and are further stated in the preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America which announces to the entire world that: “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Since that day. when John Hancock signed his name to the Declaration of Independence in letters so large "that the King of England could read it without his spectacles” we have come a long way in our attempt to extend the principles of good family life to the life of a nation based on the democratic principle. And in our day that principle for which our ancestors fought and died, that principle on which our happy family life, both as individuals and as a nation, is founded, has had enemies which threaten its destruction. Poisoned by war, many of the most powerful governments of Europe have ruled not by the consent of the governed, but by force of arms. While this state of affairs is effective there can be no soundness in national, family ·172 Marriage And Family Problems or individual life. For the poison of socially destructive philosophics of government, of conquest and rule by force, philosophics which not only disrupt international relations but destroy family life by setting son against father and brother against brother, may slowly scep through the walls of your home and bring disaster to that structure which you have built on love and faith and courage, unless you, and all of us, combat it with every influence and force we know, Destructive political philosophies are not the things which contribute to individual happiness or the solidness and happiness of family life. Such facts are your cnemics and mine. They are forces which tend to tear clown all that I have urged you in these chapters to build up. Combating them under the banner of democracy, building your own family life and social life outside your home, as well as within, so securely that these destructive forces can find no entry there, is a part of your family responsibility that family responsibility which begins within the confines of your own home and automatically cxtends outside to every living human being. It is in the democracics that the ideal of the good family governed by love, intelligence and the golden rulc, the ideal which proclaims the social necessity of freedom in thought, in specch, in worship, the right to a fair jury trial, and the opportunity for each individual to make of himself what lic is able--must make its firm and urdying stand. There must be a linc beyond which the force working for its destruction must not pass. It must be made to triumph, it must sprcad to the whole world. It is your responsibility and minc. It is your way to happiness and minc. It is the one way that you may help to assure for your children and your grandchildren the constructive and satisfying life which you have tried to give them through the sound application of good principles in family relationships. Deinocracy's proclamation of the unalicnable rights of all human beings to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. its provisions for impartial opportunity, impartial legal ·The World Your Family 173 protection, castelessness, freedom of suffrage, freedom of worship and like common privileges, are family ideals, basic ideals of good human relationship. Every blow directed at these ideals is a blow directed at the existence of your family life. We have all seen these forces at work. We have heard some of those whom we have thought we knew well say: "Perhaps democracy won't work. Maybe what we need is a dictatorship.” We have seen sporadic attempts to set up local dictatorial governments which would destroy the democratic, the family ideal, In the interest of your own happiness, in the interest of your successful family life and the happiness of your children and your grandchildren, stand firmly for the democratic ideal. Profess it at every opportunity. Do not let anyone—not even your closest friends-express a belief any other system of government without pointing out to him as effectively as you know how your conviction that he But you must.do more than this. In your own acts, in your own speech, in your own relations with others, you must accept and discharge the responsibility which the privileges of democracy thrust upon you. For a democratic society remains for ever, by the very laws which give it being, a grouping of individuals, each free (within certain wide limits) to say and do and be what he chooses, rather than a regulated and directed mass. If the individual in the national democratic family is. free to speak and vote and assemble with his fellows he is also free, so far as any restraint which the law may place on him, to own and operate his own business to his own chosen ends, to work or not to work, even if not working deprives the state and its people of sustenance and threatens to bring about his own starvation. He is free (if he is an employer) to hire or discharge employees, to operate his machinery or to let it stand idle, to raise or lower prices at will , to acquire as much property as he is able, to exercise within the limits of our tolerant laws the social and economic power such property gives him, to think what is wrong ·174 Marriage And Family Problems hc plcascs and to express his thoughts freely, to worship as he likes in or out of any church he chooscs, or not to worship at all. Such fcalty to the state and its peoplc as the state demands of him is a broad and general fcâlty (save in such emergencies as war). Most of the details are left to his own conscience and the dictates of such social wisdom as he may have. Most of his obligations to the great family of which a democracy consists are left for him to assume of his own frce will. They are not forced on him. If he is not concerned with the welfare of the great social family of which he is a part, he is free to live in such a way that his influcnce is directly against the democratic ideal to an amazing degree. These are the blessings of freedom. These are the glories of that larger family life established by our democracics. These are the great privileges granted to a democratic family of people. Upon their preservation, upon using them wisely and not abusing them, upon their growth and enlargement, depend the permanent stability and happiness. of those smaller familics cncompassed by the walls of our homes. And we shall preserve them if we accept and discharge thic obligations which the democratic privileges force upon us, the obligations of kindliness, of integrity, of wisdom, pulling our own weight, and of the golden rule, to all of our relationships outside our homes, as well as within; wc shall preserve them if we apply thc principles of the good family life to our relationships with that larger family outside our home to the end that "government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the carth", and family life throughout the world grow stronger and happier under the healing warmth of honesty, wisdom, kindliness and love.

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