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Show Kathleen Norris Says: The Wonder -Women of Long Island . Bell Syndicate. WNU Features. ! "Certainly there are baby toys about, but the place is neat and clean, and I myself am always dressed in a clean, cheerful costume' By KATHLEEN NORRIS SOME months ago I wrote an article filled with sympathy sym-pathy for today's young mothers. I dwelt upon the difficulties they encounter in marketing, washing, cleaning, clean-ing, cooking, baby -tending, with so little help. I recalled the fact that we, who are mothers, in our young days could always secure the assistance as-sistance of some competent woman, who managed kitchen kitch-en and nursery, stood by us in all domestic crises, and left us plenty of time for occasional evening amusements, for theater, the-ater, dancing, dinner parties. The drudgery of today's mothers, their struggles in the markets, the steady care of restless, exacting i children, the monotonous round of preparing meals and clearing them away, washing and ironing clothes, only to have them thrown into the tubs to repeat the process, well, altogether it summed up what seemed to me pretty strenuous living. liv-ing. But a certain young wife of Sea-ford, Sea-ford, L. I., vigorously disagrees with me. She writes me a scathing letter let-ter about it. "I am 22," she says. "Before my marriage I was a show girl, and I am more supple and better looking ' - now than I was then. I have two babies, 22 and 7 months old. I do all the housework, cooking, wasn-ing, wasn-ing, cleaning, mending, ironing, baking, bak-ing, cutting the lawn and shopping, with stores five miles away. I help 1 in the garden, do all my own pre serving and canning, and make all mine and the children's clothes, from hats to winter coats and bathing bath-ing suits. I keep up my acrobatics, reading and organ playing. Time to Go Out With Husband. "Certainly there are baby toys about, but the place is neat and clean, and I myself am always dressed in a clean, cheerful costume, with costume jewelry and hair bows and so on. I am always willing to dance, at home, with my husband in the evenings, go for long walks with him and the children on his days off, and dance the night away when we can get someone to mind the babies. "I also," the letter continues, "make all our rag rugs, curtains, afghans, quilts, blankets and pillows, pil-lows, and still have plenty of, time left over. I am not bragging, for my neighbor on the left does all this with eight children, from 6 months to 16 years, and all my neighbors have from four to six children, chil-dren, and are still beautiful women, wom-en, wearing sizes 12 and 14. "The women you quote," the letter let-ter ends, "must be slatterns and idiots." One can only respectfully agree with this fiery little housewife, and warmly congratulate her husband and the husbands of her clean, capable, capa-ble, cheerful yet undersized neighbors. They must have some secret se-cret that many other women have not yet mastered. Preserves, ' dancing, long walks and the making of pillows take time, and eight children chil-dren mean 30 meals a day, and 30 I . A . X J "We dance Uie night aivay." IDEAL HOME-MAKERS Many young mothers have been complaining bitterly about the difficulties of caring car-ing for one or two children during the last four years. Scarcities of almost every necessity, ne-cessity, sloiv laundry service, and a hundred other vexations made the always trying tasks doublyhard. Besides that, it has been almost impossible to hire any household help. To add to all this, many servicemen's service-men's wives have had to work when they could, to add to their small income from the government. Even with peace again over the land, these war-born problems prob-lems are still here for the most part, and will be for many months. Some women, however, how-ever, have such courage, energy en-ergy and pride that they refuse re-fuse to be downcast by hardships. hard-ships. Today's article contains a letter from a group of New York mothers who take everything every-thing in stride, and seem to have a good time doing it. These young women have from two to eight children. They do practically all their own work, including a lot of sewing and gardening. Yet they somehow have time for dances and parties occasionally. Except Ex-cept for such mechanical helps as vacuum cleaners and washing wash-ing machines they have no assistance as-sistance in their daily chores. Miss Norris calls them "wonder-women." meals mean at least 60 cups, 180 plates, 60 spoons to wash every day, 50 little garments to wash and iron every week to say nothing, of the babies' pin-ups and the bath towels, the boys' jeans and some 70 pairs of socks. No, the imagination staggers at it, and one can only bow respectfully to such efficiency. Modern Devices Help. Our own nursery was well filled, half a century ago, and the older members did help, and were expected ex-pected to help. We peeled potatoes, set tables, tended the younger children, chil-dren, ran errands, made ourselves our-selves useful in dozens of ways. But the woman who wrote this letter let-ter has no such help. Her children are babies; her daily baby wash runs to 50 articles. Her children spatter mush on their high chairs, demand daily baths, wake her at unearthly hours, need complete changes of crib bedding and their play aprons every day or twice a day, and still she has "plenty of time left over." Certainly she has a thousand helps earlier generations of women didn't have. She can get codfish cakes and biscuits all ready to cook, ready-made ready-made bread and cakes; she doesn't have to fill lamps or stoke coal , stoves; hot water runs in her! bathroom; vacuum cleaner works J miracles; she doesn't have to walk that five miles to the store as her grandmother would have done. But just the same those must be wonder-women down in that little lit-tle Long Island town. |