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Show KATHLEEN MORRIS Failing Marriages Bell Syndicate-WNU Features By KATHLEEN NOURIS n MERICA comes first with me in everything. Ninety-nine times in a hundred she stands head and shoulders above the rest of the world. In the hundredth hun-dredth case I pass as lightly over her shortcomings as I can and hope and know-that coming gen-erations gen-erations will correct them. So one evening some weeks ago I was made really unhappy by the quite innocent and unaffected talk of a certain French professor. We happened, as we sat about a friend's fire, to get on the subject of European marriage and the entirely en-tirely different attitude in which young persons overseas approach this tremendous subject. And as I listened, I had uncomfortably uncom-fortably to admit in my soul that theirs is a wiser attitude and a wholesomer plan than ours and one calculated to build better homes and children, better communities com-munities and better men and women. Accept Marriage Naturally "Marriage with our women," he said, "is an accepted state. It is not an experiment. The girl becomes be-comes a wife just as definitely as she is a French woman, blonde or dark, short or tall, hardworking, well-to-do or somewhere between. Married, she and her husband can afford so much or so little; he needs her help in the shop or restaurant res-taurant or farm, as a secretary or with the hospitality that maintains his position. They want and are expected to have children. "They face the facts," he said. "They do not attempt to deny or elude them. They make the most of what they have. Our women like the quiet certainty of marriage, mar-riage, with its plans, protection and ...w feel that wt gain mort . . . companionship. It is not with us a springboard; it is a deliberately chosen new way of life. We give up much old ways, old freedom, old amusements. But we feel that we gain more. "Alimony is low, among the great body of France's sober and industrious people of the great middle mid-dle class the people whose scheme includes villas, cars and country holidays and a couple of steady family servants, whose position is quite as definite and respectable as those of their employers. No Need for Pretense "Youngsters," she said, "approach "ap-proach marriage with care and with the help of family interest and advice. Their parents know the young man, his background and his record. The girl knows what money she will have to spend and her mother and father advise her as to outlay. Everyone knows everything, so there is small need for display or pretense. "Once married, she is married. Her house, her linen, her children and her hospitalities are all-important to her. Her husband comes first. He must be comfortable; he must be made to feel himself loved. He has faults; so has she. But tradition and training save them both from many pitfalls that your young married persons know and of which they become victims. "The families and friends do not drop in on them unexpectedly during dur-ing the first year. They are not expected to take groups of young friends to expensive night clubs and foot the bill. Children are expected, ex-pected, and with the coming of children the woman finds herself more important than before. She is wife, mistress, mother, housekeeper. house-keeper. That she remains balanced and self-controlled and equal to doing her duty means that everything every-thing else in the household goes well " , . . He told me that psychologists do not do a good business in France, in the'Scandinavias or among Belgian, Bel-gian, Swiss and Polish wives. These are women with a job, a position and affectionate home ties to keep them balanced. Weigh these three elements and you will see what is lacking in the lives of so many thousands of our young married women. Our young wives don't know where they stand. And too often the husband is as unfit un-fit for partnership and as confused as the wife. She wants amusement; she wants her sitting room torn to pieces and done over; she wants a fur coat. What she wants has no reference at all to what money she has to spare for it. She and t:er -.usband go to cocktail parties and vening bars, quarrel, come home ,alf.ick wih a sense of frustration. |