UNMARRIED DAUGHTERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2914, 19 January 1910, Page 88

UNMARRIED DAUGHTERS.

A PROBLEM OP MIDDLE-CLASS FAMILIES. The head master of Eton, speaking on education and practical life, remarked that English home life was weakening, and the girls ought to bo taught in. such a way that they would be able to take their E:es in the homes. One can agree with on both points, says The Times, and yet remain, in some practical uncertainty. Girls must he fitted to take their places in the homes; but in what homes—their fathers’ or their husbands’ ? It is not at all the same thing; for the wife’s function in ,a properly ordered home is clear and well defined. The function of the grown-up daughter, especially if there are several of them, is not. Parents nowadays cannot count upon their daughters marrying. A father with half a dozen daughters must face the fact that none of them may marry; and, if they are all to remain spinsters, how is he going to train fhem all to take their places in tile home ? However well he may train them, the home will not provide them with enough to do : and if, as Mr Lyttelton says, English home life is weakening, it is weakening because there are too many women with nothing to do in our homes. —•Women Who Are Failures.— How is the ordinary girl to be educated so that she will he both happy and useful if she does not marry \ That is the difficulty which no generalities Avill meet; indeed, it is a difficulty almost unsurmountable in present conditions ; and because of it many of our middle-class homes are full of subdued unhappiness. There are hundreds of things which the ordinary spinster might do if only she were capable of doing them. But she is not capable, partly because her parents often haye not the means to give her a good education, partly because her very position as a spinster in her parents’ home deprives her of energy and initiative. Of course the main cause of the trouble is the fact that in the middle classes marriages are fewer and later than they used to be. The middle-class home, as we have it, is an institution designed for husband and wife and children. It is not designed for children when they grow up. The idea underlying all its conventions and relations is. that sons and daughter's alike will in one course leave 1 it and make homes of their own. If they , do not, they may not seem to linger “like an unloved guest,” hut there is no provision for their remaining. 1 The eon who stays at home because he cannot .make a living for himself is obviously failing in life. The daughter who ; stays because she does not find a husband 1 is often conscious or half-conscious of the i same failure, not because she is evidently inferior to the women who marry, but because, unlike them, she has not found her proper business in life, sire has not done taat which was expected of her. I —Love and Convenience. — It is easy to state the problem, but difficult even to suggest any kind of solution. Are middle-class parents to make more efforts to marry their daughters ? If so, they must be more ready for their sons to marry : they must be prepared to give as well as to take. There is no doubt that we are far more exacting about marriage than our grandparents were. Fathers do not like either their sons or their daughters to marry on vague prospects. They demand some kind l of security, whether of income or of settle- { rnenta. We are against marriages of con- I venience; but our marriages for love must also be convenient. our sons and daughters naturally grow cautious about falling in love. They do not care to face the uncertainty and trouble of unauthorised engagements ; and they have caught from their parents the idea that it is better not to marry at all than to maty upon hopes. Thus, while waiting for the cleaised combination, of love and oonveni-

ence, tho sons often grow inured to celibacy and the daughters pass the marrying age. We may call this reasonable caution, or selfish cowardice—there is something to be said on both side's ; but the practical question is, What do we mean, tc do? If we want more marriages we must either give our children a freer hand l in arranging their own matches, or we must arrange them ourselves more after the French system. Our present attempt to combine love with convenience makes marriage too difficult.