Immorality and the HomeBy Clara E. Laughlin(Contemporary—Author of “The Evolution of a Girl’s Ideal,” “Everybody’s Lonesome,” “The Work-a-Day Girl.” The following extract is from “The Work-a-Day Girl.”)
By Clara E. Laughlin
(Contemporary—Author of “The Evolution of a Girl’s Ideal,” “Everybody’s Lonesome,” “The Work-a-Day Girl.” The following extract is from “The Work-a-Day Girl.”)
What is the relation between domestic service and criminality and immorality? Between erring girls and their own homes as nurseries of weakness and wilfulness? It is this: housework as a sad majority of women perform it, is the most unsystematized, unstandardized, undisciplinary, unsocial and uninteresting work in the world. And family relations, as a sad majority of our citizens comprehend them, are the most unregulated relations in the world; there are a few standards below which the social conscience of the community will not allow a parent to fall in the treatment of a child, or a mistress to fall in the treatment of a maid; but they are standards so low that almost any other human relationship is better regulated by law and by public sentiment. The home is the most haphazard institution of our day.... Of the twelve or fifteen million homes in the country, probably not one million would pass an efficiency test based on the way they are run and the quality of their output.