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Show Kathleen Norris Says: June Brides Begin to Complain About Husbands (Bell Syndicate WNU Service.) kk If l hand my husband a towel he dries M , r ij only one plate. Then he'll sit down, I h- J chattering, but he never helps. J IVi .,fhJr,fS By KATHLEEN NORRIS I HAVE a crop of letters from 1939' s June brides and I wish all the fathers and mothers of the brides and bridegrooms could read them. Apparently young men and girls step into matrimony nowadays as entirely unfitted for the obligations of the new life as they were at the respective ages of five and three years. Strangely enough, they are all well-informed on the physical side. Forty years ago girls knew nothing noth-ing of that. They dreamed bashful dreams of the realities of wifehood, but nobody told them anything; mothers and teachers shrank away from the simple biological truth and babies were born in cabbage leaves. It is different today. In high school and college everything of that sort is discussed, diagrammed, analyzed. ana-lyzed. Not infrequently actual experimental ex-perimental love-making goes on. Old-fashioned mothers frequently appeal to me, sending me the text books upon which small girls and boys batten in our schools, but all educational boards are for open and frank dealing in the matter, Victorian Victori-an reticence is "prurience," and infancy in-fancy babbles lightheartedly upon subjects once reserved for the specialists. spe-cialists. In all other ways the marriages of our young people are left to chance. There are no moral rules, no ethical rules to hamper them. The new wife expects to do always and in everything exactly what she likes; the young husband has never been crossed or disciplined in his life. When the first shock of their contending wills occurs It staggers them. They can't believe it. They often decide to end their marriage then and there. Hundreds of divorces di-vorces ensue. It would be interest- making a sling shot to annoy the neighbors' cats, and he went on making it while I cleaned the shoes." That's one kind of husband. The fascinating college graduate of 22 who married Elise last June is different. dif-ferent. Nettled by His Stinginess. "Thorny exasperates me until I'm all but a nervous wreck," writes Elise, from Wilmington, Del. "His father divorced his mother because she was so extravagant, and it seems to have affected him. I never noticed no-ticed it while we were engaged, but now he doesn't want to spend a cent. Everything our home, our comfort, the question of having a baby, is estimated in terms of cost. He asks me at dinner what the chops cost; wasted butter annoys him, and if some friends come in and drink up our cocktails and smoke our cigarettes ciga-rettes he gets wild at them. "We have a small Income, but we're not as poor as that comes to. I'd rather be in one room, and be happy and easy about it, than scrimp in a pretty five-room apartment. What to do?" Then there's Emily, whose new husband, she complains, is "still just a bachelor. "He had four years in college, three in law school, and three in his own bachelor apartment," writes Emily, "and I thought I was lucky to get a husband with no family to complicate matters! But Jim simply doesn't get the idea of being married. mar-ried. He'll bring four men home unexpectedly for dinner, and when I look startled he laughs and says 'It's not up to you, darling. Tom here is doing the steaks and we got a lot of beer and Saratoga chips.' "Then they proceed to get the kitchen into the most terrible mess, scatter cigarette ashes over everything, every-thing, use up every pan and bowl in the clace. and presently they're all Ing to know exactly now many taice place in the first year; it is an appalling ap-palling number. A Few Samples. From these letters aforementioned I offer a few quotations. They are typical of hundreds; some are despairing, de-spairing, some humorous, some puzzled. puz-zled. "Mother never talked to me about how selfish and childish men are," says one. "Not knowing a thing about budgets, housework, cooking, and marrying the dearest man in the world on an income of $1,000 a year, I'm in horrible trouble!" confesses con-fesses a second. A third wife is thoroughly discouraged, not because he is mean or drinks or doesn't hand over his pay check, she writes, but he is so "dumb." "He'll let me set the tame, clear the table, pull back the chairs, brush up the floor, clean the kitchen, wash the dishes and put them away," she says, "without ever offering so much as to wipe a spoon. If I hand him a towel he does one plate, wiping 'round and 'round it, and apparently not thinking at all what he's doing. He'll sit backwards on a chair, chattering chat-tering with me, moving when my broom comes his way, but he never helps. In our room dirty linen goes on the floor, camera and films, radio, ra-dio, records, letters, books are all over everything. He'll let me carry the picnic out to the car and up the bill; be never thanks or tips a waiter; wait-er; at gas stations he'll say, 'Wash these windows, will you?' and sit smoking and talking with me while some nice fellow works for us, not even saying Thank you' as we drive away. He's always good-natured enoueh if I pointedly ask him to do something, but half the time he doesn't do it. This morning I gave him his white shoes and mine and asked him to clean them, and when I went out on the porch he was playing poker in the dining-room, as oblivious to my existence as if I were a fly. The Sport-Loving Husband. "Jim sends me word he's playing golf, won't be home to dinner. Last week he and three men went fishing; fish-ing; there were no women on the trip, but on the way home they stopped at Tom's house for dinner and he wasn't back until midnight. "Am I a fussy cry baby that this doesn't satisfy me? My mother and a married sister live near, and I can always go to them, but I get ashamed of explaining what Jim's doing." These are a few of the problems. And over and over again comes the innocently surprised complaint, "The trouble is, he's selfish." As if we weren't all selfish! Two-thirds of this trouble could have been spared by wise mothers; mothers who trained their sons and daughters in self-control and consideration. con-sideration. Mothers who made it natural for them to talk over expenses ex-penses and plans, before marriage. |