SHOULD THEY MARRY?

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 260, 2 November 1929, Page 7 (Supplement)

SHOULD THEY MARRY?

TWO OF A TRADE.

"SHOP" WEDDINGS A MISTAKE.

VALUE OF CHANGE IN THOUGHT.

(By JOAN KENNEDY.)

This is the day of the professional woman. She appears to have entered every calling, from the Bar to brickmaking, from qualifying in medicine to making motor cars. And because propinquity is still Cupid's best ally, we find men and women falling in love and marrying into each other's professions.

For years we have had schoolmasters marrying schoolmistresses, doctors taking to wife trained nurses, parsons linking their lives with social workers in matrimony. But as woman widens her sphere the thing will increase. More and more "shop" marriages will take place. Are they wise? Time For Ease. The average professional man wants to push his profession into the background when his day's work is done. Your stockbroker is not longing to get home and talk of the office to the wife of his bosom. He would prefer her to be innocent of knowledge when it comes to stocks and shares, and be able to rest in the home he shares with her without bringing the worries of "'Change" into its atmosphere. Generally speaking, men are unmistakably stamped with the callings they

pursue. The mind of the bank manager is working on "current" and "deposit" on investments and overdrafts. Lawyers are as dry as dust and ae heavy as their own tomes of knowledge which they consult. The bedside manner of a doctor never deserts him —not even wben he is relaxing so far as to waltz round a ball room. The actor is forever posing, more or 1e66, and wben he speaks it is with attention to voice production. If all professional men married women in their particular profession the thing would grow even more marked. "Shop" would become an obsession from which there was no escape. No, though at first one imagines it to be a good thing for a man to marry a woman who understands his work because she has been trained in the same calling, a little deeper thought reveals the fact that "shop" marriages are not happy, except in rare instances. Home and work should be distinct in the mind of a man. Home should spell relaxation from work.

If I were a lawyer I would rather marry a woman whose legal knowledge could all be written on one postcard. I should hope she was not a fool in moet walks of life, but in legal matters I would prefer her to be dumb. I should want her to take my mind off the,law when I returned to my home, and provide change of thought along with change of scene. When Women Help; Most men go to their wives for advice at times when their own minds are bewildered by technical details, and they "cannot see the wood for the trees," but a woman with a mind of her own can often help better when she is not initiated into the technicalities of the case. She gives the unbiassed view of the outsider and that helps her husband, Half the secret of brain rest is the power to put away the worry of work when working hours are over. Men dc not want wives who help them to remember, but who show them how to forget. But what of the woman's side of the question? Does a "shop" marriage help or hinder Tier ? Frankly, I think that women would gain more than men by having as husbands men who know their particulai professions inside out.

Except in cases where health is perfect women are not so stable as meD, and there are always times when they incline to lean. At such times sharing professional worries might be an asset to a worker wife. On the other hand, writing as a woman, I realise that there are dangers. Suppose the wife succeeds while the husband remains something of a failure! Successful women are not too tolerant and a successful wife might be apt to look down on the man who could not, at least keep pace with her. If his profession were different from her own she would not know anything about it, but in a "shop" marriage— unless both are equal —there are bound to be "rocks." Two Big Tasks. Should the arrangement be what we call a "fifty-fifty" one financially, inequality soon steps in. The wife shoulders 75 per cent io the husband's 25 per cent.

In any case, she is carrying on the double profession of home-maker and wage-earner. Resentment is bound to spoil the beauty of married love then. But here is one "shop" marriage where success comes—and this when shop takes on its literal meaning. Just a3 "Madame" in France works with her husband in a little business, so in Britain and other countries a shopkeeper marrying a woman who understand his business gains a helper worth while, and this kind of shop marriage answers.—("Star" and Anglo American N.S. copyright.) i a .1