The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1907-1917, 1915-01-28
The Masculine Woman, and the Woman
iSh Man.

proportion, and that when her laws are dis
regarded, IN one quarter, she has fashion of
making even in another.
While the masculine woman has been de-
velopmg, the womanly man has been coming
more and more III evidence, and there is no
better illustration of the truth Of this, than
III the recent happenings in New York, where
the 'teaeher-mother" question has bobbed up
again, and has been treated from another
angle" with the woman winning the empty
victory.
It has been decided that the teacher
mother" may absent herself from her duties
after she had been married, and it becomes
necessary for her to prepare for the advent Of
new member in her family. The question
has been decided only after much airing in
the courts, much argument for and against,
and at last the thing has been decided.
1t may be hard matter to find them, in
some sections but there are a few women who
still think it desirable that children should
not have all the mysteries of life revealed
them, before they have reached the age of I'M
drstanding which will balance the new
knowledge by the clear clean understanding
of them, and which comes only with mature
development of the mind.
When a school-teacher leaves the school
room to marry, in this day and time, with the
brand of precoclous, oyer-developed, and, in
~many instances, puTlent children which make
up so great per cent Of the children in mixed
schools of large cities, there is bound to be
great deal of surmise, criticism and discus
sion, which the teacher herself would be
amazed to know of. This isn't hard matter
to understand by any who have mingled with
the children Of Cities North or South. and
who may have overheard snatches of conyersa-
ton, read 'notes" passing between girls
nd OTr1 N4
we are getting to be so Gradgrindy, and we
deal so freely in "facls," we might as well
face this phase too.
Ii, In due time, the teacher finds it neces-
sary to leave the school-room, for the purpose
OF preparing for the ordeal through which she
is to pass, and returns after the affair is over,
just what effect is she to have on those child
rem, under her?
The truth Of the matter is, the mercenary
motive is the one at the bottom of the whole
thing No woman, honest in her self, can say
truthfully that, taking all these things into
consideration, the mere fact Of her having
given birth to child whom she leaves to the
care of another as soon as she can decently
do so, is going to have a better moral effect on
the children she is receiving money to teach,
than the clean, healthy, moral, unmarried
woman, we may not know SO much Of child
birth, but who knows as much of the teaching
Of children, as the ''teacher- mother"
And what Of the man who has married the
woman? Where is his pride? In all the dis
cussion which has gone on in the Northern
papers on this subject, not once has the opin-
ion of the husband of the ''teacher-mother"
been asked or given.
If the suffrage idea, in which we are assured
that woman is to be and do all that a man is
to be and do, is to result in the feminizing Of
the men who acquiesce in the move, then | am
ready to donate half of my weekly dibs to