Settlement work at Greenwich House, New York. The settlement worker to succeed must be truly altruistic
The social worker must of course have the same suitability for teaching or nursing or any other of the various tasks that she may undertake as has the teacher or nurse or other person who works under different auspices. She must have in addition a truly altruistic spirit, a deep earnestness which will survive discouragement, and a real insight into the circumstances, handicaps, and possibilities of others. This insight presupposes maturity of thought; and the young girl must serve a long apprenticeship with life before she is at her best as a social worker. It sometimes seems as though no field was so exactly suited to the abilities of the married woman who has time for service, or the mother whose children are grown, leaving her free again to teach or nurse the sick or bring justice to the little child as she was trained to do in her youth.
Less common vocations for women—but still often chosen after all—are reserved for those whose abilities are so specialized and so striking that they compel a choice. Singers, artists with brush or pen, the natural actress, the journalist or author, need usually no one to guide their choice. Our great difficulty here is not to open the girl's eyes to her opportunity, but to restrain the one who has not measured her ability correctly from attempting that which she cannot perform. The same is true of girls who aspire to be physicians, lawyers, or ministers. Some few succeed in all these vocations. Many more have not the scientific habits of mind, the stability, or the endurance to make a successful fight for recognition against great odds.
Many girls mistake what may be a pleasant and satisfying avocation for a life work. For the girl who will not be held back, there may be a life of achievement ahead, with fame and all the other accompaniments of successful public life; or there may be the disappointments of unrealized ambition. We must see that girls face this possibility with the other.
CHAPTER XII[ToC]
The Girl's Work (Continued)—Vocations As Affecting Homemaking
Choice of vocation is far from being a simple matter for either boy or girl; but for the girl who recognizes homemaking as woman's work, double possibilities complicate her problem more than that of the boy. The girl must prepare for life work in the home, or life work outside the home, or a period of either followed by the other, or perhaps a combination of both during some part or even all of her mature life.
It is the part of wisdom for us to study vocations in their relation to homemaking. Will the girl who works in the factory, for instance, or who becomes a teacher or a lawyer or a physician, be as good a homemaker as she would have been had she chosen some other occupation? Will she perhaps be a better homemaker for her vocational experience? Or will her life in the industrial world unfit her for life in the home or turn her inclination away from the homemaker's work?