The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-09-08
Dorothy Da1 Says
BY DOROTHY DIX
worlds Highest Paid Woman writer
Too Much Family.

s-~~.~~~~~-~-~-~~-~---
Too Much Family.
If I were giving advice to any I'M
born baby, should say:
For heaven sake, use a little dis
erection. and don't be either the oldest
child of a family, or the youngest one
of it. If you are the oldest your poor,
silly young parents will almost Kill
you trying out on you all OF their
mental, and moral, and physical the
cries about how a child should be
raised. while if you are the youngest
child of the family you will be bossed
and chicken pecked by your older
brothers and sisters until you VIII
wish you were dead. So have little
sense, and be of one OF the in-netween
children. That's the safe ind com
Portable place in the family circle
OF course, 1 don't expect any baby
to take my advice because babies are
the hardest headed people on earth
and the ones most determined to have
their own way-as witness how often
they persist in being girl babies When
everybody has just begged and prayed
them to be boy babies. and 1t would
be the greatest possible accomnoda-
ton to dozens of people If they would
be boy babies-but whether they heed
my words of warning or not, In
handing them a good tip. all the same
Especially to those who ere going
to be of the feminine persuasion, for
if there is any poor, harried, haras-
sed, put-upon creature in this world
| it is the little sister in a big family.
I've just got a real heart-to-heart
letter from one of them. She says
that she's got four old maid sisters,
and ever so many brothers with wives,
and that each individual in the whole
/ family thinks that he or she has
| perfect right to dictate to her about
| everything on earth that she does or
| thinks of doing.
This girl says that she is twenty
| two, but the family persists in con-
| sidering her a mere infant in arms
who lacks the judgment and intel
! igence to make any decision for her
self, and in particular they hold that
she Is so young and tender and un-
| Sophisticated that she can't be trusted
| to look out for herself in good Arneri-
can girl fashion, but has to be chap
| eroned in an inch of her ltfe-
| Worse still, the girl complains that
her family is blocking her way to the
| altar.
st don't want to be an old maid like
| my sisters she walls, but how am
1 ever to get married If they scare
every man away from the house by
sitting around looking sour and glum
| whenever one comes to see me?
There's young man now that I like
| very much, and who likes me. He
suits me, but because he doesn't hap
have succeeded in making my mother
believe that 1 don't know my own
mind. and that I would be throwing
| myself away en- a man who has his
own way to make in the world, and
that they know so much better what
| is good for me than I know myself
| that my mother has forbidden me to
have anything more to do with this
young man.
Wont you please write an article
| telling older sisters to keep their
hands off of younger sisters affairs,
and let them live their lives in their
| own way?"
| 1 certainly will. poor little youngest
sister in a big family. 1 have seen
your tragedy happen over and over
again, for it is said, but true. that
/ more hearts are broken and more lives
are wrecked by our friends than our
enemies, and mistaken love and kind
ness can do us more harm in a min
ute than malignant enmity can devise
in a week. 1t is the pity of goodness
| that 1t so often puts it's stupid fcot in
things and ruins where it tries to help.
Big sister is actuated by only the
purest of motives when she interferes
| with everything little sister wants to
do. Martha adores Mary and would
risk her life to guard her, and all that
her well meant efforts amount to is
just shutting poor Mary off from her
opportunities in the world.
There are women who never marry
because they are celibates at heart.
They stay single because they prefer
their liberty to any man. Domesticity
and children have no attractions for
them, and they find in spinsterhood
the condition of life that most appeals
to them.
These are bachelor women in con-
tradistinction to old maids. The old
marry, and for some reason or other
has not married. To her, husband and
home and children are the only words
that spell happiness. and, lacking
these, she is miserable no matter what
else she has. Her world is bounded
! by a wedding ring, and if she never
gets this all the balance is cinders,
ashes and dust.
This type of woman has no impos-
| sible ideal of a husband. She doesn t
ask very much of man except that
he shall be man, and when she does
not get married and live happily ever
afterwards, she almost always can lay
the blame at the door of her meddling
family.
Sometimes she has had a mother
whose fierce maternal jealousy has not
been able to brook the thought of her
daughter loving some man better than
she does her mother and leaving her
mother to go away with him. Such a
mother will make every young man
who comes to the house so unwelcome
that he will not repeat his visit
| She will hover around her daughter
so closely that no young man has a
chance to get acquainted with the girl.
much less to become ~entimental, and
If, in spite of too much mother, the
girl does get engaged, mother never
rests until she breaks the engagement
off. OF course, she will tell you that
she wants her girls to marry, but she
| wants them to wait until they are old
enough and the right man comes
along, but she considers anything un-
der 60 too young for matrimony, and