THE DAUGHTER QUESTION.
THE upbringing of daughters is a very vexed question just now. What am we to bring them up to ? Matrimony, or professions, or emigration ? Mrs. C. D. Whetham, who has just written a book on the subject, The Upbringing of Daughters (Longmans and Co., his. net), has no doubts about the matter. That any career but motherhood should ever be considered satis- factory for a woman is, to her mind, unthinkable. She has several daughters, still children, we learn, and her ideas of training are reactionary. No early Victorian ever objected mom to the maseu- linization of feminine education or was ready to devote less of her s;hildrenk3 time to study. Two hours a day under twelve years old, and not more than four hours at any age, she thinks quite enough. This refers only to " lessons " generally so called. Serious reading for pleasure she would encourage. Languages may be learned with a view to reading, but a too great fluency in a foreign tongue or any conspicuous mastery of a foreign accent strikes her as unnecessary, and apparently almost unpatriotic. She is, she admits, inclined to resent the accomplishment. On the other hand, practical matters are to be thoroughly taught. Sewing, cooking, gardening, housekeeping and nursing, the care of younger children, and the wise expenditure of money should be familiar to every woman by the time she arrives at the marrying age. The family budget should be no secret, but be openly discussed in all its details, and children should be encouraged to make suggestions for its alteration or reform. A mother who enforces this system in her family has, of course, plenty to do ; but a woman ought, we are told, to labour incessantly in her family and not fritter away her time in outside pleasures. To shirk the work or to push it off on to schools and teachers is to be a failure, and Mrs. Whetham has no patience with failures. Old maids and invalids, especially if they owe their condition in any way to their own fault or want of strength of mind, arouse her ire. It is natural to laugh at old maids, she says, because it is natural to laugh at what is unnatural, and she even suggests that it might be best if in moments of danger, such as shipwreck, they should forgo the usual privilege of women and be left to shift for themselves. A " spinster woman," profes- sional or not, is repellent to her.
With whatever bitterness our authoress puts her point of view, she yet faces a great problem and clings to a great truth. We are all agreed that women were made to be mothers, and that an increase in the army of unmarried women would be very disturbing ; but given the Christian view of marriage, and rejecting the notion of polygamy, as the religious tone of her book assures us that she does, what is to be done 1 To do herjustice, she admits the dilemma. An Englishman making an average professional income, if ho have many daughters, may be pretty sure that they will not all marry, especially after this war. He cannot look upon his own child as a negligible "spinster woman." If he brings her up on the lines suggested in Mrs. Whetham's book, she is not likely to be able to make her living ; and unless he is prepared to leave her the greater part of his patrimony, to the detriment of his married children, how can he assure her happiness ? He has also no certain know- ledge when his daughters are little which of them will be left permanently in his home. Is it unreasonable that he should bring them up like boys, to be able to make their own way in life ? Mrs. Whetham says that a professional woman is not as a rule a marry- ing woman, and if she does marry, she has few or no children. It is impossible to deny, and impossible not to regret, the fact. In the class of whom Mrs. Whetham writes there are more women than men. Is she prepared to regard education solely as an equipment for the race which is to be run for matrimony ? Emigration is not such a simple way out of the difficulty as some people think. It is easy for a cynical looker-on to wonder how it is that parents should be attached to all their children, and should be filled with anxiety at the thought that even one girl should go away alone to a new country to hunt for a husband ; but so it is, and the situation may be still further complicated by her unwillingness to go. The problem is, so far as one can see at present, radically insoluble ; but there are expedients which might ease the situation—for instance, the sweeping away of minor class distinctions. Tho immense and absurd expense of education is the thing which main- tains the class barriers that surround the upper middle class. Its members must be willing to pull those barriers down, or to sacrifice its daughters to the fetish of the Public School. Their men could many earlier, andwomen could marry men who are now —to put it plainly—considered to be a little beneath them socially. Dearth of men is not so obvious in any class but the professional, and marriage is not so late in any other. Once outside it, we can see our way a little clearer. Whether it is a good thing for the country that the upper middle class should cease to exist is another question ; but, to speak frankly, we think it is better than that it should produce armies of educated unmarried women, heartily as we disagree with Mrs. Whetham's cruel tone towards them. Sho pays them the compliment, no doubt,: of believing that a very large number are single by their own choice. That this is true in a smaller measure than she seems to think is demonstrable because of the few bachelors over thirty-five whom one meets. On the other hand, there is truth in it. The number of women who resolve not to marry is negligible, but the number among the educated who will not marry without a grande passion, or what they take for ono, is fairly large, -was larger, we suppose, in this elms in this country in the last century than it ever was in the world before. It was the Victorian ideal, and was very fine and very widespread. Can see afford in bringing up our daughters deliberately to break it down A great many parents will still be found to say " No ; it is worth almost any sacrifice." The present writer, for his own part, thinks otherwise ; but if we destroy one ideal we must substitute another or lower the moral standard. The daughters of French lawyers and doctors and Civil Servants and soldiers and sailors do not marry for love. They are brought up to regard marriage as the right pre- liminary to motherhood, and their ideal view—the one put before them in youth—is that husband and wife should draw closer and closer together in common devotion to their children, and that matrimony should become a perfect friendship sanctified by a stir holier and more passionate tie—the bond of common parenthood. It may of course be said that this is a view of marriage which looks very well on paper, but which in practice is by no means always. satisfactory. The some thing may be said of the more romantic; English way of facing the question. The truth is that both systems work fairly well, and both ideals are equally high ; but, considering the present necessity, the French one would seem to be the more practical, and it would servo, if we adopted it, to stem the now and curiously unnatural desire just now evinced by women to pile the cares of maternity upon other shoulders—sending their children earlier and earlier to school, and keeping no boys over eight and no girls over twelve in the house with their parents.
Money difficulties lie at the root of all changes in what we may call the family plan. The French system presunpo3e3 dowries, and the English professional man must overhaul his time-honoured financial system before he can give money to his daughters before hie death. We all agree that greater economy will be a necessity for years after the war, but we do not know how to accomplish it, Mrs. Whetham's hints on the subject of household budgets puzzle us. She thinks that the type of housewife who keeps three servants may bring her food bill without undue difficulty to eight shillings a head, and if she be prepared to spend twelve shillings may provide her family with a diet of considerable variety and some luxury. In these days this computation of expense is sheer nonsense. After the war it may be again possible, but we think the mother of the ordinary nipper middle class family will find it a hard tusk indeed, even though she be assisted in her trouble by the suggestions of her elder children as welt as her hungry husband. But Mrs. VS' hetheia is right in considering that housekeeping must once more become a fine art and home-making a first duty if we are to cope with any of the problems before us just now. To sum up, we think Mrs. Whetham'e book will be widely read, because it is eminently provocative of discussion. For ourselves, we should describe it as a- superficially interesting and deeply irritating piece of journalism.
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