"DISPOSING" OF OUR DAUGHTERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 13, 22 September 1939, Page 10

"DISPOSING" OF OUR

DAUGHTERS

O you know the kind of mother who makes every effort to "dispose" of her daughter before she’s out of her teens? Most women who do this-thrust a mere child into the bewildered arms of the first young man that peeps over the horizon -are vastly proud of their achievement. "O yes," one said to me the other day. "T’ve got my two girls off my hands..." and I could see she felt a real glow of self-satis-faction and superiority over the woman whose daughters are into their twenties and still unmarried. Of course, many of their arguments are fairly sound. It is true that you get fond of almost anyone-that is, within reason-in time. I’ve often heard that flung up against a plea for romance. But it is also true that being "fond" of anyone is a pretty poor hope for successful marriage. The years are going to be difficult enough, heaven knows-the Victorian Bed-of-Roses idea is nothing more nor less than a hoax! And-even with romance flung in for good measure-lI’ve yet to meet the woman who, on half a-dozen occasions, could

not have run away from her husband and never looked back. Marriage is difficult--and to anchor a *. child down to it-before she’s had time to lift a wing is often both selfish and cruel. The most it usually does is to rid a mother of her responsibilities. The poor little ill-guided craft that sets out on a difficult sea is lucky indeed if it does not founder. Even children will not, often, entirely divert one, and for ever. They begin to grow and go their separate ways-and the woman whose mother thrust her into early marriage has time to think, to work it all out, to know it all for what it is-and not without bitterness. Any curious thing may happen then. Or nothing. She may run away-or find escape in some less balanced way. Of course, she may do nothing-but it’s really hard to say which is worse. She’s an unhappy person to know. And there’s one thing you'll always notice. She seems to have nothing in common with her mother. | Curious, that. But is it? It’s hard to forgive, surely, the theft of one’s youthful privileges, of initiative, of free choice, of romance. A mistake is an unhappy business, but there at least it will be her own-and you are not, as may otherwise be, ranged up in her disillusioned mind of the side of her enemies.

Ann

Slade