Can Modern Adam Afford Modern Eve?

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 974, 17 May 1930, Page 24

Can Modern Adam Afford Modern Eve?

Slump in British Marriage Market CAUSES ANALYSED While our bright young people are still debating the merits of marriage v. a woman’s career, unnoticed by thost most intimately concerned, there is a grave slump in the marriage market, says a London writer. Marriage, much quicker than the short skirt, is quite definitely “going out.” Soon it will be gone. You may laugh. You may refuse to believe it. You may point to the seemingly endless stream of “pretty weddings,” to the everlastingly “beautiful brides” of the gossip writers, to the crowds of neck-craning, tip-toed women infesting the church doors, to the muddy confetti littering our highways and byways, and to the various matrimonial ventures in your immediate circle of friends. Admitted! The Civil Service Clerical Association recently balloted its women members as to whether women should retail} their position in the service after marriage. I submit that the real question today is: Can women retain their position in the marriage market after securing that freedom which aomes of service? It has come to that. An ounce of fact is worth a ton of theory. Here is one startling fact. UNWILLING BACHELORS For every 20 marriages- made nine years ago there were only 15 last year. A sheer drop of 25 in every previous 100 marriages! At that astonishing rate of progress (if we may term it “progress”) within the lifetime of the adult members of the present generation, marriage will have become as extinct as the dodo. The young people will have become a new and strange race of unwilling but compulsory bachelors. All. very well, it may be said, but how 'is one to know that the figures are correct? - Alas! the figures are only too correct. Official! They are taken from statistics, compiled by that austere and aloof official, the Registrar-Gen eral. BLAMING THE NOVEL AND THE DANCE How came all this? The Dean of Dublin blames the modern novel. To make quite sure, he also blames the modern craze for dancing. You have your choice; 1 choose neither. Modern women can do almost everything. We have women doctors, women barristers, women preachers, women legislators, women magistrates, and women police. Eveu women firemen! And, according to recent astonishing cases in the Press, women-men!

There is still one very important item that women cannot get awav with lacking the aid of the men. No, I am not speaking of mice. Something even more thrilling. Marriage! The harmless necessary bridegroom is still essential to all workmanlike weddings. The most modern maid, the most up-to-the-minute parson, would never sanction any wedding without him. Even a woman-man won’t do. That has been tried.

Though it is generally conceded that the last word on any projected marriage is spoken by the blushing bride-to-be; in actual fact, the first and the last word rests with the male of the species. Without him, unworthy though he be, nothing happens. Ido not laud the fact. I simplv state it.

If a man really means to marry, neither the terrors of the modern novel nor the craze for dancing is likely to put him off. True, a non-dancing male who deliberately marries a girl with an incurable mania for dance halls is asking for trouble.

filie sinister slump in the marriage market goes deeper than that. Onp authority has it that modern bachelors are too bashful to face all the accumulated agonies that precede that devastating walk up the aisle. There is the ordeal of proposing, of asking papa, of facing the prospective “in-laws,” of looking such an unutterable ass to the grinning confetti throwers, and that ordeal of all ordeals, the wedding speech.

Mercy on us. There’s nothing very new in all that. Our fathers had to go through it. Whether anybody ever actually made a formal proposal to any girl is largely unknowable. According to the Victorian novelists they did—on bended knees. As to asking papa, even before the fully competent modern maid it usually fell tc the lady in the case. I fancy, to “tell” mamma. Mamma told papa. The rest of the marital chamber of horrors with which to scare off the would-be wooer is doubtless, as It ever was, a true bill. But if modern bachelors are any more bashful than bachelors ever were, they’ve got a job on. Futhermore, this modern basilfulness is not too apparent. By a majority of four to one, the 7,000 Civil Service women, who balloted on the question whether women should retain their position in the service after marriage, gave to that question an emphatic “No.” They evidently believe in marriage and to the extent of placing it before all other considerations. Whatever the slump, as recorded by the Regis-trar-General. certainly they are not to blame. Phyllis is willing. Why isn’t Barkis? If I know my fellow man, Barkis is willing. The question that arises is: Is he able? Can modern Adam afford modern Eve? Is marriage becoming far too expensive a luxury? Within the memory of most people everything is so very much changed. GIRLS OF OTHER DAYS In earlier days, the girl usually dia not go out to business. She stayed at home, getting good experience for a future married life, while dusting and scrubbing and mending and washing pots or, if of another type, boring herself to tears, and perpetually dq-

ing nothing -under the vain impression that only thus could she prove herself a perfect lady. In both cases there was a certain monotony," a certain parental restraint, and marriage was eagerly looked forward to as a happy “way out.” In every type of street, in everysort of suburb, there were “desirable residences” to suit all tastes and all purses. When you sought out the gratified and beaming landlord, he greeted you effusively as a public benefactor. Decorations? Renewals? Repairs? Certainly! Only too pleased. Come inside. I know one imposing terrace of houses having a fine position in a good lbcality where, in order to attract reluctant tenants, the landlord gladly offered a ton of coal in the cellar to start with, and the first month's tenancy rent free. Those were the days! We weren’t quite so swanky then. The very word “swank” was only just beginning to thrust its boastful way Into the vocabulary. Furniture, for example, was then bought for use rather than for show. The durability of clothes was the .first consideration rather than modern smartness and chic. To modern eyes, perhaps a down-at-heels world. But very jolly. And cheap. It used to be said that what one could live on two could. Untrue, of course, but they believed it and chanced it —and won. The crux of the matter today is £ s. d.—plus nerve.

What chance has any average suitor of giving the girl of his heart her premarital independence,, her ample pocket money, and, above all, her modern clothes? Yet what a nerve it must require to ask her to give it all up—even for him. Very awkward!