THE GIRL’S WORK (Continued) VOCATIONS AS AFFECTING HOMEMAKING

Choice of vocation is far from being a simple matter for either boy or girl; but for the girl who recognizes homemaking as woman’s work, double possibilities complicate her problem more than that of the boy. The girl must prepare for life work in the home, or life work outside the home, or a period of either followed by the other, or perhaps a combination of both during some part or even all of her mature life.

It is the part of wisdom for us to study vocations in their relation to homemaking. Will the girl who works in the factory, for instance, or who becomes a teacher or a lawyer or a physician, be as good a homemaker as she would have been had she chosen some other occupation? Will she perhaps be a better homemaker for her vocational experience? Or will her life in the industrial world unfit her for life in the home or turn her inclination away from the homemaker’s work?

These questions have somehow fallen into the background in the steady increase of girls as industrial workers. “Good money” has usually come first, and after that other considerations of social advantage, working conditions, or local demand. Marriage and motherhood are still recognized as normal conditions for most women, but we let their industrial life step in between their homemaking preparation in home and school, with the result that many lose physical fitness or mental aptitude or inclination for the home life. We treat marriage as an incident, even though it occurs often enough to be for most women the rule rather than the exception. At some time in their lives, 93.8 per cent of all women marry.

The first broad classification of vocations in their relation to homemaking is: (1) those which are favorable to homemaking, (2) those which are unfavorable, (3) those which are neutral.

It must, however, be recognized at the outset that few hard-and-fast lines between these groups can be drawn, and that “the personal equation” is as important a factor here as in most personal questions. It is true, nevertheless, that helpful deductions may be drawn from facts which it is possible to gather concerning the physical, mental, and moral results of pursuing certain occupations as a prelude to marriage and the making of a home.

In a general way, economic independence, that is, the earning of her own living by a girl for several years before marriage, tends to increase her knowledge of the value of money and to make her a better financial manager. Probably this same independence makes a girl slightly less anxious to marry, especially since in most cases she has hitherto been expected to give up her personal income in exchange for an extremely uncertain system of sharing what the husband earns. Independence of any sort is reluctantly laid aside by those who have possessed it. This very reluctance on the part of girls ought to be a force in the direction of economic independence of wives, a most desirable and necessary condition for society to bring about. Gainful occupation has then much to recommend it and little to be said against it as part of the training for matrimony.

Certain occupations, however, are so essentially favorable to the girl’s homemaking ability and to her probable inclination to make a home of her own that we do not hesitate to recommend them as the best directions for girls’ vocational work to take, other things being equal. We have already said that the girl distinctly not home-minded is more safely left to her own inclinations. She would not be a success as a homemaker under any circumstances. Other girls may be made or marred by the years which intervene between their school and home life.

The value of domestic work of any sort as a preparation for homemaking is generally admitted without argument. Closely in touch with a home throughout her maturing years, the girl may undertake her own housekeeping problems with ease and efficiency. Conditions as they often exist, however, especially for the younger and untrained domestic worker, do not allow the girl to obtain other experience quite as necessary if she is to become not merely a housekeeper but a true homemaker. The untrained girl who enters upon domestic work at fourteen or fifteen should have opportunity indeed the opportunity should be thrust upon her of attending a continuation school, where the special aim should be to counteract the narrowing tendency of work which revolves about so small an orbit. Ideals of home life are either lacking or distorted in the minds of many working girls, and when such girls become wives and mothers they strive for the wrong things or they fall back without striving at all, taking merely what comes. They fail to be forces for good in their family life.

Teaching and nursing may be grouped together as excellent preparation for the prospective homemaker. It may be contended that the teacher and the hospital nurse spend years outside the home environment and that their minds are turned to other problems than those of housekeeping. This contention is undoubtedly true; and if we were striving merely to make housekeepers, it might be worthy of serious consideration. The home, however, as we have defined it, is a place in which to make people, and both the nurse and the teacher serve a long apprenticeship in this sort of manufacture. Expert workers in either line concern themselves with the bodies and the minds of their pupils or patients. They, together with physicians, lawyers, and social workers, have opportunities which can scarcely be equaled for learning by observation and experiment about the human relations that will confront them in their own homes. They learn to be resourceful and to meet the emergencies of which life is full; they have the advantage of trained minds to set to work upon the administrative problems which underlie successful home life.

A question may arise as to the physical fitness for marriage and motherhood of the girl who has given her nerve force to the exacting and often depleting work of nurse, teacher, or physician. It is unquestionably true that nurses and teachers do often wear out after comparatively few years at their vocation, although of the majority the opposite is true. This merely means that conditions surrounding these vocations should be studied with a view to their improvement, if necessary, since we believe the vocations to be suited to women and women to the vocations.

Office work may prove an excellent training for certain phases of homemaking work. Neatness, accuracy, precision, the doing again and again of constantly recurring tasks, all find their place and use in the housekeeper’s routine. The calm atmosphere of the well-kept office even when typewriters and calculating machines are rattling is a better preparation for an orderly home than the rush of the department store or the factory. Purely routine workers, who put little or no thought into their daily tasks, will enter upon homemaking lacking the initiative that homemakers need. But the able office worker is not merely a follower of routine. The greatest lack of office work as preparation for a homemaking career is that the girl’s interests during so large a part of her day are led away from the home and all that pertains to it. She works neither with people nor with the things which go to make homes. Probably, on the whole, office work in a general way may be classed as a neutral occupation, which neither adds to, nor reduces, in any great degree the girl’s possibilities as a homemaker.

Salesmanship for girls, especially in the great department stores of the cities, is a vocation of at least doubtful advantage for the home-minded girl to pursue as a step in her training for managing her own home. In the quiet of the village store, with few associates in work, and with one’s neighbors and fellow townsmen for customers, salesmanship takes on a somewhat different aspect. But the city store means usually hurry, excitement, nerve strain, a long day, with quite probably reaction to excessive gayety and hence more nerve strain at night. It means spending one’s days among great collections of finery which tend to assume undue importance in the girl’s eyes. It means constant association with people who spend, until spending seems the only end in life. It means almost always pay lower than is consistent with decent living if the girl must depend alone upon her own earnings. And none of these things tends toward steady, skillful, contented wifehood and motherhood in later years. This question of underpaid work is of course not found alone in the department store. But, wherever it is found, we may be sure that it tends on the one hand toward marriage as a way of escape from present want, and on the other toward inefficiency in the relation so lightly assumed.

The factory girl is in many respects in a position parallel to that of the saleswoman. She earns too little to make comfortable living possible. She too must leave home early and return late, wearied by the monotony of a day in uninteresting surroundings, with neither energy nor inclination for anything other than complete relaxation and “fun.” This desire for relaxation leads her often away from a crowded, ill-supported home in the evenings, until the habit settles into a confirmed disposition. This is a decided handicap for a homemaker. Coupled with the mental inertia resulting from years of mechanical work without thought, it provides poor material from which to make steady, responsible, efficient women. We have already noted, however, that factories differ widely. It follows of necessity that the girls who work in them come from their work with all grades of ability.

The actress, the artist, and the literary woman are usually spoken of as far removed from the true domestic type. This I cannot believe to be true, except in individual cases. All these women, as makers of finished products, stand far nearer to the traditional type of woman than many others we might name. The life of the actress tends more than the others perhaps to break home ties, but in the case of real talent in any direction ordinary rules do not apply. The actress, the artist, and the writer are much more likely to carry on their work after marriage than the teacher, the office worker, or even the factory woman. Many of them succeed to a remarkable degree in doing two things well. Many more, of course, are less successful, but we must not overlook the fact that the failures are more noised abroad than the successes.

It is a matter for regret that most women, upon leaving an industrial career for marriage, drop so completely out of touch with their former work. In the case of the untrained woman, who has received little and given little in her work, it is a matter of no moment; but when years have been given to skilled labor, it is economic waste to have the skill lost and the process forgotten. Many times the woman finds herself after a short life in the home obliged to earn a living once more for herself or it may be for a family. She returns to her teaching or her office work or a position in the library; but she is no longer, at least for a considerable time, the expert she once was. Why should not the former teacher keep up her interest in educational literature and the new ideas in what might have been her life work? Would it not be well for the one-time stenographer to keep a gentle hold upon the quirks and quirls which once brought to her her weekly salary? A young mother of my acquaintance who was a concert violinist of much ability has found no time for more than a year to practice, “since baby came,” and thousands of dollars spent in making her a player are being thrown away. To some this might seem the right thing. She has found “the home her sphere.” To others it seems a serious waste. We advocate often that the middle-aged woman who has reared her children should return in some way to the work of the world outside the home. In the case of the trained woman her training should be made of use in such return. She should, however, beware lest her tools are rusty from disuse.

We may not perhaps leave the questions involved in a discussion of vocations as they affect homemaking without noticing that certain occupations are considered especially dangerous to the moral stability of girls. Nursing, private secretaryship, and domestic service present dangers in direct proportion as they bring about isolated companionship for the girl and a male employer. Girls must not enter these employments without the knowledge of how to protect themselves from lowering influences.