SHOULD GIRLS MARRY WIDOWERS ?

Wairarapa Age, 19 December 1919, Page 2

SHOULD GIRLS MARRY WIDOWERS ?

A HEAVY BURDEN THAT FALLS ON WOMEN. (By Henry Mason.) The writer discusses the difficulties that hamper the stepmother, and doubts whether girls realise the burden they are taking on in marrying men with children. The case of the stepmother is a very hard one. She has a bad name. Just as the mother-in-law is a figure of fun, held up <most unjustly, as we all know, in, many cases to z-idicule, so the poor stepmother from time immemorial is pictured as stern and stony-hearted. Cinderella had a wicked stepmother, and from our fairy tale days we come to connect something sinister with the name of stepmother. It is a hard and censorious world, and personally my sympathy is with stepmothers. My heart goes out to them, although I would never advise a girl I know to take on the job. The stepmother is always misunderstood. If she attempts to bring up properly the children she is called upon to mother, her methods and motives arc aljvays subject to correction by hej husband or her husband's people. DOES SHE PREFER HER OWN? If she is kind and indulgent to them she spoils them or she has no idea of the way to \ treat growing children. If she is strict and a disciplinarian she is accused of harshness. "She wouldn't behave like that if they were her own," people say. If she wins their' love she is suspected to trying to alienate them from their own father. "And if they dislike her, "Well, what else could you expect?" The stepmother is put in the wrong, coming or going. If in addition to her husband's family she has children of her own, her lot becomes still worse. It is not in tho nature of things that a woman could care as much foi another woman's children as she does for her. own flesh and blood. However much she may try to hide it, however much she may try to be scrupulously fair and unbiased in her treatment, she must have ia preference for her own offspring, and it is likely to reveal itself and in many cases cause trouble. It is very unfair on her that it should be so. For consider the position. Just as widows have an extraordinary attraction for certain types of men, so widowers with children make a very great appeal to girls in whom the mother-instinct is strong. A wiuovver with two or three young children is the most helpless thing alive. He simply can't get on without a woman to assist him. People are sometimes censorious about the rapidity t with which » widower marries again. If he be a father, ho simply has . to do it in self-defence. And that is where the unfairness comes in. He may be genuinely in love with his second wife, but often, On the man's side, it is just a marriage of convenience. He must have

someone to look after the children and the home. AMAZING WOMAN. She, on her part, young, romantic and idealistic, perhaps, is "so sorry" for him. Her heart goes out to the poor motherless bairns. And she does not realise in her sweet womanliness, her instinct of motherliness, that the sentiment which is leading her to marriage is not the right basis for matrimony. Or if she does realise it, her pass'on for self-sacrifice, woman's most exquisite joy, is so great that she is prepared to take the risk. But she forgets that the children will grow up. It is all right while they are tiny and need her care. She may spend herself upon them to the utmost. Bui when they grow up—then comes the tug. The call of the blood, that mysterious instinct, draws them every day nearer to their own parent and further from her—irresistibly, inevitably. Try as she will, try as they will, they can never forget that she is not their own mother. If there be any friction it is with the father they side, and if there be any trouble it is to the father they turn. No, girls do not realise what they are letting themselves in for when they take on the task of stepmother. To those who do and make a success of the business I bow the knoe with reverential awe. Women are amazing and wottderful creatures.