§ 40. The Young Woman's Attitude towards Love and Marriage
Reasons not same as for men.
In the preceding lecture to the parents and teachers of young men I emphasized the importance of developing the young man's ideals of love and marriage primarily because such ideals have so often helped men morally in character-formation and character-protection. I feel sure that this is not the chief reason why the ideals of young women should be developed along parallel lines. On the contrary, it seems to me that those representative women are right who think that the first reason why ideals of young women should be influenced is that there is need of a radical change in the attitude of a very common type of young women who are flippant and disrespectful concerning love and marriage, and whose influence on the morals of men is decidedly bad because they often give unguided young men their first and strongest impressions concerning women. A second reason, which is equally applicable to both sexes, is that advance understanding of the relations of love and marriage is likely to lead to happy and satisfactory adjustment in marriage.
Men naturally lead in love.
Perhaps the flippant and disrespectful attitude concerning affairs of the heart develops in many young women because they do not consciously feel in advance of experience the demand for affection which comes so naturally and spontaneously to many, possibly to all, normal young men whose views of life have not been artificially twisted. I fully realize the treacherous nature of the ground on which walks one who tries to compare the two sexes concerning their relative attitudes towards love, but certain it is that the novelist's descriptions of men as the leaders and aggressors in love is not fiction but the common fact of real life. Man's tendency towards leadership in love is not scientifically explained by any superficial assumption that established social conventions have repressed an original spontaneity of women. On the contrary, there are the best of physiological and psychological reasons for believing that the social conventions have arisen as an expression of masculine aggressiveness and natural tendency towards leadership in affairs of the heart. The accepted fact is that many young women have no understanding of or demand for affection until experience has taught them its place in life. In the records of real life, as well as in fiction, many a young woman's possibilities of happiness have been lost because she did not understand herself when love came into her experience.
Affection in marriage.
Another side to the problem of the young woman's relation to love and marriage is brought to our attention by the lamentable fact that many wives lose interest in devoted husbands when the children come. This is probably true in at least half the families; and many matrimonial disharmonies are the result. This is really one of the greatest problems of marriage which cultured women should consider seriously; for even more than in most other sex problems, it is one for the solution of which women are in a position to take the leading part. This problem is especially important in these days when the household inefficiency, personal extravagance, and desire for social position of numerous young women of eighteen to thirty are having an enormous influence in advancing the age of marriage because many of the best types of young men pause and consider seriously the impossibility of adjusting a small salary to the ideas of their women friends as to what is the minimum of a family budget. Add to such facts a growing pessimism of young men regarding inconstant affections of wives with children, and the need of special educational attack is evident.
The duty of parents.
From whatever side we look at the question whether the larger sex-education should somehow try to mold the ideals of young women with regard to love and marriage, we see reasons why parents should encourage their maturing daughters to get some advance understanding of such relation. If parents are themselves unable to help their daughters to this understanding, they can at least exert great influence by their own attitude, and they can approve the reading of books, and perhaps there may be opportunity for hearing lectures by women who understand life.
Books.