BUSINESS WOMEN MAKE GOOD WIVES

Shannon News, 2 January 1925, Page 4

BUSINESS WOMEN MAKE GOOD WIVES

(By Jane Taverner)

“I do not want my daughter to have a career. Too great an interest £ * profession unfits a woman for mar riage, or turns her eventually into a 41 and by no means an old-fashioned ® other ’ this remark. But hers was a p judiced opinion, for an honest impait!£ study of the Uves of m arned women discontented with their homes rows that snob women are very rarely indeed women who are following some profession, or who have done so for some time before their matristS6t Probably no woman so dearly loves her home as the woman who earns her living outside it. After a day m an office, an evening on the stage, a long round of calls as a doctor, it is not the night life of London that appeals to a woman, but the far greater refreshment and adventure of home. .. , Women who enjoy home life ana enjoy professional life have struck an almost perfect balance. And there are very many such women. Home is dull only to women who know no other life but uninterrupted home, life. But women who work hard outside their homes ■ find house-keep- | ing a hobby, their children an unending source of happiness and delight, and cooking a more interesting pastime than dancing or dining-out. Public bodies which regard marriage as a disqualification for public service surely miss the point that an experience of home life, of children, of domestic affairs has an enormous public value Which should make any woman a better, not i a worse, public servant. And those who fear that professional work disqualifies a woman for home life do not know how joyous is the home coming after the toil of the day is over.

I have known many discontented wives who were home-weary. But they were tired of home not because of their experience outside of it, but because of their experience within it.

To the woman who has been engaged in professional work for many years marriage often comes as a way to greater freedom; the novelty of being her own mistress instead of an employee makes boredom impossible, and that is the reason perhaps why business women usually make such contented wives. ]f I could have my way with peevish, petulant women who have since girlhood known no other life but that of home. I should send them all to earn their living for a year. At the end of the period they would return to their homes, with a new appreciation .of domestic life and - a sense of its freedom which they did not before know.