Marriage is variously regarded. "It is a sacrament, a religious sanction, and not to be dissolved by anything but Death." So say a very large group of our people. "It is a contract, governed by law, entered into under certain conditions and to be dissolved only by law." This is the attitude of practically all the governments of the world and rapidly is becoming the dominant point of view. Though the religious combat this conception of marriage, no marriage is legal on religious sanction alone, and the increase of divorce among those claiming to be Catholics is an undisputed fact.
It is only in the last century that the contract side of marriage has been emphasized and become dominant. There has resulted a conflict between the sacramental, sacred point of view and the secular. This conflict, like all other social conflicts, is a part of the inner life of most of the men and women of this generation, influencing their attitude toward marriage, the home, the mate.
For when we say a thing is part of the "spirit of the times" we mean merely that arising as a development of, or a change from, old ideas in the minds of leaders, it has become propagated among the mass. It has become part of their thought, incentive to their action, source of their energies.
Thus sentiment and religion proclaim the sacredness of marriage, its eternal nature, its indissolubility. The law asserts it to be a civil relationship, to be made or unmade by law itself; experience teaches that if it is sacred, then sacredness includes folly, indiscretion, brutality, and crime. Therefore the marriage relationship has become a source of conflict for our times, with opposing champions shouting out their point of view, with books, the movies, the press, the stage, with daily experience adducing cases. The scene of conflict is in the moods and emotions of all of us.
This divided view is particularly the attitude of women and becomes part of the neurosis of the housewife.
After all a woman does not marry an institution; she marries a man with whom she lives, sharing his life. In the natural course of events she becomes the mother of the children to whom he is father. We may dismiss as nonimportant the occasional freak marriage where a man and woman live apart, have no children and meet occasionally,—for obvious purposes. Such a marriage is not only sterile biologically, not only empty of the virtues of marriage, but encounters none of its difficulties.
This intimate individual relationship makes marriage when complete and successful the happiest human experience. Soberly speaking, it is then the flower of existence, satisfying biologically and humanly, giving peace and satisfaction to body and mind. This is the ideal, the "happy ending" at which most romances, novels, plays, and all the daydreams of youth leave us. Warm, cozy, intense domesticity, where passion is legitimate and love and friendship eternal; where children play around the hearth fire; of which death only is the ending!
This ideal is not realized largely because no ideal is. How often is it closely approximated? Experience says seldom. That implies no reproach against marriage, for we are to judge marriage by the rest of life and not by an ideal. A world in which great wars occur frequently, in which economic conflict is constant, in which sickness and disaster are never absent; where education is occasional, where reason has yet to rule in the larger policies and where folly occupies the high places,—why expect marriage to be more nearly perfect than the life of which it is a part? To be reasonably comfortable and happy in marriage is all we may expect.
What are the difficulties confronting the partners which impede happiness and especially which bring the neurosis of the housewife? For after all we can only examine the field for our own purpose.
We may divide the difficulties as follows from the standpoint of the neurosis of the housewife: