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Show KATHLEEN NORRIS Every Generation Has Dangers "TITHAT ABOUT my teen-age VV daughters?" women from Maine to Monterey have been asking me, during the last puzzling years. "What about dates, and night clubs, and going steady?" "Yes, what's happened to the kids?" demands India Roberts of Denver, Col. "Are the 14-year-olds in your town talking beaux and dates and who is going with whom? My husband and I are nearly frantic," fran-tic," the letter goes on. "Our Phyllis Phyl-lis is 13, Frances two years older. They are lovely girls, good students, helpful at home, gay, and they are all our world. But ever since' school started last fall we have been flooded flood-ed with girl-boy talk; long-legged young creatures infest our downstairs down-stairs playroom; and every week end presents a problem. "Fran has "gone steady' with a boy for months; little Phil is rapidly following suit. They only want to do 'what the other girls mothers let them do,' but isn't that a lot more than girls so young ought to uncertainties until one's card was full. I recommend Rosamund Lehman's Leh-man's delightful novel "Invitation To The Waltz" as a perfect picture of what a dance meant then to a shy, unpopular girl. "Going Steady" Now, strangely enough, today's teen-agers have accomplished what chaperons and mothers and patronesses patron-esses have vainly tried to achieve for whole generations. "Going steady" merely means, in the life of a protected, dignified small girl, that she has a sure partner for movie companionship, at school dances, on all-day parties. She likes him with all the honesty she shows her girl friendships; they save each other endless uncertainties, endless chances to establish an inferiority complex, an unpopularity complex, for all the years of their lives. Victorian girls never talked to men at all, except when in the presence of their elders. Girls of my generation confined themselves be allowed to do? Movies, in parties of four or six; school dances; house parties. And they all pair off as naturally na-turally as if they had been married mar-ried for years. Dangers and Advantages "Now isn't this very unhealthy? Doesn't it stimulate desires and emotions that belong to much later years? Doesn't it take the bloom off our girls? You've been asked this question thousands of times; what is your solution?" WelL India, in the first place, this to endless friendships with their own sex, but became muscle bound, affected and nervous when men came around. Today's custom does away with both these unnatural conditions. But like all other new things we have to see in it a challenge to a new moral. Like the rules we make for our children concerning radio, movies, motors, planes, we have met this juvenile development with an increase in-crease of dignity, self-control, duty- situation isn't all wrong. Like every other custom of every other generation, genera-tion, It has its dangers, and its advantages. ad-vantages. There are good things in this sudden leap from childhood into understanding understanding on this question of sex, if back of the girl and the boy there is a sane, affectionate family as a rock of se . . with girl-boy talk . . ." curity to which they may anchor their dancing craft. Girls 100 years ago were simpering, simper-ing, ignorant, romantic misses, so protected, so sheltered, so kept in the dark that marriage to them was often a serious disillusionment and a shock. Managing mammas inveigled in-veigled the groom into proposing, and pompous papas arranged the dowry. Without that dowry European girls could not hope for marriage at alL ' We who were school girls 50 years ago didn't have the managing mammas, mam-mas, and dots and doweries were never American institutions. But we did have all the awkwardness, shyness, ignorance that made social events agonies for youngsters of both sexes. And believe me, we took just as poignant and obsessive an interest in the subject of sex as do girls of today; only we knew nothing about it, and were not allowed al-lowed to question. For us it was all suspicion, tittering, surmise and mystery. Dances were miserable |
