The Washington times., 1933-11-13
Marry
7 O Flee
lone
BY Beatrice Fairfax
Famous Authority on Problems
OF Love and Marrige

WudC udppcI1S 10 CI16 memories
of some parents, after they
marry and have boys and girls
of their own?
Looking backward along their
own past lives and experiences,
they see themselves apparently
as so many Christmas tree
angels with triple halos around
their brows; and they try, with
every prop to authority, to in.
sist that their own children
shall conform to this model,
forgetting entirely that their
offspring are chips off the old
block.
Strangely enough, parents fail
victims to their own imagina-
tions. After telling Of their
youthful projections, they come
to believe that they, in the days
of their adolescence, were plas-
ter saints of the best quality.
The farther removed from saints
they have been, the more de-
termined they are to try to pour
their children into the plaster
saint mould, which is perhaps
only Natural.
The following letter will ex.
plain why some girls will
marry anything to escape q
home Of this sort:
Dear Miss Fairfax:
Perhaps if some girl in my
position reads this letter, it
will save her from making the
cruel blunder I made. Our
home had every material com.
fort, except we were kept like
creatures in an institution.
We were never allowed to have
a date, no matter how nice the
boy or how well my family
knew his.
All boys were taboo, and
most girls. Sometimes mother
would allow two or three girls
in for Friday evening, then sit
in her rockingham, direct the
conversation and speed the
(only too willing) parting
guests at 10 o'clock. They
never came back, and boys
never paid any attention to us.
We seemed just funny to them.
After awhile eloped with .
man who came to the house
to collect for a player-piano
my brother was buying. I did
the counting. I would have
married anyone to escape my
home. One of my sisters dis
appeared, and the third one has
melancholia. Still, my mother
thinks that we are entirely to
blame for not approaching our
blessings in the way of a home.
I am divorced from my hus-
band, who drank to excess and
was otherwise impossible. My
little daughter, to whom I'm
devoted, is in a day nursery,
and mother still bewails her
ungrateful daughters. But I'd
rather starve than return home.
Why couldn't we have been
permitted to lead normal lives
under our own roof? Since I
went away, I've seen a good
deal of the same wrong-headed
discipline. Girls sneak out to
meet boys on the sly, when they
might just as we'll be allowed to
come to the parental home.
They hang round "drugstores,"
or wait on street corners for
someone to pick them up in q
car. They're adept at decep-
tion-and who can blame them.
Mother, I have since under
stood from a cousin, was very
gay" in her own youth. Is
this the reason, do you think.
that she incarcerated her own
daughter? shall do differently
with my child. CARRIE B.
Goodness only knows why
parents forget their own youth.
and why they keep their boys
and girls at arms length, fail
to make companions of them or
invite their condolences.
I'm writing you this, Miss
Fairfax, because I could never
tell my own mother" is the key
note of so many letters which
come to me. And then follows
some childish escapade over
which any sensible woman
would enjoy a good laugh.
If I could say but one thing
to parents the world over, it
would be "Please step down off
your pedestals and be compton
able to your sons and daughters
and above all things, invite
their condolences"