Her first and most valuable training.—Marriage is not the only goal toward which a young woman may turn, but it is the most natural, important and worthy. Most all girls look forward to marriage as a possible and desirable goal. Perhaps no woman would refuse marriage, if the right man should propose. It is for this reason that every girl should prepare herself thoroughly to be a housekeeper, a wife and a mother. This should be her first and most thorough training. She should not rest satisfied until she has learned every phase of how to keep house, to care for the wants of small children and to manage hired help. This training should begin in childhood. A girl should be able to dress herself and to keep her own room by the time she is ten years old. Whatever may be her career in life, she will always be the better off because she is a good housekeeper. She may not have to be a housekeeper, for she may have servants, still she is all the better off, as she will understand how to manage the servants.
The independent girl.—In addition to having prepared herself for a housekeeper, a wife and a mother, she should now prepare herself for some vocation in life. The right man may not present himself, she may be called upon to support an aged mother or father, or an invalid husband, and she will need to know how to earn a living. A girl, unprepared to support herself, waiting year after year for some man to come and marry her, is an object of profound pity. If the right man comes along and marries her, all is well. But she often marries the wrong fellow, or waits for many weary years and yet, he never comes. A generation ago few opportunities of earning a support were open to a girl. Conditions have changed, woman’s ideals have grown and the world offers her other vocations than housekeeping, wifehood and motherhood, and unless these come in very attractive form she can choose the vocation of art, music, teaching, stenography, book-keeping or some other calling. By the time she is eighteen, a girl should be able to keep a house or earn a living in some business way. This will give her an assurance of independence. Regardless of the wealth of her parents, she should have these two qualifications. If her parents are poor and she is ambitious, she can now work her way through college, if she desires.
If the morals of a girl have been properly safeguarded by her mother’s training and teaching, the independent girl is little more likely to fall than the girl who remains at home and waits for a husband.
The independent girl who goes out into the world with her brother, shoulders the same burdens, wrestles with the same problems, fights the same battles and overcomes the same difficulties, will meet a better class of men than those who would likely seek her out in her home. She is more likely to be happily married, than if she remained at home. She is now better fitted to be a housekeeper, wife and mother, than if she had remained at home. She has learned how to produce a dollar, she now knows the value of it and how, wisely, to spend it.
CHAPTER VI
TRAINING AND GOVERNMENT IN THE HOME
Home a unit of government.—As already observed, the home is a partnership. It is a unit of government. In an ideal unit of home government, every member is governed by and through an intelligent understanding of the customs, rules and laws, a conscientious recognition of what is right and wrong and the golden rule of love. Each have equal rights. What is wrong for one is equally wrong for each and all. What is right for one is equally right for each and all. Such a home is a unit of government where parents and children are organized under a constitution of intellect, conscience and love; for the purpose of building character, fitting themselves for larger citizenship in this life and the life that is to be the sequence to this one.