MARRIAGE-SHY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19784, 7 March 1927, Page 8

MARRIAGE-SHY

THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AN ARRAY OF PROBLEMS. Sixty years ago tho philosopher Edward von Hartmann wrote: “At no previous period have young men fought more shy of love.’’ In every stage of our social history persons of the older generations have deplored the “decline’’ or the “decay’’ of marriage, states January Mortimer in the “Daily Mail.’’ Is this alleged indifference to love and wedded life a sign of selfishness or timidity among our young men? I have attempted lately to extract from my younger and unmarried friends an open confession of their views upon girls and matrimony. I find these young men are mostly marriage-shy. They do not criticise the existing system of matrimony from a legal standpoint, and by far tho larger number of them avow frankly that they would like to marry. Their chief difficulty is the money question. They say of the girls of the middle class: “They want so many things that our mothers never dreamed of wanting." One bright, warm-hearted lad confessed that he had been in love with a girl of his own age for some months and that he had curbed an impulse to propose marriage. “Tho fact is," he said, “she repeatedly refused to go with mo to dances or shows because she had ‘no shoes fit to wear.’ Well, one day she showed me six pairs of quite nice shoes, better than my sister wears; and T said to myself: ‘I shall never be able to gratify At ’s love of clothes and finery unless I become a rich man.’ And as I am in a Government office, fairly secure for life but not likely to become wealthy, my regard for my girl friend must remain platonic."

Another young man complains that he very rarely meets a girl who shows any interest in household affairs. “Most of them," he says, “talk of domestic work as ‘a nuisance, slavery, or drudgery.’ And these same girls are very fond of pointing out the ‘selfishness' of men."

It is undeniable that there are types of cautious, purely self-regarding bachelors whose motives for abstaining from marriage are mainly mercenary. But there are a very large number of young men who are deterred from marrying by the reflection that the standards of comfort and luxury among middle and upper-class young women are beyond their moans of gratification. I fear the old belief that married Jove is worth some sacrifice of external and materia] things is now somewhat rare.