r you prefer marriage or a career. It is a
case of marriage and work together, or no marriage and work alone. Work
must go on in either case. For most women there is something so
satisfying in creating a home that they do it frequently by themselves.
It seems to fulfill a deep inner need to do the little homely things of
everyday living, and I think that is one reason why so many young people
get married and set up homes of their own long before their financial
resources warrant it.

If they want to have children as soon as they are financially
established, they usually do so, but a craving for a home of her own is
the first stirring of maturity in a woman. To many women, however, a
home is not wholly satisfying unless she is making it for someone else,
and nature has made most women yearn for a man to mother.

I know one young couple who were married when the boy was getting
twenty-five dollars a week and the girl was getting the same as a
stenographer. Both of them went on working. Everything seemed to be
going very well, and she managed her two jobs quite successfully. The
most successful part of it was the fact that she induced her husband to
feel an equal responsibility for the house. I remember that when I dined
with them, he put on an apron after dinner and helped wash the dishes as
naturally as if that were the normal occupation for a man. When a
marriage works out this way, it is very successful, especially if the
man has a knack for doing things about the house, because it keeps him
busy when his wife is busy.

Children can be postponed if two young people have a home and a mate. If
a woman has to work to have a home and husband, she will do it happily,
but I do not think that always means that she longs to work. It is
unfortunate that so often she is forced to for material security.

Where circumstances verge on poverty, marriage is even more of a career,
for then more depends on the woman's ability to manage. Of course, when
it comes to the mothers of families who work in mills, factories, and
stores, we know quite well that there is no question of choice--poverty
drives them, and they work because they have to, and only a few would
hesitate if they were offered an opportunity to stay at home and look
after their home and their children.

I remember visiting a mill town once, and as the women came off the
night shift--for there were no laws at that time in that particular
state against women's working o