women of the college and
professional school shall be available for the great work of mothering
the nation of the future.

A final word as to the place of the vocational guide in the choosing
of vocations may not be amiss. That every teacher should consider
himself or herself a helper in this most important work we must agree;
but that any teacher must walk carefully, and use the guiding hand but
sparingly, is equally true.

The object of vocational help is not merely to keep the "square peg"
out of the "round hole." The girl arbitrarily placed in a suitable
occupation may never discover why she is there, and may be handicapped
all her life by a deep conviction that she fits somewhere else. "Know
thyself" is a good old maxim yet. The teacher or vocational guide is
fitted by the place of observation she holds to help the girl to study
herself and the possibilities that life holds out to such as she thus
finds herself to be. The final choice should be made by the girl.

CHAPTER XIV

MARRIAGE

Marriage may, or may not, in these days, be the opening door into the
homemaker's career. Many a young woman is a homemaker before she
marries. On the other hand, women sometimes marry without any thought
of making a home.

But, after all, it is safe to assume that marriage and homemaking do
go hand in hand. The great majority of wives become managers of homes
of one sort or another. Shall we then frankly educate our girls for
marriage--"dangle a wedding ring ever before their eyes"? Or shall we
regard marriages as "made in heaven" and keep our hands off the whole
matter?

The proportion of marriages in the United States which terminate in
divorce was in 1910 one in twelve. Divorce in this country is now
three times as common as forty years ago. The success or failure of
marriages cannot, however, be measured merely by the divorce test. We
cannot avoid the knowledge that many other unhappy unions are endured
until release comes with death. When we say unhappy marriages, we mean
not only those which become unendurable, but all those in which
marriage impedes the development and hence the efficiency of either
party to the contract. Unhappy marriages include not only the
mismated, but also those whose unhappiness in married life is due to
their own or their mate's misconception of what marriage really means.
It is obviously impossible even to estimate the number of marriages
which are happy or unhappy; but we are safe