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Show Kathleen Norris Says: Long Engagements Have Their Advantages, Too j (Bell Syndicate WNU Service.) ' 21 are bound to fall in love. easy. Nothing to do all day. If there are no babies, curiously enough, the situation is worse. It doesn't seem so, at first. Marge's mother says firmly: "No babies until un-til you can afford them," and Rob'i mother warns him that a baby would be a calamity. They are free to go about with the old crowd, insofar as they are able to afford it, and Marge has nothing to do when the simple housework is over but to shop, have her hair done, fix flowers in vases. But shopping is expensive, lunches downtown with the girls cost money, beauty parlors are ruinous to budgets. budg-ets. Marge sees frocks and hats she wants, and kitchen ware and a gorgeous gor-geous bridge lamp. Also she hears the girls talking of the winter sports that week-end. Everyone is to give Connie $10 and Con and Fred will manage everything. Ten dollars, with Rob's whole salary only seven times that every month! Nature's Protective Plan. And the childless young marriage has an even deeper and much more serious handicap. It is this. The marital relation is a fragile and sacred thing; its physical aspects inseparable from the more subtle elements of mind and souL Uncontrolled Uncon-trolled mating would destroy even animals, and animals are protected from it by Nature herself.- Mating seasons are interrupted by the long periods of bearing and rearing the young. When human beings interrupt this process, passion, here called love, soon burns itself out. The immature imma-ture boy and girL never trained for life at all, not developed in resources re-sources and interests and character, tire of each other, and the emotion emo-tion that should extend itself through long and beautiful years, that should be only a part of a thousand other balanced elements in married life, is destroyed. So what about the long eneaee- Our girls of 18 and our boys of By KATHLEEN NORRIS TODAY'S paper has the story of a boy of 21 and a girl of 19 who couldn't afford to get married and so decided to die. The boy couldn't earn enough to support sup-port a wife and the girl had to help out at home, where she had an invalided father, a hard-working mother and a small brother. The sympathetic press adds that: "Here is one more tragedy trag-edy of youth caught in today's tide of no job and no future." If this girl and boy were the only selfish young couple who took this course they mightn't be worth noticing. But there is a lot of this sort of thing. There is a lot of self-pity in youngsters who have caught up the modern jargon about conditions in America, and who use it to disguise weakness weak-ness and inefficiency. There are ALWAYS more than 40,000,000 jobs in America, and to say: "I can't get a job," means that there. are 40,000,000 persons in the land who can do what you can't do. But that doesn't mean that in any land under any conditions a boy of 21 can be started off at employment that will support a wife. And that doesn't mean that a girl whose $30 contribution to the home finances Is badly needed is free to get married; mar-ried; free to start oft with her boy husband on his $18 a week, and have him, burdened and worried and exhausted, ex-hausted, lose even that job in a few years, when her second big, fat, hungry, exacting baby is four months old. ment? In Italy and Germany and England and France, seven and eight and even ten years are not supposed to be too long for a man and a woman to maintain a dignified friendship before conditions permit them to marry. Certainly five years would not be too long. They must learn to control themselves in many ways if they are to be happily married; mar-ried; control extravagance, laziness, temper, selfishness, over-indulgence. Why not practice self-control in the most important matter of sex? Sex Self-Control Essential. Thousands of fine men and women achieve continence even in marriage for one reason or another; thousands thou-sands of happily married folk, efficient effi-cient and successful in their lives, know that that one thing will be always al-ways denied them. Why all this hullaballoo about the children not being able to wait? Of course they're able to wait, if they're properly trained to respect themselves and each other, and to regard marriage as a state some day to be entered upon with reverence, with an increased in-creased appreciation of its high privileges priv-ileges and an increased sense of its responsibilities. To those who wait, who study the duties and cares of marriage seriously, se-riously, who develop a fine and deep-rooted deep-rooted friendship and a congeniality of taste while waiting, marriage comes as an almost miraculous consummation con-summation of hope and desire and love. The long-anticipated home is a sacred place, lneir community of tastes, their memories of long planning, plan-ning, make every hour together a fresh delight The man has completed com-pleted his professional training. The girl has discharged to the full her duty to her own people. They are a man and a woman, this husband and wife, not a pair of passionate children. Statistics seem to indicate that one of our national dangers now is the young divorce. More than half our divorces are of persons under 24, and two-thirds of those after marriage periods of less than three years. Flaming Youth. When our girls of 18 and our boys of 21 fall in love the immediate question of everyone concerned is:-"And is:-"And when is the wedding to be?" And the sooner it is the better satisfied satis-fied are both. They are burning up with young passion; their first and foremost consideration is physical possession of each other, and while her family borrows money for a modest wedding, the boy rashly commits himself to a long lease on an adorable bungalow. Into it they ecstatically scramble, equally enchanted with the little rose-bowl her chum gave her, and the electric refrigerator for which they have to pay $11 a month. It is all such fun! Kisses and laughter season the burned omelette and the watery coffee; on Saturday and Sunday Sun-day nights the college crowd come in, and smashed crackers and stepped-on cheese and sticky glasses and over-loaded ash-trays litter all four of the pretty little modern rooms. Baby Brings Care, Worry. But if a baby arrives at once, then suddenly all glamour disappears. disap-pears. Marge and Rob, if they are sweet-natured, fine persons, may still love each other. But it now becomes be-comes an anxious, a wearied love. The baby is a darling, but the baby's presence means that the old, young good times are forever over. Milk for the baby. Someone to sit with the baby. Bills. Worries over the baby's fever. Wakeful nights when the baby cries. And when Joe Smith and Mildred stop at the door with a car, on a broiling hot Sunday, with talk of the beach, and barbecue sandwiches. Marge and Rob of course can't go. 'I couldn't leave the baby in the car. Mil." "No, I suppose you couldn't, you poor thing, you!" No Babies Headache Too. Off go Joe and Mildred, and Rob and Marge turn back to the morning morn-ing papers again. No hurry about beds or breakfast dishes. Now while the baby is asleep they can take it |