other finds it so hard to yield
to the other's way as upon this. Each feels, and rightly, that the
material to be trained is so precious, and that failure, if it comes,
will be so stupendous, that neither dares do what seems wrong to his
own mind. Nothing but common knowledge and a predetermined policy can
solve this problem so near to the root of success or failure in
marriage itself.

Girls are commonly taught too little of the duties of married women to
their husbands. They look for a lifetime of unalloyed bliss. If they
fail to realize their impossible dream, they turn their faces toward
the divorce court. Many girls have had too smooth a pathway, too
little of responsibility, and too little of disappointment, before
undertaking the serious duty of establishing and maintaining a
lifelong partnership. There has been little in their lives to
prepare them for long-continued relations of any sort. On the other
hand, the same girls have equally little idea of what they have a
right to expect of marriage for themselves. Much of the necessary
adjustment is left to chance.

[Illustration: Photograph by Paul Thompson
AMELIA E. BARR
Far from interfering with her career, Mrs. Barr's home interests were
the inspiration for it. Thrown on her own resources by the death of
her husband, who sacrificed himself in a yellow fever epidemic in
Texas, Mrs. Barr took up writing to make a living for her children]

Scarcely any phase of woman's part in marriage is arousing more
attention at present than the question of childbearing. Women, and
especially educated women, are accused of sterility or of
intentionally avoiding motherhood. They are said to believe that
children interfere with their careers, that they can render greater
service to the world in public work than in childbearing. They "prefer
idleness and luxury to the care of a family." The "maternal instinct
is fading." They threaten us with "race suicide," the "extinction of
mankind," a silent world given over to dumb beasts who have not yet
learned the principles of "birth control" and "family limitation."
Thus on the one hand.

On the other: "The world is better served by the small family well
reared than by the large one necessarily less well cared for." "Women
are not merely the instruments of nature for multiplying mankind. They
have a right to some time for living their own lives." "The maternal
instinct has not faded, but merely come under control of a wisdom
which