Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 79.djvu/299

Rh great for her task, for the growing child is a many-sided personality interested in many things and the mother being most closely associated with him is naturally his teacher and guide, and must know something of many things in order to come into sympathetic touch with his busy brain.

We know, however, that divorce frequently comes in families where women are really idlers in the economic field, who have no responsibility beyond a good time and to be supported by their husbands. In these cases idleness, discontent, desertion and divorce are the result. A socialization of industry would be a good thing for this type of women by compelling them to have some definite share in the social service, for we all know that there is no greater cure for the blues and discontent than rational activity. By the socialization of domestic industry, if it could be brought about, the monotony of isolated home labor would be removed.

The difficulty with the woman who has too much work to do in the home and the woman who has not enough work to do is that they lack expressional freedom, partly from overfatigue and partly from lack of knowledge of the happiest means of self expression. It is a noteworthy fact that Massachusetts, where women are so largely employed in industry, stands forty-first in the matter of divorce, while Washington, where women are not much employed in industry outside the home, stands first, having produced 513 divorces to every 100,000 married couples. All this may go to show that women who are busy in social industry have little time to dwell upon grievances.

A good broadening course in our schools and colleges with a proper presentation of the duties of adult life would do much to lessen divorce, because after all the home is just what men and women make of it as a public utility in the development of efficient personality. Such a course would serve also to establish a tradition in favor of the homemaker and prevent in some degree the rush of women into outside industries which to many now appear attractive.

One of the difficulties with our educational system to-day from the kindergarten upward is that it seeks to make hard things easy, from the learning of the multiplication table to easy helps for Latin and kindred subjects. The only really satisfactory way of mastering the multiplication table is by definitely learning it. All through our educational system this spirit of helping children to avoid the hard things which require persistence and application is shown in our home life when neither men nor women are able to endure the hardships and unpleasant factors which do come up in every home at some time.

Instead of facing these difficult problems and bringing to bear upon them a rational mentality which will restore order from chaos and strengthen the bond of helpfulness between husband and wife, the husband and wife brought up by our educational system to look for