Cradles — or Careers?

Any girl who, avoiding the mannish tendencies of the day, enters the holy relation of marriage with an appreciation of the fact that it is a privilege to be a mother, to help build up a home, to help rear a family, and who does all this in the fear of God and in the spirit of love toward the Savior, is one of the greatest constructive forces of the present age.

1926Walter A. MaierWalther League Messenger

The following article by Walter A. Maier is taken from the May 1926 issue of the Walther League Messenger, Volume XXXIV, Number 10, on pp. 520, 521, and 569–571. A scan of the original issue may be found in the HathiTrust Digital Library.

The happiness of the home often vanishes when a young wife begins to dream of a career. And since this absence from the home encourages small families and helps to make for mannishness, Christian young people will do well to study the blessings of parenthood.

Not long ago one of the largest popular weekly magazines of our country conducted a contest to find “the most interesting woman in America.” A well-known writer selected from “Who’s Who” a thousand people, representative of all walks of life and asked them to choose their candidate for this distinctive position. More than six hundred of these representative Americans replied, and starting with Jane Addams, internationally known Chicago social worker, who easily led with 96 votes (and who was followed by Carrie Chapman Catt, feminist leader, second with 49 votes, and Mary Roberts Rinehart, novelist, third with 28) there was a long list of about two hundred names, — all suggested as America’s most interesting woman.

The results of this contest are especially significant because nine-tenths of the candidates named are not known especially for their home lives and for their careers as wives and mothers, but are women who have attained to their reputation through public life or through their own independent efforts in some sphere of activity which is in no way associated with home and family life. We may say that the answers submitted by these 600 plus people indicate a changing ideal, according to which a woman is regarded as interesting and admirable, not because she performs those plain and homely duties which are laid down for a Christian woman in the Bible, but because, overlooking entirely her home duties, she attains to some distinction in politics, on the stage, in philanthropy, in literary work, in the professions, in business, or in other activities, most of which a few generations ago were considered beyond the pale of woman’s usual sphere and interest.

And yet of the more than six hundred people who nominated their candidates, there was one single and solitary individual who had the temerity in this advanced and enlightened day to declare that woman attained to her highest and most pleasing ideal, when, forsaking the roar and grime of business, the mud-slinging of politics, and the clash of other careers, she marries, settles down to make a home, proves herself a helpful wife, and willingly assumes the responsibilities and blessings of motherhood. These, very likely, were the sentiments of the person who, at the very end of this formidable list containing all of the constellations in the starry heavens of femininity, dared to nominate as “the most interesting woman in America” none other than “A Successful Mother.”

This nomination, we believe, should be seconded, the name should be moved from the last to the first place, the election should be made unanimous, and all of the young people of our country should be called upon to ratify this choice of “A Successful Mother,” not only as the most interesting, but also as the most valuable woman of our country. For the time has come when the young people of our country need to think clearly and constructively on the ideal of Christian womanhood and to understand and avoid those influences which are hostile to these ideals and which tend, not only to drag Christian wives and mothers away from the family hearth, but also to make them disregard the glory of motherhood and sacrifice the real charm and attractive qualities of worth-while womanhood.

The Danger of a Career after Marriage

One of the unfortunate influences that is weakening the home ties and loosening the bonds that bind husband and wife together is the desire for “a career after marriage,” which is increasing in an unmistakable manner. According to statistics recently compiled by the Women’s Bureau of the United States Department of Labor there are more than 2,000,000 wives now employed in daily occupations which take them away from their homes every day. And while it may be that there are many instances in which the economic conditions within the family make it imperative for the wife and mother to engage in such work and to assist the husband who may be incapacitated or unable for some reason to support the home and family; and while in all such cases any faithful wife should willingly shoulder this responsibility just as long as her services are thus required; — the alarming fact of the matter is just this, that in many instances the wife continues to work after marriage when her husband is earning an ample salary and when the financial income of her independent career is not really required for the support of the home.

The motives which lead to this working outside of the home are varied. But all motives, even those that are apparently harmless, are shown by experience to be highly dangerous. When a young wife, except in the emergencies noted above, deserts her home in order to retain her position, say, as stenographer, her absence from the home will never tend to draw her closer to her husband, to preserve those feminine traits which every man admires, to give her the time and energy required to make and maintain a happy, neat, and attractive home. No, such an independent career often leads to independent living, thinking, and acting — and, in many instances, to even more serious consequences. Judge Samuel E. Kramer, magistrate in the Common Pleas Court of Cleveland, recently issued a statement in which he described some of these dangerous consequences. He declared:

In seventy-five per cent of all divorces which I have granted I find that both husband and wife were working outside the home. Under such conditions they are bound to drift apart. They meet too seldom and need each other’s aid too little. The home too often is a dusty, unkept place.

And the tragic experience that has robbed many homes of their happiness proves the force of this assertion. The young bride who ventures out into the sea of matrimony with only half of her attention on the compass of happiness need not be surprised if she finds herself heading toward rocky shores or drifting about in untried waters. And the young husband who permits his wife to keep up her former business connections should not complain when he realizes that his dreams of home and happiness are not being fulfilled.

The force of this truth has been emphasized by women who have viewed the situation with impartial judgment. The widow of Admiral Peary, the discoverer of the North Pole, declared in this connection: “It is impossible to serve two masters at once and do it well.” Mrs. Benjamin Harrison, wife of one of our former Presidents, came to the same conclusion and stated that no woman can succeed in business and “bring up her children properly and make a desirable and successful home at the same time.” Very recently Madame Schumann-Heink asserted very directly: “Wives should not work outside of their homes if their husbands can support them.” Not long ago, too, Mrs. Augusta S. Montgomery, well-known New York lawyer, dropped her career as attorney and gave to the press this significant statement:

After I was graduated from New York University, in 1910, I was especially interested in the suffrage movement and other activities that gave promise of assisting women to attain greater laurels in the commercial, professional, and financial sphere. I recall that in newspaper interviews given while I was actively engaged in the practise of law, I came out firmly for the woman who desired to rear a family and still adhere to her professional calling.

I would not care to advocate today the possibility of a woman being able to rear a promising family and still follow her professional calling, because it cannot be done successfully.

Home is where the heart is, and if there are children in the home, the spirit and love of the mother will always be there. A mother may win distinguished honors in a business career. The honor that comes to her in bringing up good children, equipped with the necessary training to enter the world and be good citizens, is far greater.

Even society women occasionally are awakened to the real responsibilities of life, and a recent dispatch from Paris tells us that Gloria Gould Bishop, former actress and an outstanding figure in New York and Paris societies, explained her absence from the fashionable life of Paris and from the stage as follows:

I am quite through with social gayeties, with the ephemeral glories of the stage and with the empty pompousness of fashion. All that is froth. No woman enjoys life to the full until she has known the joy of motherhood.

And more forceful and more cogent even than such statements is the ideal of the Christian wife and mother that is held up to us in the Bible. If the many passages pertaining to the duties and privileges of a wife are compiled from Scripture (and read in this connection especially “The A. B. C. for the Ideal Wife,” in the thirty-first chapter of Proverbs), it will be seen that according to divine wisdom the sphere of woman’s greatest usefulness and greatest blessing is the home, and that in the fulfilment of her family duties she attains to those rich enjoyments which are so ennobling to her personally, so helpful to the work of the Church, and so constructive in raising the moral standards of our country.

The Blight of Birth Control

Associated with the desire for a career is the attitude which apparently an increasing number of married couples are taking, namely, this, that it is regarded as more comfortable and convenient to postpone the advent of children into the family circle for a number of years, so that both husband and wife may enjoy freely and without restraint the many opportunities which social life offers. When a group of Modernist preachers, teachers, and students recently convening at Chicago University declared that birth control was not wrong and that the legal ban against it should be removed, we can hardly blame young people who have no connection with the Christian Church when they enter the marriage relation and decide that they will not have any children, or at most one or two. But when Christian young people who know the sacred command of their God: “Be fruitful and multiply” and who realize the sinfulness, as well as the physical and moral danger, which lurks in all plans to evade this divine requirement, nevertheless adopt a similar perverted and pernicious policy for their married life, their sin is the more serious, lamentable, and disastrous.

It is true, there seems to be a world-wide determination to avoid the responsibilities of parenthood. In Sweden, for example, conditions have come to such a point that a bill was recently introduced in the Riksdag according to which motherhood is to be subsidized and recognized as a service to the State. In England the birth rate is said to have dropped below that of France, which country up until this time had held the unenviable distinction. And in our own country the childless families of the so-called intellectuals have caused so much concern that a Harvard professor recently proposed that a bonus system be instituted which should be graded according to the size of the family. Not only our educated families, however, are responsible for the gradually decreasing birthrate in our own country; for the spirit of the one-or-two-child system which is making it fashionable to restrict families to a minimum is a prominent factor also in the middle classes in promoting this unfortunate state of affairs.

We call childless marriages or marriages with one or two children (where this limitation has been intentional, wilful, and criminal) unfortunate because, as history shows, the failures to assume the privileges and responsibilities of parenthood, the delusion that children are a burden, and the attitude which makes large families commonplace and plebeian is always, and under all conditions, the unmistakable evidence of moral decay. But more: small families usually start their children off with a disadvantage in life. Of eighty of the most eminent men whom the human race has produced in recent years only four, Thackeray, Hamilton, Ruskin, and R. L. Stevenson, were the only sons of their parents, while seventy-six of the greatest men of the same period have been members of large families. Benjamin Franklin had sixteen brothers and sisters; John Marshall had fourteen; Peter the Great thirteen; and Napoleon twelve. Samuel Adams, Walter Scott, and J. F. Cooper each were members of a household which embraced a dozen children. Lord Nelson and Irving each had ten brothers and sisters; Washington, Webster, and Carlyle had nine; Grover Cleveland eight; Jefferson and Dickens seven; Clay, Longfellow and Byrant six each. And the experience of uncounted myriads of parents has proved that the love of children and their chatter and patter is one of the strongest possible binding forces to cement the happiness of the home.

The Menace of Mannishness

Finally, the pronounced tendency to make our young women masculine is working with especial destructive force in the present hour. Not only is there a tendency toward this mannishness in clothes, in the arrangement of the hair, in the adoption of such habits as smoking, but women, in an increasing degree, are assuming positions and professions which hitherto have been recorded as essentially masculine. One of the particularly discouraging signs of the times, for example, is the increase in the number of women preachers. Newspaper headlines feature the activities of “flapper evangelists,” and girl revivalists, and this whole unnatural activity, which is certainly directly contrary to Scriptural injunction, is often accompanied by depressing and disheartening results.

Experience in uncounted myriads of instances has demonstrated to the satisfaction of all who approach this question with an unbiased mind that the more masculine a young woman becomes in her appearance, actions, occupation, and amusements, the more her womanly charm vanishes. Over in England the House of Commons has repeatedly hesitated to grant the women of England equal voting privileges because it is feared that if equal franchise is introduced the women voters will outnumber the men by nearly one million and there will then, as a result, be a rule of feminism. But in our own country there seems to be a greater danger than that of the possibility of female control of our government and that is the equalization of the sexes and the associated tendency to make our young women masculine.

The call that the nation, the home, and the Christian Church issues to all young women who want to know how to make their life really worth living and to come to the fulness of the sacred position which God would have them assume is therefore this: Your happiness, as well as the welfare of the future generations of our country, depends upon your willingness, yes, your sincere and intense desire, to fulfil those high and holy obligations for which motherhood has been instituted. It may be more spectacular to dream of careers; it may seem more comfortable to live in a marriage relation where there are no children to limit the social activities and keep you close to the home: it may be more up-to-date and fashionable to sacrifice the characteristics of true womanhood and to become a “good pal” to the members of the opposite sex, eliminating as far as possible those evidences of maidenly reserve and modesty which should distinguish every young woman. But above this unfortunate delusion, misunderstandings and disregard of God’s ordinances, the assurance rings true and clear and convincing that any girl who, avoiding the mannish tendencies of the day, enters the holy relation of marriage with an appreciation of the fact that it is a privilege to be a mother, to help build up a home, to help rear a family, and who does all this in the fear of God and in the spirit of love toward the Savior, — that such a girl not only belongs in the very front ranks of the most interesting, the most useful, and the most helpful women in America, but also that she is one of the greatest constructive forces of the present age.

God give us uncounted myriads of such young women!

W. A. M.