Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-03-20
DOROTHY DIX
DISCUSSES
LIFE
BY DOROTHY DIX
1t Is Happier, Wiser and Kinder
for Older Persons to Garry On"

Ii is happier, wiser ana hlnder
for Older Persons to Garry On
q rATIsTICS show that nearly
three-fourths of the men and
women who are over sixty years
are dependents.
Many of these are incapacitated
by disease from supporting them
selves, but the great majority of
them are simply cutters who find
it less unpleasant to sponge on 9TH
ers for a living than to earn one.
Most of the dependents are sup
ported by their children, which en-
ables them to preserve their self
complacency, for far too many, par
ents regard parenthood as simply
a graft. They consider that their
children are bond slaves. born into
the world for the sole purpose of
toiling for them.
Therefore. they have no shame in
being parasites on their children,
and in many family when the
oldest son or daughter gets his or
her first good job it is the signal
for father to knock off work and
call it a day.
He never does another hands
LulI DIS IOIIS CS IlC llfGSy C4A0 etAAANA1S9
the most loathsome spectacles of
our times are the vast numbers of
husky able bodied, middle-aged men,
who are living on the wages of
their daughters, Many a frail, little
stenographer, or bookkeeper, or
sales girl has to go without a nour-
ishing lunch because it takes so
much money for fathers tobacco
and pinOchle game,
Many a man and woman have to
forego marriage because they have
their parents to support when the
parents are perfectly capable of
making their own living if only
they were not too lazy to do it.
OF course, when father or moth
er are too ILL, or too old to toll any
more, it becomes the most sacred
duty of their children to provide
for them, but there is no excuse for
middle-aged men and women to give
up the fight, as they often do, and
settle down to be burdens on their
children's backs.
To save their faces these leech-
like parents speak of themselves as
"old," although they are often in
their fifties and sixties, which is
mere youth in these days. Or they
invent some fictitious disease which
doesn't interfere with their eating
three square meals per diem and
doing everything they want to do,
but which forms an admirable eX-
cuse for their not doing any sort of
work except working their children.
How many buxom, fat widows we
know who give up their homes when
their children get married, and who
go and live around in other peo'
pies houses with nothing to do but
| poke their noses in their in-laws af-
| fairs and stir up trouble! How many
pestiferous old mne we know who
gave up their jobs to live on the
children, and who grow more and
more cranky and boring as the years
60 by in which htey have nothing to
do but think about themselves!
How much better it would have
been for themselves, and for all con-
cerned, if these men and women
had stuck to their jobs and gone on
| with their own free, independent,
| self-respecting lives instead of
| throwing up their hands and quitting
cold in the middle Of the game!
There comes a time whe we get
around sixty when we get in a panic
about old age. 1t seems so close upon
us that we get frightened and feel
| helpless. Also we are tired We have
| worked so long and so hard. and
there is very great temptation
| to give up, and lean upon the one
who offers to carry our burden for
| us, or on whom we can shunt it.
| But it is terrible mistake to listen
| to the voice of the tempter. II we
| gather together our strength, and
| get a strangle hold on our courage
| and grit and fight on we get what
| athletes call our second wind" and
! we are good for many years more
| Of useful work, and happy indie
pendence.
| Furthermore, there is no such pre-
sentative of youth as work, nor is
there any such other cure-all for
! disease. The young-old women and
| men are the ones who are actively
employed, and keenly interested in
some constructive work. 1t is the
men and women who have retired
and who have nothing to do but
think of themselves and eat who are
equity invalids, and who die early.
! No dependent can be happy, not
even those who are dependent upon
! their children. The bread we do not
earn and cannot pay for, is bitter in
our mouths. If some malign destiny
sends this cruel fate on one, 1t must
be born with what patience one can
command, but surely one should try