AN INNOVATION.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 48, Issue 82, 17 January 1928, Page 7

AN INNOVATION.

“COMPANIONATE MARRIAGE.” CONTROVERSY IN AMERICA. The proposed “companionate marriage” of Miss, Josephine HaldemanJulius, aged 18, and Aubrey Roselle, aged 20, children of well-to-do residents of Girard, ’Kansas, has attracted national attention, and created heated discussion in the public Press and the Church, writes the New York correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph.” The prospective' bride is still a student at a high schpol and the bridegroom an undergraduate at the University of Kansas. The parents of both believe that it will be better if the children a reunited now and continue to live independently of each other, instead of waiting five or six years until the young man is financially able to support his wife. For a few years the parents will continue to support them. They will continue their education and meet occasionally at their parents homes. If they find their married life unsatisfactory they will be divorced. The arrangement, in the opinion of the parents, is a solution of the economic problem and social unrest, and a logical and sensible answer of thoughtful parents to the problem of boys and girls who wish to marry before the boy is prepared to assume the burden of earning a competent living for two. Education has become such a long drawn out affair, they say, that marriage is delayed far beyond the time that is natural and proper for it. Many parents are afraid to give their consent to companionate marriages only because of a'groundless regard for old and worn-out conventions.

Companionate marriages are defended by the Rev. L. M. Birkhead, a PVesbyterian minister of Kansas City, as a. step in the direction of making marriage a “more civilised institution.” He and numerous other ministers, he says, have performed' many ceremonies uniting young couples who desire to get married without sacrificing their education and training for their future career. Those who defend the wedding which has been arranged between the eighteen-year-old girl Julius and the twenty-year-old boy Roselle explain tlieir view of companionate marriage as meaning that: (1) Husband and wife would each have the status of a single person in property matters, although their sex relationship would he legalised and the legal status of any possible child .protected : (2) upon entrance to marriage each would he thoroughly instructed in birth control; (3) that the mutual consent of the couple, legally presented, would be the only requisite for the termination of the marriage, except in the case of a eliild being horn, and in that event divorce should he avoided except for a very grave cause.

New York clergymen interviewed denounce “companionate marriage” as a travesty of Christian civilisation and a cloak for moral breakdown.