Now for the next step, mating. No, it's not so difficult at all if you have not neglected to build up a foundation for it as you went along. For an understanding of the act of mating, the children must first be familiar with the differences in body structure—that boys have an outer organ, and the girls have a long, slender inner passage. Knowledge of the first they acquired in the come-and-go of daily home association; of the second, when they learned how a baby was born. In a discussion of mating, it takes usually just the merest reference to these structural differences for children to see immediately the mechanics of mating. "Yes, these two parts fit closely together so that the father cells (sperm cells) are able to pass over to the mother and up to the place where the baby is to grow."
To many this will seem a very cold, stark, and inadequatepresentation of a deeply psychic experience. In these first explanations of human reproduction, pregnancy, birth, fertilization, and mating, I believe it would be out of place to try to bring about any considerable awareness of either the sensuous or the emotional involvements in the act of procreation. That knowledge comes later. But the feeling which all our first teaching conveys is important. It is especially important in relation to the three major experiences, pregnancy, birth, and mating, about which so much resistance has centered in the past. Our teaching should carry with it a natural acquiescence to Nature's own plan, rather than any outward expression of our own mental philosophy toward it. Most children, given a knowledge of the basic facts of reproduction, usually grant them a ready and happy acceptance.
Those parents who met their children's questions and other expressions of interest as they arose, and also those who were not able to, seek, as junior-high-school days approach, the assurance that their children are ready for that wider experience. "I don't know how much she knows—she doesn't say anything, and she doesn't want me to." Certainly the last thing one does is to probe or question. If you have reason to feel that something must be done, you may go about it in several ways:
1. You may take the initiative by introducing into family conversation some topic of current interest which will promote questions—incubator babies, the Dionne quintuplets, child marriages, the recent thirteen-year-old father.
2. Pets are marvelous biological laboratories—white mice, rabbits, puppies, snakes, turtles. Of course there must be mates and matings.
3. Well-chosen books, not only sex-education books, but simple biologies and Nature books as well, open up thought and discussion.
4. Visits to the zoological gardens, to natural-history museums and art galleries, are valuable teaching experiences.
If the subject is not marred by too much realism or sentiment or moralizing, older children will respond with interest to a discussion of human reproduction. Even when a child is approachable, if your own emotional balance is insecure, it is, perhaps, well to work out these objective and tangible activities with the children, as with a fellow student. The joint interest is a way of achieving in the end greater poise for yourself.
Before we leave the subject of the biological aspects of sex teaching, a word concerning preparation for maturing. In general, experience shows that explanations of the outward phenomena which mark the onset of adolescence—menstruation and seminal emissions—should be made to both boys and girls long before they are likely to occur—at ten, surely, or even earlier if questions arise. Many children become acquainted with them through older children at school and receive not too pleasant impressions. In pre-adolescence the whole matter can be presented so that it is accepted objectively and impersonally. With both boys and girls there is often a feeling of prideful expectancy, and some day you may expect to hear a joyful announcement, "Mother, oh, Mother—it's come!"
At this point I should like nothing better than to leave our teaching to do its own good work for the children. But in the minds of parents there is an ever recurring anxiety—the use to which the children will put this new knowledge. Ideas are not, we know, soporific. They tend to translate themselves into action. Will the children talk? And won't they start experimenting? The matter of "talking outside" is rapidly taking care of itself through the general adoption of sex-education teaching by most young parents. Nobody runs around tellingwhat everyone knows. It has become a commonplace. Occasionally one may caution young school-age children not to say much to the other children, but if they do in their enthusiasm or in a casual moment, no great harm is done. Certainly one does not punish for it.
Children who are overweighted either with too much sex knowledge or with fears and cautions are usually the neighborhood offenders. One father recently told me that he didn't dare give his son the usual terms for his reproductive organs because he would go straight out and shout them from the housetops. As a matter of fact, that was just what the boy was doing with the substitute terms. Realizing that a wooden gun is as good as a real one when it frightens everybody, the child used his substitute terms to shock his father and the world at large. In reality, thereareno substitute terms. Everyone knows them for what they are, and in addition as confessions of weak courage.
Modern sex teaching is filling the great need of other days in its adoption of correct terms for the functions of the body and its organs as they apply to elimination and reproduction. It is an informal sort of thing which comes along like a little companion of the more important topics. Strange that so much that is visible should go nameless, while hidden things like heart and stomach and lungs should be known! A young five-year-old who adored his pretty nursery-school teacher took constant note of the beauties of her person. Her eyes were so blue and her hair was so wavy and her throat was so smooth, and when she bent over, "you could see herlungs!"
In all this provision for your children's understanding, one thing we counsel against. It is the choice of another person—friend, nurse, minister, doctor—to take your place, unless that person has had special sex-education training and possesses those personal qualifications whichfit him for the task. A scientific background is not enough. In the near future we shall have college-trained leaders, not only trained but college-sanctioned and selected. Until that time there is no lay person so well qualified to teach children as their own intelligent fathers and mothers. They are able to establish a valued inner and progressive bond of confidence when their teaching has been happily and wisely carried out. After all, in this age of transition when so much is counted good that once was counted bad, and so much counted bad that was once good, it doesn't matter much what our words are so long as they convey reassurance, dependability, and a sense of the rightness of livingwithrather thanagainstthe best of Nature's plans.
Does sex instruction tend to start misconduct—suggest to children that they undress each other, play "father and mother," and does it impel to too free speech and behavior? No, on the contrary, sex teaching, wisely carried on, has proved itself to be the best of preventives. It has a stabilizing influence and leaves the minds of the children free to turn to other interests. My experience shows a high correlation between sex misconduct and lack of adequate sex instruction.
Usually in childhood, sexual misconduct is not sexual at all in origin. It has any number of causes and any number of guises. Most frequent of the causes are: seeking to know, emotional stress, lack of a good time, sex activity in others, premature sex experience.
Children who do not live in a cloud of mystery, whose mental horizon has been cleared by simple explanations of observable facts—the differences in physical structure of boys and girls, for example—are not likely to be the aggressors or even onlookers in any neighborhood undressing episode. It holds nothing for them.
On the other hand, a child may have a very clear ideaof sex differences, may have dressed and undressed freely with sister or brother, and still be active in undressing episodes as an emotional outlet. One such boy was mother-bound. He had been brought up a goody-goody. In order to demonstrate that he was no sissy but a thorough-going he-man of eleven, he headed a gang of girl tormentors.
Sex misconduct as recreation, as something to do, has a long record. In a dull and dispirited world, girls and boys find the thrill of adventure in games, clubs, and play of all kinds, with sex in its most unsavory form as the central theme. A little nine-year-old who had been a frequent offender was asked what in all the world she would like most to do. Promptly she answered, "Go roller-skating." "Which would you rather do, go roller-skating or play 'father and mother?'" With shining eyes she answered, "Oh, go roller-skating!" There was no doubt of this child's sincerity, no doubt of the drab, pinched quality of her meager opportunity for childish fun.
Sex activity often has its origin in a home situation. In these days of apartment dwelling and the crowding together of many families, a child must be very inattentive indeed not to have gathered through conversation and observation much firsthand knowledge of the adult sexual relationship. Children should, of course, be aware of the love of their fathers and mothers for each other as well as for themselves, but love-making in its final forms is baffling and disturbing to their emotional natures, and observation of it often leads to sex misconduct.
The most serious type of sex activity is that caused by a premature sexual experience at the hands of some adult, often an elderly and trusted person. Even if the episode occurred but once, and the offender left, never to be seen again, a psychic injury or trauma frequently (not always) results and manifests itself in obsessive sex behavior.
When premature sexual experienceisthe motivating factor in sex misconduct, most careful guidance is necessary, lest the future love life be endangered. After relieving the child of feelings of guilt, the conduct of the older offender must be explained in terms of his senility or his mental state. "He is not normal." "He should be in a hospital." It is important that this person's abnormal conduct does not represent in the child's mind the natural sex pattern.
Faith in love-making and faith in love partners must be held intact. Yet there should be no discussion of love and no real sex teaching at this critical time. Sex instruction is a post-convalescent therapy. It should not be used as an immediate or first-aid remedy for fear it may become associated with a most distressing memory. Above all, family conversations and speculations should be abandoned, for children are sensitive to talk they do not even hear. A child who has suffered a premature sexual experience at the hands of an older person needs all that his family can give him of thoughtful consideration and reassurance. Yet he should by no means feel himself a hero. Once the story is told and accredited, it should sink into a friendly silence.
Whatever form sex misconduct takes—whether peeping and undressing, playing "father and mother," using vulgar words, making offensive drawings or writing unsavory verses, urinating in public—punishment in any of its many forms tends to decrease the quick chances of recovery. Humiliation, body-guarding (I never can trust you alone), confinement (lock you up), emotional scenes (you've disgraced your family), threats (I'll send you away)—strike deep into the emotional nature of the child and destroy that integrity of spirit and belief in himself which he needs for his restoration. Persistent probings and grillings will also block progress.
Correction of any type of sex misdemeanor requires insight, forbearance, a vast amount of emotional poise, and an understanding of contributing causes. If lack of wholesome sex knowledge is the cause, then wise sex instructionwithoutreference to past sins is the remedy. If fixations, jealousies, or a too strict moral code at home are responsible (and they often are responsible not only for the more active forms of misconduct, but for masturbation, thumb-sucking, and other bad habits as well), then the cure rests with the willingness of parents to modify their own attitude and exactions. If the cause is a recreational lack, new activities, new scenes and companions, new interests must be supplied to break up the old associations and supply the needed zest for life. If observation of adult relationships has taken place, a careful explanation and interpretation of the act of mating is necessary to lift the relationship into its legitimate and acceptable place.
The most difficult phase of sex education is the interpretation and guidance of sex activities in childhood. Our traditional codes and sanctions have measured their punishments out of all proportion to the offense. In order to meet this type of conduct constructively, one must avoid severe punishment, the awakening of a deep sense of guilt, and set oneself to work out a quiet regimen of rehabilitation. Best of all, one comforts oneself with the knowledge that, except in cases of psychic trauma, studies reveal that there is little relationship between early sex play and later delinquency.
Wise parents of today build a solid foundation for the sexual happiness of their children. No longer do they withhold knowledge of love, mating, and the renewal of life. They equip themselves with a thorough understanding of the emotional nature of their children and of the technique of presenting sex instruction. We of thisgeneration are seeing changes in thought and patterns of sex teaching and ethics. Codes and sanctions are in transition. It is not that in the years to come we shall have more knowledge or more freedom purely for the sake of knowledge and freedom. It is that we and our children and our children's children, who are tomorrow's men and women, shall live with more serenity, more wisdom, and more joyousness in their love relationships because of the foundations which we have built.
William Lyon Phelps
During my forty years of teaching college under-graduates, if the lesson for the day was pertinent or an occasion afforded the opportunity, I talked to the men in the classroom about their careers—not concerning vocational training; what I emphasized was the right mental attitude toward life itself, the perhaps inarticulate philosophy underlying all choices and all ambitions.
I have always been able to speak more intimately to a group of young people than to an individual. The individual must take the initiative. I believe we have no more right to probe into the secret places of the heart than we have to pick a man's pocket. Whenever a student came to me alone and on his own, then I was willing and glad to discuss anything with him. But I believe every man's personality is sacred: an unauthorized or unasked-for attempt to enter it is the worst sort of trespassing.
In the classroom anything may be discussed without embarrassment. No teacher ever had a more intimateclassroom than mine. For my main interest in literature, which I taught professionally, is its relation to men and women. Browning said his poetry dealt exclusively with the human soul; and it so happens that four poems of Tennyson's which, intentionally or not, are placed together, deal with four terrific passions. The poems are "The First Quarrel," "Rizpah," "The Northern Cobbler," and "The Revenge." They deal respectively with sex, mother love, drink, and patriotism. All four have produced happiness, and all four have produced murder. Life is dangerous.
Students naturally wish to be successful in their chosen careers. I told them the greatest and most important career was marriage; that, unlike other careers, marriage was a career open to every one of them. For among the many and striking differences between male and female we may observe this: not every woman can be married, but every man can. There is always some woman who will marry him.
The highest happiness known on earth is in marriage. Every man who is happily married is a successful man even if he has failed in everything else. And every man whose marriage is a failure is not a successful man even if he has succeeded in everything else. The great Russian novelist Turgenev said he would give all his fame and all his genius if there were only one woman who cared whether he came home late to dinner. It would have been well if he had known this when he was young.
I told my students: "Young gentlemen, although very few of you are now engaged to be married and not one of you is married,your wives are alive; they are living now. You do not know their names or where they are; but isn't it exciting to think that you are every moment drawing nearer to each other? She is half an hour closer to you now than when you entered this classroom. Some inCalifornia are sound asleep, for it is before dawn; some are eating breakfast in New York City; some are eating lunch in Europe. But all your wives are as real as if they were already living with you. What do you intend to do about it?"
Those preparing for the law or medicine take special studies; those preparing for athletic contests take special training. If they did not, they would be idiotic. Those who are preparing for marriage should not leave success to chance. For, while happiness is sometimes dependent on luck, in the majority of instances it is not; happiness usually follows the proper conditions.
Thus boys and girls, young men and women, will do well if they train their bodies and their minds to be successful husbands and wives long before marriage. It is worth it; for they are in training for the highest prize obtainable on earth, and yet one open to and won by millions.
Not being a physician and being ignorant of physiology, I know little about the value of sex instruction. Yet however important sex instruction may be to those about to be married, there is one thing more important—character. Two people unselfish and considerate, tactful and warmhearted, and salted with humor, who are in love, have the most essential of all qualifications for a successful marriage—they havecharacter. People about to be married need training in character much more than they need instruction in sex.
From childhood boys and girls find out how children come, but the secret of a good character, temperament, and disposition is not so readily found.
The reason why character is the most important requisite for success in marriage is not merely that it happens to be the chief cause of happiness, but that those who have character can turn an unsuccessful marriage into a successful one, instead of taking the easy way out, andacknowledging failure. No man or no woman is to blame for making a foolish marriage; it might happen to anyone. The test of character is not whether one has or has not made a foolish marriage; the test comes after the foolish marriage has been made. What a triumph then to turn that failure into a success, as the statesman turns a minority into a majority!
This article is addressed to young people, for those who marry late in life either do not need any suggestions or are already incurable. I am in favor of early marriages. I am delighted when either the boy's parents or those of the girl have money enough so that the young pair can be married at twenty-two, before they begin professional study or work. And when there is little money but either or both have a job, then by all means they should be married. When young people marry, they take difficulties of housekeeping and privations as a lark, even as young people do camping out. When I was a boy, camping out was absolute bliss; now it would be absolute horror. Furthermore, in youth neither of them has "set"; they can accommodate themselves to each other.
The late President Harper of the University of Chicago was married at nineteen—not so young in his case, for he had already taken his doctor's degree. He told me that during the first five or six years there were times when neither he nor his wife could mail a letter, because they did not have enough cash to buy one postage stamp. He laughed aloud as he recounted this, and added, "There was never one moment when either of us regretted our marriage."
Marriage can be wonderful from every point of view when it is a combination of the highest physical delight with the highest spiritual development. It is indeed the sublimation of the senses. The great novelist George Meredith, who hated priggishness in all its forms, said ina letter: "I have written always with the perception that there is no life but of the spirit; that the concrete is really the shadowy; yet that the way to spiritual life lies in the complete unfolding of the creature, not in the nipping of his passions. An outrage to Nature helps to extinguish his light. To the flourishing of the spirit, then, through the healthy exercise of the senses."
Could there be a better description of the union of physical and spiritual development in marriage than his phrase "the complete unfolding of the creature"?
To his son Meredith wrote: "Look for the truth in everything, and follow it, and you will then be living justly before God. Let nothing flout your sense of a Supreme Being, and be certain that your understanding wavers whenever you chance to doubt that He leads to good. We grow to good as surely as the plant grows to the light. Do not lose the habit of praying to the unseen Divinity. Prayer for worldly goods is worse than fruitless, but prayer for strength of soul is that passion of the soul which catches the gift it seeks."
What is love? From the age of six or seven on boys and girls fall in love with a good many different persons. But this is not the same thing as married love, which grows by companionship and by sharing sorrows as well as pleasures. Many years ago a college friend of mine, a splendid fellow with everything to make life worth living, was married to a fine girl. He died suddenly, during the first week of the honeymoon. I said to a man of sixty, "Can anything be more tragic than that?"
"Yes," he replied unhesitatingly, "it is more tragic when the husband or wife dies after twenty-five years of marriage."
He was right; the loss after twenty-five years is more terrible; and in the instance I mentioned the shattered anddesolated bride was in two years happily married to a second husband.
The overwhelming passion of love is certainly rapture, and marriage is its most satisfying consummation. But true love is not so expressive in desire for possession as it is in consideration for the welfare of the beloved object. "Oh, how I love you!" may not mean as much as "Don't go out without your rubbers on." Do you remember that passage in Guy de Maupassant where the husband said just that to his wife? And they were astounded when the maiden aunt, who had lived with them for years without a word of dissatisfaction, who had gone in and out of the room as unremarked as the family cat, who was thought to be incapable of emotion, suddenly burst into a storm of weeping and cried, "No one has ever cared whether or not I had my rubbers on!"
Yet expressions of love and passion, embraces and caresses, are also essential. I told my students, "After you are married never leave the house, even if only to post a letter at the corner, without kissing your wife." This very simple act is a tremendous preservative of married happiness.
I also advised them during the first twenty years of marriage to occupy the same bedroom. Quarrels and even insults given in the heat of anger are certain to happen in nine marriages out of ten. It is supremely important not to let these flames of resentment become a fatal conflagration. They must not last. Never go to sleep with resentment in your hearts.
"And blessings on the falling outThat all the more endears,When we fall out with those we love,And kiss again with tears!"
"And blessings on the falling outThat all the more endears,When we fall out with those we love,And kiss again with tears!"
Although happy marriages are common (unhappy ones are still news), the only ideal, flawless marriages I ever heard of were those of the Brownings and the Hawthornes; in both instances the husbands were men of genius and the wives positively angelic.
Since the greatest of all the arts is the art of living together, and since the highest and most permanent happiness depends on it, and since the way to practice this art successfully lies through character, the all-important question is how to obtain character.
The surest way is through religion—religion in the home. All that we know for certain of every person is that he is imperfect. Human imperfection means a chronic need for improvement. The most tremendous and continuous elevating, purifying, strengthening force is religious faith.
My parents neglected my social training. I am sorry they did. They were careless about my clothes and my personal appearances. I am sorry for it. But I am supremely grateful for their religious and spiritual training. Every day of my life I am grateful. I would rather belong to the church than belong to any other organization or society or club. I would rather be a church member than receive any honor or decoration in the world.
It amuses me when I read novels written by those who never had any religious faith or who have lost it, novels that describe religious training in the home as producing unhappiness and hypocrisy and morbidity, the atmosphere one of thick gloom. As I look back on my childhood, it seems to me that our house was full of laughter. Table conversation was enlivened with mirth. If there ever was a merry household, it was ours. Our daily existence was full of fun, and Christmas, New Years, Fourth of July, and birthdays were delirious.
This is normal and natural and logical. Religious faithis a central heating plant—it warms and energizes one's whole existence. It gives a reason for life itself, for development. It gives a philosophy for conduct, and, far more important, itemotionalizesconduct even more strongly than athletics and patriotism.
Of all essential things, the most essential in married life and in the bringing up of children is religion. When two people are engaged and are making plans for living together, they are sure to discuss religion. You remember how suddenly Marguerite turned to Faust and asked him point-blank, "Do you believe in God?"
A chief reason why bringing up children is so difficult is that example is so much more important than precept. I am a qualified literary critic, although I never wrote a novel; I am a qualified drama critic, although I never wrote a play; I am a qualified baseball and lawn tennis critic, although I never was a first-class player. But when parents endeavor to bring up children to reflect honor on the family and be useful members of society, the parents must set a good example. A man once wrote to Carlyle asking him if he ought to teach his little children to say prayers. The severe Scot replied: "Yes, but only if you pray yourself. Don't teach them anything in which you yourself do not believe."
The Scot was right. To teach little children to say their prayers when the parents never say them themselves is like teaching a dog to say his prayers, a trick that seems to amuse many people. To have little children say grace at the table when no adult in the room has any faith is again only a pretty trick. But to send them to church and Sunday School when the parents stay away is far worse; it is culpable. Then the children regard church-going, praying, and religion as one of the innumerable burdens and penalties of childhood, from which they will escape as soon as they reach independence.
When Overton, the great Yale athlete, who was killed in the war, left his Tennessee home to go to college, his father told him that he would not give him any advice as to morals or behavior; "but, Johnny, will you promise me that you will never go to sleep at night until you have said your prayers?" John promised, and afterward told his father he had kept his word.
If both young husband and wife share a similar religious belief, it is an enormous asset; and immense help to permanence in married happiness. Now, one cannot believe in God and in Our Lord merely by wishing to do so. Yet I often think that many who do not believe do not really wish to with passionate earnestness; with as strong a wish as they have for money or good looks or popularity.
There are many who say and more who think without saying: "If I only had the faith I had as a child! Then I believed in God and in Jesus Christ and in Heaven." One might almost as well say, "If I only had the knowledge of algebra I had as a child!" Why do small boys and girls know algebra and why in later years do they not know it? Because when they were at school, they gave their attention to it; they studied it; they thought about it. But after leaving school they may never have opened an algebra book or considered the subject again.
What does one expect? If one expresses regret for the lost faith of childhood, it is proper to ask: "How long is it since you read the Gospels? How long is it since you prayed?"
Since religious faith is such an asset to happiness, such a foundation for character and for married life and bringing up children, one might make an effort to recover it, or at least to consider it.
I believe Sunday should be a day of joy and happiness. Sunday afternoon games and recreation are fine, but oneenjoys them more if one has been to church in the morning or spent part of the day in either solitary or community worship. Those parents who selfishly seek only their own pleasures every weekend, who do nothing but amuse themselves—are they likely to bring up their children successfully?
To those who have no faith and to those who have lost it let me recommend some wise words by Dean Inge. There are those who are as explosively and suddenly "converted" as was St. Paul; but there are also those who cannot have such an experience; and many, many are the ways to God. Give the matter serious attention; it deserves it. It is the most serious of all things.
Being educated means to prefer the best not only to the worst but to the second best. It means in music to prefer Beethoven not only to jazz but to Brahms. So it is in all forms of art, in athletics, in politics, in everything.
Now, the Person celebrated in the Gospels is the greatest Personality in all history. He knew more about life than Shakespeare. He was the greatest nerve specialist who ever lived. "Come unto me ... and you shall find rest unto your souls." His way is incomparably the best way; it is the way to peace of mind, to courage, independence, fearlessness, to joy. If we find faith lacking, try His way.
Listen to Dean Inge; he is discussing the illumination of the mind thatfollows recognitionof the Master:
"This illumination must be earned, or rather prepared for, by a strenuous course of moral discipline. The religious life begins with Faith, which has been defined ... as the resolution to stand or fall by the noblest hypothesis. This venture of the will and conscience progressively verifies itself as we progress on the upward path.Thatwhich began as an experiment ends as an experience. We become accustomed to breathe the atmosphere of the spiritual world."
Young people about to be married, young people recently married, young fathers and mothers, should give religion the most serious consideration. To neglect it, to be indifferent to it, is worse and more foolish than to be antagonistic. Religion is not a frill or an ornament or a luxury; still less is it a thing to clutch at only in danger or in heartbreak.
Religion is the greatest creative force in the world; it has made thousands of saints and thousands of heroes; it has revolutionized innumerable individual lives. It has changed people from selfishness to unselfishness; from cowardice to courage; from despair to hope; from vulgarity to decency; from barrenness of life to fruitfulness. When religion can change the lives of millions, when it can produce supreme creations in art, it is a force worth serious consideration.
Religious faith has produced the finest architecture, the finest painting, the finest music, the finest literature in the world.
The late John Philip Sousa, the famous composer and bandmaster, said that the reason why there was not so much great music produced in the twentieth as in the nineteenth century was that religious faith had declined. According to him, creation is based on faith. This may be claiming too much, but his testimony as a composer is interesting.
The American philosopher Paul Elmer More, who died in 1937, and who was one of the most profound scholars in the world, after prolonged thought and study and observation, came from agnosticism into a complete and passionate faith in the Christian religion and in the incarnation. He said that while love was the main principle in religion as a way of life, the most important contribution to humanity made by religion was hope. Hope in the destiny of man, in the superlative value of the individual, in the Personality of our Father in Heaven.
I might add that if hope deferred maketh the heart sick, hope destroyed maketh the heart dead.
The most unfair, last word to describe religious faith is the word anesthetic. Religious faith is a comfort to the old, the sick, and the suffering; but in general it is not a sedative, it is a tonic. It is a dynamo; it is a driving force. Henry Drummond, the most effective speaker on religion I can remember, said to a group of students: "I ask you to become Christians not because you may die tonight but because you are going to live tomorrow. I come not to save your souls, but to save your lives."
Religion adds an enormous zest to daily life; it makes everything interesting. It keeps alive the capacity of wonder. I myself am interested in everything in the world, from a sandlot ball game to the nebula in Orion. The mainspring of my existence, the foundation of my happy and exciting life, is Christian faith.
I suggest to those recently married and those about to be married that they are entering into a relationship that can bring them the highest and most lasting happiness or the most crushing disillusion and despair. Such a relationship is particularly remarkable because of its intimacy, an intimacy far transcending that of friendship, love of parents, or any earthly emotion. As Thomas Hardy said, marriage annihilates reserve. In this amazing intimacy every care should be taken to insure success. A common interest in religion, saying prayers together, will help enormously toward increasing and preserving happiness.
For a true belief in the Christian religion will improvedaily manners. Husband and wife will not take each other for granted; they will not become stodgy or commonplace or stereotyped.
Tennyson gave in "The Princess" the real kind of marriage which one of my students described in the vernacular: "I am going to be married. It won't be much of a wedding, but it will be a wonderful marriage." Listen to Tennyson:
"For woman is not undevelopt man,But diverse. Could we make her as the man,Sweet Love were slain; his dearest bond is this,Not like to like, but like in difference.Yet in the long years liker must they grow;The man be more of woman, she of man;He gain in sweetness and in moral height,Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care,Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind;Till at the last she set herself to man,Like perfect music unto noble words."
"For woman is not undevelopt man,But diverse. Could we make her as the man,Sweet Love were slain; his dearest bond is this,Not like to like, but like in difference.Yet in the long years liker must they grow;The man be more of woman, she of man;He gain in sweetness and in moral height,Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care,Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind;Till at the last she set herself to man,Like perfect music unto noble words."
A wife may be a civilizing force; this is well. But she may be far more than that. She may be a revelation in daily intimacy more unconsciously impressive than a professional saint.
This is whatCaponsacchisaid of an imagined union withPompilia, in Browning's "The Ring and the Book":
"To live, and see her learn, and learn by her,Out of the low obscure and petty world—Or only see one purpose and one willEvolve themselves i' the world, change wrong to right;To have to do with nothing but the true,The good, the eternal—and these, not aloneIn the main current of the general life,But small experiences of every day,Concerns of the particular hearth and home:To learn not only by a comet's rushBut a rose's birth, not by the grandeur, God,But the comfort, Christ."
"To live, and see her learn, and learn by her,Out of the low obscure and petty world—Or only see one purpose and one willEvolve themselves i' the world, change wrong to right;To have to do with nothing but the true,The good, the eternal—and these, not aloneIn the main current of the general life,But small experiences of every day,Concerns of the particular hearth and home:To learn not only by a comet's rushBut a rose's birth, not by the grandeur, God,But the comfort, Christ."
Stanley G. Dickinson
Business believe that the happily married man will occupy a bigger position in the business world than will the man who is unhappy at home. The young men and young women inGood Housekeeping'smarriage-relations course have a right to know this, to know precisely the interest which business has in harmonious marriage and the extent to which home life is a factor when men are considered for promotion, employment, or transfer—any one of which means more income, more responsibility, and an opportunity to live more fully.
Business might very logically take another view. Itmightbelieve that the single man is the better employee, because single men are free to travel, are not burdened with the expenses of a family, do not run the risk of going home to trouble. Itmightbelieve that the home experiences and environment of the people it hires are not its concern. But business is concerned with these aspects and young people should know in what way and why.
While business negotiates with the husband, it has long since learned thatbothhusband and wife are entitled to consideration whenever one is being employed or promoted. The more important the job, the more important it becomes to determine whether husband and wife have tried to keep pace with each other, or whether there is discord at home. Business can afford to place responsibility upon the mentally capable, energetic, and tactful manifhis marriage relations are harmonious. It cannot afford to gamble with the man who is in trouble at home—not necessarily vicious trouble, but trouble arising from carelessness, maladjustment, and misunderstanding.
As a business consultant advising corporations upon their major objectives and policies, I attend several times each week conferences during which men are discussed for promotion, transfer to new work or new territory, salary adjustments, and sometimes demotion. The business consultant prefers to limit his counsel to such objective matters as plans and operating policies, but this cannot be done actually, because all business situations must be resolved into the persons in them. Hence our discussion is necessarily devoted to men—to what we can do to make them more effective, to how soon we can promote them safely, to how much responsibility they can assume, to what they are best fitted for doing, and the like. During the past fifteen years, I have discussed such lowly functions as clerkships at $85 a month and such exalted positions as vice-presidencies at $20,000, with the average running between $4000 and $10,000 a year.
The judgment of executives is not infallible, and some of the men we pick are unable to measure up to the increased load we place upon them. We try to analyze these failures even more carefully than we analyze the successes. Here is what we find: in the majority of instances, men do not fail because they do not know enough, or becausethey are lazy; they fail because business cannot always depend upon them—they break at the wrong times. We can find men who know their work and who are capable of learning the requirements of a better job. We can find plenty of men who are willing to work, and who will work even harder for the promise of a better job in the future. But we cannot find enough men whose emotional mechanism is dependable—at least not in sufficient numbers to carry on the responsibilities which business would like to place upon them.
Peculiarly enough, the results of emotional instability are complex, but the chief cause may be defined simply: trouble at home causes more emotional upsets, more instability in business, than any other single factor. By the same token, lack of progress in business causes trouble at home. No home can be run successfully without a degree of financial progress, and such progress cannot be made—except by a negligible few—without harmony at home.
All wives have, by and large, an equal stake with their husbands in their husbands' material progress. The increased income is a major consideration, but it is only the beginning in a chain of useful consequences. Business progress means mental growth, added intelligence to be applied to both working and living. Personal growth means a fuller home life, a finer environment in which to bring up children, an opportunity to become a respected member of the community. Business progress means greater responsibility, and this breeds the ability to take on still more responsibility, both at home and in business. Progress eventually brings more leisure, more culture, and more of the other refinements of living. Progress is accelerating, feeding upon and multiplying itself.
No one would deny the truth of all this, yet only a searching few have actually created at home the degree ofharmony which has been the aim of this series inGood Housekeeping'scourse on marriage relations. If effective contributions from home to the consistent progress of breadwinners were universal rather than rare, half of our troubles in finding men for added responsibility would be over. The majority of men dissipate their energy inwishingandwanting, but restrict themselves to wishing and wanting theresult, rather than thecause. These insist that they want to better their situations, but insist also that business is a thing apart, something to be shut in the office, something which need not be understood or supported at home, and certainly something over which a wife at home has little influence. These two points of view are not reconcilable; hence everyone loses who tries to hold to both at once.
If you say to a business executive, "Business is a thing apart," he will point out at once that your theory is true only in the least important jobs. The management does not worry much about the home environment of the beginner upon whom no real responsibility rests, but it frequently goes to unbelievable ends to get its more important employees back onto the track if they have lost their heads over a home problem. Again, business does this for no humanitarian reasons; it takes this attitude because its employees produce better where there is harmony at home.
The capable, intelligent, and progressive worker is almost invariably married to a capable, intelligent, and progressive woman. Each acts and reacts upon the other. Men are not so versatile that they can fill $5000 jobs during the day and then go home to become husbands of $1500 women in the evening. Neither are women so versatile that they will remain in contented harmony with husbands who are not their mental equals. Some look negatively at the problem, feeling that "I could have done better if I had had the advantages of so-and-so." Thefacts are that these envied couples were growing up together, keeping pace mentally, long before the promotion came which is given the credit for their present condition.
When a wife falls down on her part of the job, neglecting either harmony or her personal development, her husband's first natural reaction is to separate his business from his home life—to grit his teeth and go on, hoping to achieve the impossible. This usually sets up a vicious circle of events. Being handicapped in personal effectiveness, he spends more and more time at business. His home goes to ruin; he suffers the most dangerous emotional upsets; his work fails, and conditions get worse and worse. He breaks, in short, at the wrong time—a time inconvenient to business, to put it brutally.
It is dangerous to generalize here, because there is a fine distinction between harmony at home and bringing business into the home. Hasty thinking is likely to confuse the two. The man who takes petty troubles of the routine day home to his wife is a weakling, and business cannot consider him for increased responsibility. The husband who takes none of his problems home is frequently a mystery to his wife, but he probably feels that she is not sufficiently informed to be useful in helping him make decisions on purely business issues. Wives sometimes rebel against this, because they do not make the essential distinction between respect for them as individuals and respect for their information about a specific business question.
The soundness of the belief that wives have a specific and clearly defined responsibility here is verified by the fact thathusbands want, and business demands, one and the same thing. The approach is different, because the husbands of America are asking primarily for harmony at home, while business is looking for an efficient producer;yet they both are seeking the same thing. The husband asks his wife for harmony at home and a progressive instinct so that she will grow concurrently with him. Business, when evaluating men for promotion, asks whether there is harmony at home so that this man will be free from the greatest single source of emotional unbalance, and whether this man and his wife have demonstrated the ability to grow in the past—the best available indication of their ability to grow in the future. These two questions take in a lot of territory, but the ground must be covered so long as business, in effect, employs or promotes both husband and wife.
Do not be misled for a moment respecting the importance of these two points merely because businessmen do not talk a lot about them. Their sense of good taste makes them hesitate to inquire bluntly into so personal a problem, and so their investigations are conducted quietly. Numerous confidential sources of information are used, and superiors take their own means to meet husband and wife together, generally under some casual pretext. If we could look behind the scenes, we would find that emotional stability—that elusive product of a satisfactory home environment—is regarded just as highly as knowledge, experience, or any of the other orthodox considerations. We would find executives saying, "We can count on Jones for Chicago now that we have seen his wife and determined to our satisfaction that she will measure up to the promotion" or "It's too bad we can't give this job to Smith, but you know how hard it is to succeed without support from home." Another would be saying, "Brown flew off the handle again yesterday; it must have started at the breakfast table."
Wives, if you can be the Mrs. Jones of these examples, and avoid being the Mrs. Smith or the Mrs. Brown, youwill be removing for businessmen the greatest hurdle to promotion which we encounter. You will be doing your part as the wife of a man in business.
You may determine the extent to which you are doing these things now by testing yourself in the light of these ten questions:
1. Did my husband start for work this morning in a better frame of mind for having married me, or would he have been happier as a single man or married to someone else?
Remember, as you ask this question and apply your own answer, that we are talking about business; hard, practical business where intentions do not count. You may love your husband dearly, but if the results of your love are not constructive, you must write the word FAILURE across the record.
2. Do I always treat my job just as seriously as if I were working in an office for a monthly salary?
Some wives feel that it makes no difference if they linger so long over bridge or cocktails or shopping or whatever in the afternoon that they are unable to prepare a suitable meal for their husbands in the evening.
3. Have I grown in poise and interests like the wives of my husband's associates and superiors?
Wives who keep up with the procession are an asset; those who fail to grow are a liability.
4. Can I talk in the same terms as his associates and their wives?
This indicates how carefully you have maintained your interest in the source of your income, and how accustomed you are to expressing yourself.
5. Do I dress and act like the wives of the business associates and superiors of my husband?
You place a heavy handicap upon your effectiveness ifyour husband cannot be proud of you in the inevitable comparisons with other wives in his organization.
6. Do I entertain with reasonable frequency the people who are in a position to help my husband in business, or is our social life planned wholly for my own amusement?
Perhaps this question should read, "How long since I have entertained So-and-So?" You may be surprised to find that months have slipped away without your having done a single stroke of good for your husband socially.
7. Do I limit our social engagements during the week to those which will not take essential energy from the job, or do I feel that my husband "owes" me constant amusement when he is not actually at the office?
As employers pile responsibility upon your husband, more and more care must be used in the allocation of time to social affairs. You may be able to rest the next day, but business does not permit husbands to rest on the job.
8. Do I act as a balance wheel, cheering him intelligently when he is tired or discouraged, or do I rub him the wrong way on such occasions?
If your husband does not share with you his disappointments, it is almost invariably because you have not qualified yourself to share them.
9. Do I try to smooth things out after unpleasant discussions—as I would if a new dress or theatre party were at stake?
Many married persons have an uncanny capacity for making miserable the objects of their affection. It is said that the course of true love never did run smooth, but the wise husband or wife will not unnecessarily roughen it.
10. Do I carry my share of responsibility, or do I save up all the petty annoyances for our dinner-table conversation?
Wives who complain that their husbands are silent during dinner have usually good reason to overhaul the quality of their own conversation. Don't bore him with your fight with the grocer or the catty things Mrs. X said at bridge or afternoon tea.
Here are some actual examples of the way wives affect their husband's business:
We selected Blake for a branch managership at Chicago, and we thought that his wife could measure up. We took him out of a job where he had reached his limit and placed him in one where his developed ability might enable him to earn twice his salary. He failed. We who appointed this man took the blame for his failure, becausebusiness recognizes no alibis. As usual, it wasn't that he didn't want to be a branch manager, or that he didn't know enough, or that he wasn't willing to work hard enough. We found that the trouble was within his emotional mechanism. He was losing his head and his temper at the wrong times.
At last he wrote to his firm: "This town takes the heart out of my wife. She is terribly lonesome, refuses to make new friends, and reminds me continually of the good times we used to have back home. Her mother misses her and threatens to come to live with us here. I appreciate this opportunity, and I know that we have more of everything here than we had back home, but I want my old job back. I can't stand it here."
Business doesn't work that way, and so we persuaded another employer to "hire him away" without his knowledge, thus saving his face and helping to maintain his courage. He would have been branded for life if we had permitted him to crawl back to his old job. Blake will never go as far as he is entitled to go, because Mrs. Blake places her own feelings above any other consideration, and her husband is not strong enough to control his emotions where his wife is concerned. Few men are.
We do not in any way blame Mrs. Blake for the part she played in her husband's failure. She merely attaches more value to staying in her old groove, in the constant companionship of her mother, and in the regular contact with old friends than she attaches to promotion for her husband. We have no quarrel with her choice, if only she realizes that she has chosen something for herself, and is now living under conditions dictated by her own choice.
Take Smith. In the language of business he is a "whipped puppy." Again, there is no question of his ability, his desires, or his willingness to work. We have, in a certain corporation, a job for Smith which would mean a 50 percent increase in salary, a place of notice in the community, and a wider acquaintance among substantial people. We have considered him for this job a dozen times, but each time we have decided to postpone action, because we are afraid of the influence of his wife. On his present job, it does no great damage for her to be so possessive, demanding all his time outside of office hours, ordering him around like a child. On the new job, such a performance would ruin him before he was fairly started. Dare we depend on her ability and willingness to grow quickly into the person she would have been training to become? We dare not, for we are held responsible for results!
"Just as I thought," some will say, "business is inhuman." One who takes this attitude has an incomplete view of the facts. If business were to tolerate a repetition of mistakes, its general level of productivity—which, in turn, means income to its employees—would be lowered immediately. This would operate against the very thing we are trying to sponsor—increased responsibility and more full living for all as soon as they earn it.
This point of view frequently gives women no end of mental trouble, because they are more inclined thanmen to think subjectively rather than objectively. Business employs a man for what he can produce, other things being equal. So long as he is morally sound and honest, business cares little about his attitudes on other subjects. Wives measure their husbands by their helping with the housework or their thoughtfulness in little things around the home; all of these have their value, but not in the scale of production on the job. Sentiment counts heavily with the feminine mind, as it should, whereas business is more realistic. Business buys results rather than intentions.
Business did not have an inherent desire to consider marriage relations. Its interest in them began with the many examples of maladjustment to which it was compelled to give attention, in line with its age-old policy of believing that "everything is all right until it is proved otherwise." When the negative consequences were brought to light, and business really became interested, a constructive attitude was developed which gained its momentum from the countless examples where wives have been major reasons for the success of their husbands. Fortunately for every failure there are a dozen successes.
The Mortons, for example, are a couple who have found that it pays to live both harmoniously and progressively at home. Mary Morton is a convert to the constructive attitudes brought out by the ten questions outlined earlier. They have made it a custom to entertain at least one evening a week, always having in mind that certain people can bebothgood company and helpful in business. They try to reach up rather than down in the people with whom they mingle. When they were to be transferred to another city, the news was broken to them together in their home by a superior. Mary's first and genuine reaction was, "It will be fine to make new friends and to have the children see a new part of the country."
When they arrived at the new city, the old process, so successful in their home town, was begun again—new friends, new interests, new growth. If they were ever homesick, the firm never found it out; but I am inclined to believe that they were too busy on constructive matters to get homesick. Morton's salary is three times what it was ten years ago, and most of the credit goes to his wife. Likewise she is the chief beneficiary.
Another illustration of the extent to which business recognizes the principle of harmonious development of both husband and wife is shown by the experience of Parsons. He was a junior executive, capable in every direction but one. When a vacancy occurred higher up, he was the logical candidate; but the president of the company refused to promote him until he had had a chance to demonstrate his ability to meet the social requirements of his position. He conceded Parsons' brilliance, his energy, and everything but his capacity to become genuinely interested in the people who were both above and beneath him in the organization. Inquiry revealed that he was making the best of a situation in which neither he nor his wife had realized the importance of social activity. Bear in mind that we do not mean a playboy temperament or a mercenary attitude, but rather a genuineness in human contacts.
When the problem was laid before them, a program was laid out for them to follow. Parsons and his wife called on everyone they felt should not be neglected, later inviting to their own home those who seemed in a position to help them. During these second visits, the conversation was turned to what might be done by "people like ourselves" to prevent getting into a rut. Dozens of helpful activities were recommended, and they made it a business to explore the most valuable, so that they could tell others about forthcoming meetings ofdiscussion groups, plays, lectures, and the like. Within six months, they had entirely overcome the president's objection, and a year later Parsons was promoted to the other position at a $2000 increase in salary.
Two facts will occur immediately to anyone who is an intelligent observer of such things: first, Parsons and his wife had a better time after the change than before; and second, business expects people to discover these things for themselves. This couple were more than usually fortunate to be led by the hand up to this new experience.
Business gave Parsons his chance when it permitted him to demonstrate his ability. Quick jumps in business are not made available to people upon the basis of their belief that they can qualify. Business would be guilty of rash speculation with its funds if positions were given to any except those who had demonstrated their qualifications in advance. Business has no time for or patience with those who do not recognize the importance of these things. We have no license to give responsibility to those who say: "I didn't know that this was important. Give me a trial, and I will do my best to learn quickly." The answer to that is: "We have another man who has been qualifying for many years. He saw the place of these things in business progress. We'll risk our money on him."
When a young man brings to business a reasonable amount of ability and energy, reinforced by the emotional balance which comes from the right kind of home life, he is likely to surpass both his own expectations and those of his employers. Businesswantshim to succeed. Business wonders, as a matter of fact, why more people do not succeed, with the incentives for success so generally open to public view. It realizes, just as you will realize when you analyze the situation, that the incentives have been understood, but the ways and means have beenmissing. This is a common mistake in human progress. We have all erred in making someone else want something, thinking that the process of arousing desire would insure intelligent action. Most humans realize that they lack the ways and means, a realization which accounts for the interest shown everywhere in better marriage relations and in the methods for achieving them. The desire to succeed is not enough. Desire has its place, however, once the ways and means are understood, because strong desire sustains interest in the ways and means.
Does this seem an idle theory? Not to business, the instrument through which most men and women work out their economic security. Business says: you must show us harmony at home and mental growth before we will believe that you are a safe candidate for promotion. Give us these along with the ability you have always brought us, and we will make it worth your while. We will increase your salaries. We will put you into jobs where you may live in better neighborhoods, mingle with more capable people in business and at home, give your children advantages you may never have had, and provide you with all the creature comforts for successful living, a base upon which you must build your own philosophy of happiness, but without which no genuine happiness is probable.
Being composed of realists, business does not paint these rewards in glowing colors. It merely says, without question or qualification,the happily married man will occupy a bigger position with us than the man who is unhappy at home.
Ernest R. and Gladys H. Groves