The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-03-26
Dorothy Dix in New York American
Journal.


One of the curious social features
of our day is the exodus of girls from
their homes.
The old ideal of family life pictured
the daughters as sitting sheltered,
protected and contented in the home
nest, and it was regarded as a great
misfortune when one of these tender
creatures was thrust by circumstances
out of this safe haven into the cruel
world.
But the home nest seems to have
no attractions for the modern young
woman, and instead of cuddling down
to 1t, she is frantically anxious to fly
away from it.
This is not peculiar to any grade
Of society 1t is universal mania
among women.
The college-bred girl yearns to leave
her fathers house, no matter how lux.
urious it is, and go to live in a studio
with chatting dish and other dyspep'
sia-breeding appurtenances.
The village maiden's dream of bliss
is to get away from home and mother
and into some city.
The poor girl prefers the exhausting
labor and long hours of factory or
store to doing needed domestic work
in her own home.
The rich girl who has neither the
culture nor the talent to enable her to
aspire 10 Il Career, nor the Necessity III
going out to be a clerk, or a stem
ographer, or typewriter, will marry
simply to get away from home.
This is an abnormal state of affairs
and doubly unfortunate, because the
home needs the girls and the girls
need the home.
1t is a blighting disappointment to
parents, who have spent thousands OF
dollars in educating a daughter, when
she refuses to stay at home and
brighten and cheer the family circle
with her culture and intelligence.
1t is cruel hardship to a mother
who has spent her life toiling to rear
q family of girls, and who has looked
forward to having her burdens light
ened when they were old enough to
assist her, to have her daughters turn
their backs upon their own home and
leave her to struggle on with the do
nestle load unaided.
I'VE have looked forward for years
to the time when jamie would be
through school and would fill the
house with gay young company" say
the lonely rich parents, but she was
not satisfied to stay at home, and she
is in Paris or Leipsic cultivating her
voice and studying art
I'VE had expected to enjoy Elean-
or's mpanionship so much" say the
parents, who have sacrificed every
thing to give their daughter a college
education, but it bored her to stay
at home, and she is living in a settle
ment in New York or Chicago"
Il had thought that Mary would
help me raise the younger children,
and that / might have a little time to
rest when she was grown signs the
poor mother of a big family, "but she
didn't like to work at home and she
is clerking in a store in San San
Francisco"
If every girl who finds the home
circle too narrow for her and is bent
upon getting away from it was a
genius who could win some great tri-
umph in the outer world, if she had
some special fitness even for doing
some work outside of her home, or if
she was so poor she needed the money
she could earn away from home, it
would be right and proper for her
to go wherever her destiny called her.
This is not the case, however, with
the majority of girls who leave home.
The average girl is in no danger what
ever of setting the world on fire with
her genius; she has no mission to ele-
Vate society, and she could be more
profitably employed in her own home
that she is outside of it.
The most pathetic thing in every
city in the land today is the thousands
of young women who have left good
homes and kind parents, and COM
Portable surroundings to come there
to starve and freeze and grow morbid
and morose living in hall bedrooms in
third-class boarding houses.
These girls lack everything to which
they have become accustomed. They
lack almost everything they should
have-they lack protection, they lack
guidance, they lack restraining infiu-
ences. they lac kthe good society and
innocent amusements that are a neces-
sity to youth
Yet they seem to feel that they are
amply compensated for all they miss
i'm simply being away from home.
Why is this?
Why should girls be SO generally
dissatisfied with their own homes;
why should they find SO little interest
in them, and be so anxious to leave
them?
Is the fault with the girls themselves
or with the parents?
Undoubtedly the first reason why
girls are anxious to get away from
home is because there is SO little real
sympathy between the average moth
er and daughter.
1t is heresy to say this. We are in
the way of thinking that the tie be-
tween a girl and her mother is the
closest and most sacred in the world,
but this is far enough from being the
case.
1t is true that there are few in
stances in which real lack of affec-
ton exists between mothers and
daughters, by cynically enough, this
affection generally belongs to the cate
CORY of blessings that brighten as they
fade, and in the majority of cases it is
only after girl has left home and
gone out into the world to work, or
has married and gotten a home of
her own, that she and her mother
really begin to understand and appre-
ciate each other.
The picture of a mother and
daughter who are real friends, ana
whose companionship is elective, in
stead of being forced on them by ma
ture. is a beautiful and poetic one
but in actual daily life it is as rare as
an old master in a chrome factory.
There is no other girl alive with
with whom the average woman feels
as unacquainted as with her daughter
and there is no other woman in the
entire universe TO whom the girl
could not more easily open her heart
than to her own mother.
L