er of girls is therefore blind to the facts of life. All
education, all training, must be considered in its bearing on the one
vocation, homemaking. The time will come when the occupations of boys
and men must likewise be considered in relation to homemaking, but
that problem is not the province of this book.
Women will bear and rear the children of the future, just as they have
borne and reared the children of the past. But _under what
conditions_--the best or those less worthy? And _what women_--again,
the best or those less worthy? Has woman been freed from subjection,
from an inferior place in the scheme of life, only to become so
intoxicated with a personal freedom, with her own personal ambition,
that she fails to see what emancipation really means? Will she be
contented merely to imitate man rather than to work out a destiny of
her own? We think not. When the first flush of freedom has passed, the
pendulum will turn again and woman will find a truer place than she
knows now or has known.
Two obstacles to the successful pursuit of her ultimate vocation stand
prominently before the young woman of to-day: first, the instruction
of the times has imbued her with too little respect for her calling;
second, her education teaches her how to do almost everything except
how to follow this calling in the scientific spirit of the day. She
may scorn housework as drudgery, but no voice is raised to show her
that it may be made something else. With the advent of vocational
guidance, vocational training of necessity follows close behind. And
with vocational training must come a proper appreciation, among the
other businesses of life, of this "business of being a woman."
Must we then educate the girl to be a homemaker, and keep her out of
the industrial life which has claimed her so swiftly and in which she
has found so much of her emancipation? No, we could not, if we would,
keep her from the outside life. We must rather recognize her double
vocation and, difficult though it seem, must educate her for both
phases of her "business." She will be not only the better woman, but
the better worker, because of the very breadth of her vocational
horizon.
Training for homemaking, then, must go hand in hand with training for
some phase of industrial life. Vocational guides must consider not
only inclination and temperament, but physical condition and the
supply and demand of the industrial world. They will consider the girl
not m
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