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Show Kathl een Norris Says: What About Babies in War Time? Bell Syndicate WNU Features. ' "The trouble is that John is most anxious for a child, and I am unwilling to assume that responsibility until after tht war." By KATHLEEN NORRIS . t 7"ILL you please set-A set-A tie a question for my V V husband and me?" writes Donna Barton, from Pasadena. "I am 22, John is 27; we have been happily married mar-ried for a year and a half, during which time my sailor-husband sailor-husband has been twice to the South sea's and back. Ours is an unusual devotion; we have no families, we live for each other. "The trouble is that John is most anxious for a child, and I am unwilling un-willing to assume that responsibility until after the war. When peace comes he will still have another year in medical school and the usual intern years to face, and I am earning earn-ing good money as teacher in a private school, and saving for his education. We are young, and I believe be-lieve we may reasonably look forward for-ward to long years ahead, when conditions con-ditions will be more normal, life less of a strain and everything easier on us all. "This is the first difference that has arisen between us. For awhile I managed to treat it as a sort of Joke; then I dropped the subject completely, but now he is continual ly bringing it up. The probability is that he will soon go away again, for the dangerous duties of a destroyer's de-stroyer's existence, and he says he would love to feel that a baby as well as a wife was waiting for him at home. Please tell me I have no mother if you agree with him. Of course, I would adore my baby. It would break my heart not to have children someday, but I can't face it now. John did not say he would abide by your advice, but he admitted ad-mitted that it would influence him. "Mother," concludes this letter, "sometimes used to read your articles arti-cles aloud to us at the Sunday breakfast break-fast table when I wasn't more than 10 years old, so please regard me as a sort of grandchild and tell me if I am making a mistake." No, I don't think you are making a mistake, Donna, I think you are acting wisely that Is, may I add parenthetically, if you are using only those precautions against motherhood mother-hood that are recognized as legitimate, legiti-mate, and I am sure you are. -normalizing- war. What John is trying to do is what so many young men and women are rebclliously trying to do in these dark times; he is trying to normalize normal-ize war. It cannot be done. War is like a high fever, sweeping over the world, and persons or worlds in a high fever must have very careful care-ful and special treatment; everyone of us must make sacrifices and face changes heroically, if we are to get through this thing, and John's and your sacri.lce must be made in waiting wait-ing for the richness and glory of parenthood. You cannot manage your Job and your baby, which means financial finan-cial stringency for all three of you. The entire responsibility for the baby would be yours, without husband hus-band or mother or sister to advise you and that is a nervous strain to which he has no right to expose you. His visits home will be brief for the next few years, and tar apart, he will hardly know his child. He may not return, In which case your baby will be exposed to two possibilities, both unfair to babyhood. One Is that you will become one of those doting mothers who art absorbed in a child, spoiling that child and living liv-ing for him, and eventually breaking break-ing your heart when he grows away "Couldn't lot another man's child. BETTER TO WAIT There's no use trying to pre-tend pre-tend that these are normal times, Or that the usual customs cus-toms can prevail in the midst of a great war, Miss Norris tells a young wife that her husband is wrong to want a baby now, while he is away at sea, in con-slant con-slant peril. If he dies, his child will be left without the protection pro-tection and care of a father. Donna would like a child as much as John, but she realizes that she would have to try to hold her job and care for her baby at the same time an almost al-most impossible burden. John is stationed on a destroyer. His life may end at any moment, and then the whole responsibility responsi-bility of supporting and rearing rear-ing their child would fall on Donna. If she remarried, she would face the likelihood that her second husband would not be able to love another man's child, and the resulting domestic domes-tic tension would wreck any chance of enduring happiness. from your influence. The other is the more usual one of your remarrying re-marrying presently,, and giving him a stepfather. Only a husband of superhuman goodness and generosity will share the raptures of young married life with a small rtepson; the 'child's demands and needs will be continually con-tinually getting in the way of the new husband's natural claims. No matter how eagerly he agrees to any conditions you make, the wear and tear of married life will wipe away every memory of them, and once you begin the "you promised" prom-ised" and "you said" and "I always understood" sort of conversation your marriage is doomed. Difficult Adjustment. The adjustments between children and step-parents is a real problem today, with wartime divorces almost equaling marriages in number. In a case that recently came to my attention, at-tention, the little daughter of the first marriage, a child of six, had never slept away from her mother ueiure. wnen sne iouna ner place taken by a strange man, and herself her-self expected to call him "Daddy," the child went into a psychological state very hard to handle and eventually even-tually had to be moved to the custody cus-tody of strangers. It was of this child that I once asked the stepfather: stepfa-ther: "Margot giving any trouble?" "Nothing that couldn't be whipped out of her," he said briefly. He was a clever man and known as a "good fellow," but he couldn't love another an-other man's child. Hard and cruel as it may sound, John must consider now the possibility pos-sibility that another man will have the raising of this son he so much wants. If he docs that seriously, and with prayer, I think he will see that it is fairer to all concerned to leave Donna with as little responsibility respon-sibility as possible, to leave her, in short, In a free and mobile condition, condi-tion, so that there will be no feeling of regret if she is widowed, or if he comes home injured, or if all goes well and he returns to qualify for his profession and to build that baby-filled home of which they dream. These times are indeed out of Joint. Extraordinary valor Is demanded de-manded of every one of us if we are to win our way through them to something better. CONSERVING VITAMIN'S Fresh raw vegetables are rich in vitamins end minerals. Unfortunately, Unfor-tunately, however, some vitamins are lost unless carefully cooked. We need to protect them from contact with air as much as possible. Therefore There-fore cover utensils, and don't stir while cooking. Naturally a covered utensil will continue to slcam on a much lower heat than an open one, so foods are actually cooked in steam when you follow the "little water, tight cover rule." That save both fuel and food value. |