Omaha daily bee., 1919-07-27
By BEATRICE FAIRFAX.


Of course you hope that your
daughter will marry.
Every unselhsh mother wishes
her own girl to have as wide and
full life as possible, to become some
day happy wife and an ecstatic
mother.
But which kind of parent are you
the kind that feels it is her &c
sponsibility to marry OF" their
daughter, to provide her with an
agreeable background, to see that
she meets eligible young men, to
stay conscientiously on the mater
nal job until the wedding bells nave
actually rung? Or the kind that
feels that marriage and the selcc-
ton of a husband are girls own af-
fair, and that--with the exception
of shooting the rest of the family
off the front porch or out OF the par
lor when Dorothy has calIer-ller
own part is purely that of passive.
if rather huttery, spectator?
Is it duty" indeed the most
important of all maternal duties. to
marry off" the charming yourg
l8-year-old? Or is any effort of this
sort an odious and almost vulgar
interference, which girl of delicacy
and high spirit might properly re
sent?
If finding a husband for your
daughter really is duty, we have
to admit that it's duty that's less
and less observed. With every year
that passes girls and women take
their own lives, careers, romance
and all, more thoroughly irto their
own hands. Is this a thing to be
lamented?
Arranged" Marriages.
OF course American parents have
never arranged" marriages, in what
seems to US the cold-blooded Euro
pean way, The American mother
has never gone any further than in
viting narriageable young men to
the house and then artlessly look
ing the other way as though she had
no understanding of what she had
done or of what might result from
it.
And today it is only in Society
that the business of providing a girl
with opportunities for marriage is
done with any thoroughness. So
that sometimes you hear harsh criti-
cism of parents who have allowed
the good old system to decay. And
at other times you hear quiet COM
ments to the effect that the marry
ing-off system never worked with
any precision anyway and that quite
as many girls marry nowadays on
their own initiative as do those
who tamely accepted husbands of
their parents choosing.
Not long ago, in a magazine ar
ticle on this subject, the writer gave
an entertaining instance of a we'll
to-do American widower who had
begun toftake very seriously the fu-
ture OF his two baby girls. He be-.
Jlieved that as they had no mother
it devolved upon him to bring about
this desirable end, and to set the
necessary machinery in motion as
early as he could.
But he had a totally new theory
of how this should be done. No
"coming-out parties" no debutante
frivolities. no diligent,- day-after-day
ensnaring of guarded. indifferent
youths when these little girls should
"grow up!'
On the contrary. this father had
determined that they should both
become trained nurses. And this
was his argument:
Where to Find Husbands.
The kind of young men they
ought to marry, earnest, energetic,
successful young men, don't go to
teas and balls. They're too busy.
In fact they're so busy that they
overwork. And so. after a while,
they break down and fall i'll. So the
girl their convalescent eyes first fall
on. the girl their convalescent hearts
first throb for, isn't the chiffon-clad
debutante; but the sturdy, young