COURSE IN MATRIMONY

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 1 May 1926, Page 9

COURSE IN MATRIMONY

BOSTON UNIVERSITY’S LATEST

LECTURES ON THE CHOICE OF A HUSBAND

W'HEN Miss Audrey Ware, of Brookline (U.S.A.), married Mr F. G. Woolf, of the Ohio State University, she was the world’s first certified bride. America, the home of efficiency methods, is the first country in which a special university course is available for women who desire to fit themselves for marriage. The huge number of divorces in that country every year points, Americans say, to inefficiency in marriage; the Boston University’s scientific marriage course is an attempt to deal with this problem. Miss Ware was one of the first to take the course, the idea of which was conceived by Professor J. Lawrence Davis, Dean of the College for Women at Boston University. He chpse an authority on matters matrimonial, Mrs Elizabeth Macdonald, to fill the post-of Inst ructor in Matrimony at the University. . The course covers such subjects as the choice of a husband, the apportionment of income, reasons for marriage failures, and so on. Lome of the questions set as tests are real-life prob-

lems which demand considerable psychological knowledge. One, for example, has reference to the attitude which should be adopted by a wife who has been informed by a reliable friend that her husband has been seen dining with his pretty secretary. Nothing on quite the same lines has previously been attempted, even in the United States. Girls have had domestic economy courses, have learned to cook well, and have been instructed in the care of children, but this, so Professor Davis thinks, has proved insufficient. The great central problem has not been solved, the divorce courts have become even more crowded, and among the divorcees have been graduates of the “home-making” schools. In 1923 there were over 165,000 divorces granted in America, and it is believed that the total for ■j 924—the figures are not yet available —will be even larger. \ I low to will a man, how to hold him, how to prepare for success in marriage, just as one does for a professional career —this is.the idea in the mind of the university authorities.