THE SUPER HOUSEWIFE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3131, 21 August 1922, Page 7

THE SUPER HOUSEWIFE.

(By Margaret Gordon).

The recent appointment of two women, each possessing a B.A. degree, to posts of responsibility in a. laundry is a good omen. It shows that men are shedding the masculine illusion that flie unintelligent and semi-educated woman is likely to give a better account of herself at domestic duties than the woman with the trained mind. Let us admit at once that the housewife who really enjoys cleaning and dusting has yet to be bom. As a job it as tiresome and uninspiring as adding up a band ledger is to the normal man. But just as a man with brains will get through tedious clerical work quicker and better than the man without brains, so the cle.ver woman will deal more efficiently than the stupid one with the problem of running her home. I am assuming, of course, that she either can’t find or can’t afford a servant to relieve her of the dullest an d heaviest part of the work. But even among those whose means are sufficient to pay for service I know women who find it less exhausting, and, above all, less exasperating, to do their own housework than to spend their time teaching the average “general”—convinced she knows more about it than ner mistress —how to handle brooms and dusters to the best advantage. We ichall not, alas! in this generation, live to see the ideal labor-saving home made available to those who are most in need of it— homo in which central heating replaces the open lire, where dishes wash themselves, where hot water flows and disappears automatically, where tlie little dust that collects can be disposed of almost without effort! In the far future that home, now a rare luxury for the rich who don’t need it, may lighten the burden of housekeeping for all womanhood. But to-day to the young man who is contemplating matrimony on the tiniest income and wants a wife who will make him comfortable, as well as happy, I say “choose the woman with brains who lias learnt how to use them, every time.” Such a woman will not pretend that the drudgery of housework is a pleasure. But she will have the sense to realise that an ill-kept home means' not only demoralisation for herself, but for her husband too. She will accept file toil of keeping it bright and beautiful as her part of the contract, and by turning her brains and her education on to the task, she will be able to accomplish it and still find time to look as if she didn’t know where the dust-pan was kept when her husband comes homo in the evening. More than that ,sho will he ready and able to meet him in conversation on his own intellectual level, while he is eating the dinner she has thought out and prepared.