MAKING A HOME.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4779, 21 November 1924, Page 4

MAKING A HOME.

HOW TO MANAGE A MAN. lake Margaret Bondfield, I believe (By Norah March, B.Sc., Secretary National Baby Week Council.) in woman doing jobs belonging to her sex, i believe that home-making is one oi. these jobs. Like Margaret Bondfield, 1 am working for my living as a man does, and am ajs independent a., a man. Like Margaiet Bondheld, i am a “Miss," and, like her, 1 venture to have views on men and women and home-making.

Home-making in some ways does not seem to be a difficult job. Any woman of average intelligence, foresight, and patience can run a home smoothly and competently ap far as the ordinary amenities of domestic life are concerned —keeping a, house clean and healthy, preparing the meals, doing the shopping, the mending, and the general management of a house. It is a matter of good organisation and method.

What seems to be a really difficult job in the ordinary home, however, is keeping a husband happy and contented. and at the same time disciplining him to the requirements of home and family life. Men are queer creatures. They have enormous capacities for work and for play, for thought, and for feeling. But they are rot temperamentally suited to discipline, although they are, on the whole, and under skilful management, very malleable. Once they have become accustomed to the regularity of a new home life (and transition from one home to another is a great test of adaptability) they appreciate it.

I think most men appreciate a restful woman ruling the home, and a certain mixture of mother!;nests with wifely love seems to keep the average husband happy—assuming, of course, that the home life is, in all the erdinarj 7 things, well managed and regular, and that he is not bothered v. ith details of it. some of whicn may be, and obviously often, are, annoying to the house woman. The wise wife does not bother her husband with these little details any more than lie bothers her with the petty little details of his own business life. The really great troubles of his work outside the home, and her work within the home, would be shared iiy both.

Perhaps the most essential thing m successful marriage and home life is comradeship between husband and wife. When love passes the passionate stage of early married life it iis apt to wane altogether unless fortified by comradeship. Thai is why a woman should not be overburdened with the details of managing a home. In justice to her-

self a.; well as to her husband and family she must have time to develop those other interests in life which, paiticularly with the modern woman and her education, have a great attraction for her, and which provide a channel of intellectual communion between her and her husband. If. like a woman doctor ceasing to practise, she givep them up on marriage, she oiten, both consciously and unconsciously, regrets it, resents her sacrifice. And, perhaps without her being aware of the leal. source of the trouble, an element of disharmony entei;.’ into the home life. Wifehood and motherhood do not always compCIISUiC.

Jealousy, too, is a serpent that creeps in. 1 am not speaking of the jealousy of the husband who fears that his wife may be loved by other men, or of the woman who does not trust her husband. The type of jealousy which tends to disturb, sometimes fatally, the happiness of husband and wife who love me another is a deep-rooted jealousy of the children.

Neither husband nor wife may realise that there is this jealousy. They may be unconscious of its existence. Yet it is easy to see how it comes about. Before there are any children in the home the husband has all his wife’s thought, affection, and attention, but when the first baby comes some of that thought and care naturally gc.es to the baby. Many husbands, without realising this, unconsciously resent it, and become, from the woman’s point of view, difficult to understand and to manage.

Some women, in whom the maternal instinct is stronger than trie sex instinct are carried away by the claims of the children, and a danger point is reached. It can be guarded against. Now in the chance for her motherliness— not. the fuzzy “Have-you-wash-cd-your-neck-Johnny ?” sort—but that wonderful warm feeling of love and understanding that up in a woman’s heart at the sight of a little' child in trouble. Motherliness and wifely love for her man—the biggest baby of them all.

As an onlooker I see other factors at work. One of .these is that, after all, there are a million and threequarters more women than men in England, and that means that a tremendous number of women have to anticipate a (singleness which modern education is preparing for them to find blessed. They have got to be independent of men. Some women naturally find that to give up their work is, indeed, a very great sacrifice, and if, when once the glamour of marriage is past, home life proves to be less interesting than the work she gave up, a woman may become irritated, discontented, and unhappy, perhaps not knowing the real reason why, and the jeering Fates gather another human mistake to their treasure store.