The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1919-01-28
DOROTHY DIX TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worries Highest Paid Woman Writer.
rhe Right Age to Marry.

rho Right Age TO Marry
What is the proper age for a woman
TO marry?
Many girls ask me this question.
Naturally no hard and fast rule can
be laid down on the subject, nor any
specific number of years set down as
the lucky number that is sure to win
out in the matrimonial lottery. Age
is not a matter of birthdays, but of
mental and physical development, so
that one girl may be fitted for mar
riage at an age at which another girl
is totally untitled.
Generally speaking, however, a
woman is most apt to make a happy
and successful marriage if she enters
into the holy estate about her twenty
fifth year. She is then neither too
young to exercise judgment and dis
erection in the choice of husband, nor
too old to adapt herself TO another
persons foibles and peculiarities and
the inevitable exigencies of domestic
life.
In a word she has developed char
acter. but is still pliable. 1t has not
had time to harden into a mould. II
is also the time when she is at the
top notch of her physical health and
strength which insures vigor to her
children.
There are many reasons why a
young girl should not take upon her,
of these is that she has not had her
playtime of life and is not ready to
settle down to the sober business of
wife and mother. She may think that
she is and marry on this assumption,
but after the novelty of having a
house, husband and baby of her own
has worn off, she realizes that she
is still a young girl and has a young
girls. natural desire for young girls
amusements.
She wants to dance, go to parties
and theaters and take joy rides. She
her. thus her husband, her home and
baby become hateful to her. They
are not her crown of joy. They are
the symbol of her slavery.
Nine-tenths of the women who be-
come involved in scandals are women
ly all of the neglectful mothers arc
child mothers./ They are women who
gave hostages to fate too early.
By the time a woman is 25 she has
had all the playing around she wants
She is fed up on society and is glad
to settle down in her own little home
Another reason why a girl should not
marry when she is very young is be-
cause she hasn't the remotest idea
of what she wants in husband, nor
what kind of a man she is going TO
be satisfied with for the balance of
ed in men than IL is in foods. and the
very qualities she admires at IS she
will loathe at %.
OF course the schoolgirl thinks that
she asks nothing OF fate but TO sup
ply her with unlimited diet of choc-
olate eclairs. and she is equally sure
she can never cease to adore a youth
who wears his hair in a barber's
blessing and who fox trots diyfnelv
But BY the time she is 25 the very
sight OF chocolate eclair gives her
nausea. and the youth who Is nothing
but hair and heels bores her to extinc-
ton Then tragedy engues IL she has
been foolish enough to marry him.
Marriage is full enough of RISKS for
women without their taking any risks
on themselves. The woman of 20 has
come TO herself. She knows what she
wants and needs In a husband, and
when she makes her choice # is for
keeps She isn't forever wishing she
could take him back to the bargain
counter and exchange him for an en-
ti-ely different type of man.
The girl who marries when she is
matrimony because she Is unfit for IT,
She is undisciplined. She lacks self
control. and is ignorant of the prac-
teal side OF domestic life.
There are no households more pill
ful. or in which there is less ha ppi-
nezs. than those in which a child wife
u9arrels with her husband over fri-
files and wastes his money I'm foolish
cxtravsgances and poisons him on bad
cooking and wresties fncompetentIy
with sickly. teething babies.
The woman of IS avoids a. million
mistakes the child wife makes because