The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1918-09-21
BE SLOW TO CONDEMN
Tho "Managlng' Mother Who Seeks
Suitable Husband for Her
Daughter.

AulcflCdu SOClcIy IL 10 ehO SuosOAAA w
anathematize the managing mothRy
says the Echo.
We hold her up to scorn and ridi-
cule, and are honestly shocked at the
spectacle of woman who tries to
shape her daughters future instead
of trusting them to luck.
Why we should assume this hypo-
critical attitude toward very i'm
portant subject no one knows. Every
body admits that the best thing that
can happen to woman is for her to
marry the right sort of man, and
to live in the peaceful security of
comfortable home. This being the
case, why should woman be criti-
cized instead of commended for try
ing to secure this happy lot in life
for her daughters?
Every mature woman knows how
marriages are made. She is perfect
ly aware that the beautiful theory
that a strange fate sends affinities
across the world to seek each other,
is far-fetched. Matrimony is largely
a matter of opportunity and propin-
guilty.
The most beautiful and attractive
girl in the world can be so shelved
by her mothers tactlessuess and stu
pidity that she will be moro cut off
from chance to get married than If
she had humpback and cross eyes.
On the other hand, a really homely
and unattractive girl can be discreetly
doomed into belledom, while it may
be laid down as general proposition
that any two ordinary young people
of opposite sexes will fall in love with
each other if they are thrown enough
together.
These facts are truisms with which
every mother in the world is perfectly
familiar, yet observe the idiotic way
in which mothers act. A woman will
let a young man of dissapated habits,
or one who is so shiftless that he
could not support a cat, or a hand
some relative, fairly live in the house,
thrown into intimate daily association
with her daughter, and then, when
the two come to her some fine day
and blushingly ask her for her bless
ing, she has fits of horror and sur
prise all over the place.
'What, let Mabel marry that
drunken Tom Smith! What, let Susie
be dragged down to poverty by that
trifing, lazy John Burns! What, let
her darling Mamie marry Billy, who
is almost her brother!"
It will break her heart to even
think of such thing, and she'll never
consent Never in the world. But
she does, for what is mother when a
hot-headed girl thinks she is in love,
and so the poor woman has to suffer
all the agony that tears mothers
heart when she watches the long
drawn-out agony of her child's unfor-
tunate marriage. And the mother de-
serves everything she gets, for she
should have protected her daughter
from falling in love with the wrong
man. She should have managed bet
ter.
No woman should ever let any man
get on a visiting footing in her house
that she would not be willing to see
her daughter marry if it came to that.
On the contrary, just as much as she
could protect her daughter against
the wrong man, she should give her
chance at the right man.
There are households in which a
girls matrimonial prospects are frost
bitten by the entire family always
sitting around, helping to entertain
her beaux. This is fatal play. You
may take it for granted that no young
man puts on his best clothes and
comes around to listen to mammals
babble about how marketing has gone
up, or papa's dissertation on what he
would do if he were Wilson. Nor
does it conduce to love-making for a
young man to overhear the hum of
family gossip in the next room, and
have suspicion that little brother is
under the sofa and little sister is peep
ing through the curtains.
This is a plain tip to mothers that
they should furnish Cupid the proper
stage setting if they want their daugh-
tiers to marry.
And one last word-let no woman
be scared off from doing her duty to
her daughter by fear of being called
managing mother It is every wom-
ans business to help her girls get
good husbands, and to throw oppor-
tunities in their way and quarantine
them against the danger of falling in
love with the dissapated, the immoral,
the trifing, and the no-account youths
that infest society.
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