YOUNG AT 45

Southland Times, Issue 21896, 23 December 1932, Page 16

YOUNG AT 45

AMERICAN WOMEN’S YOUTH. “Forty-five nowadays,” said the still beautiful, distinguished woman with the unlined face to a London woman recently, “is nothing. I feel that 1 have the best of my life before me. Nobody seems to think I’m too old to begin to do something. I believe I'll be happier earning my living than when I had money.” She was one of the many American “new poor” created by the depression. After 45 years of having everything she suddenly has nothing—and is relishing the adventure. At 45 she is really starting life, welcoming its thrills, its adventures, its difficulties, as a boy welcomes them at 21. In other words, at 45 she is still young. Her husband, who was also 45, reacted in a different way to the loss of his savings and his job. He felt that life was too much for him, and left it. He was too old, he said, to start again. Besides, there was no room in the business world for a man of 45. He was sucked dry of his vital forces, his energy enthusiasm, youth. Not so long ago a man was considered in his prime at 45. It was the woman who at that age was on the downward slope. Now the tables are turned—the years take their toll of the man, leaving woman unscathed. What has caused the volte-face? Chiefly the ingenuity and indulgence of the male himself!

Since the second industrial revolution, this combination of kindness and ingenuity has lifted all but the lightest burdens of work and worry from feminine shoulders. Every step of the housewive’s work is lightened.

Even twenty years ago, she worked a great deal harder. She cooked much more, for nothing came then—as everything comes now —semi-prepared. She made her own bread and cake, she made nuddings, because there was nothing like so much fresh fruit available, she put up conserves and stores for the winter. She used a wood or coal stove that needed constant tending, she beat and shook her rugs, for there was no vacuum cleaner, and she sewed and sewed and sewed—for there weren’t collections of pretty readymade clothes in a shop round the corner. She had to plan, and she had to work really hard; no wonder she grew old, even when she had servants to help her.

When the tremendous stream of inventions came rolling into her home to do things for her her labours became but a burden of gossamer in comparison. To buy these inventions, however, the man of the family had to work all the harder; he became more and more keyed up, with added responsibilities, working under fiercer tension, producing more, always keeping ahead of the other fellow. And the responsibilities that remained to his wife he also, in a great measure, shared. If their child fell sick, he would be appealed to to call the doctor or the specialist. When it came to enlarging the house or sendind Betty to school in Europe, his was the casting vote, and his the necessity of meeting the bills. Meanwhile, woman, with more and more leisure and less and less responsibility, frequently ’ spent a good deal of time in deliberately keeping young. She played with creams and diets and exercises, and, while admiring a few more active sisters who held “man’s-size” jobs, was more than content to drift and persist in a life of care-free idleness. It is to her credit that she did generally keep her mind lissom along with her body, so that now at a crisis she has both backbone and intelligence, and certain maturity which will help her to make sensible decisions, even though she be ignorant of technicalities. But her freshness and youth are not hers by any special virtue of her own—on the contrary! If her husband, at 45, is tired, and unwilling to go through the mill again, it is that he has borne the dust and burden of the day, and paid for her youthful freshness with his own disillusion and fatigue. In future, perhaps, he may discover some more equable distribution of “wear-and-tear” that will be happier in the long run for man and woman both!