Page:The Truth about Marriage.djvu/80

 "Now, John, when you grow up I want you to treat your wife like Dr. Porter treats his wife. Make her happy. Be thoughtful. Be appreciative. Don't hesitate to tell her that you have been thinking of her during the day. Tell her that you love her. Say sometimes the nice things that lovers say to their sweethearts."

Children can be trained in the home as nowhere else, but mothers will have to have the usefulness of such training impressed upon them. Children will be powerfully impressed by what you tell them of the ideal nature of marriage.

But they will also be more powerfully impressed by the example they see in the home. It ought to make fathers and mothers ashamed of themselves to give such horrible examples of married infelicity.

Fathers should learn to be pleasant in the home for the sake of the children, and mothers should try to stop nagging and being temperamental and otherwise disagreeable. They are teachers in the art of making home unhappy more often than they know.

Parents are often responsible for passing on mental pictures of unhappy marriages that are later worked out into the lives of their children. There seem to be special little purple devils that take delight in stirring up maliciously the passions of married partners and make them forget decent behavior with