Evening star., 1935-03-28
the Spice Seasoning Modern Womans
Dorothy Dix Says
Beware of Marriage With Mother of Two
Spoiled Girls-Victim of Too Early
Marriage.

~ EAR DOROTHY DIX: I am
in love with q widow who has
tow girls, one IL and the
- other Is. They are under
very poor control and do
just as they please. I just simply can't
stand the way they act, though don't
say anything. But If I married their
mother would have to change from
that and I am afraid that it would
cause her and me to get along badly.
feel can't give the mother up, but
can't endure the kids. Please give
me your advice. M. r. H. A.
Answer-You certainly have pro-
phetic soul when 1t warns you that
you will have trouble with the mother
the minute you begin to try to control
her undisciplined children. Brother,
you are headed for grief If you at
tempt it. If you feel any call to be an
animal tanner begin on something mild
and gentle. such as q wild elephant or
o man-eating tiger or starving lion,
but don't tackle two spoiled adolescent
girls, as you value your life.
WHY, they will tear you limb from
w Limb and enjoy doing it. They
will frazzle out your nerves until they
drive you insane. They will make
your home a perpetual battle-ground.
They will spoil your meals with their
quarre6. They will deprive you of
sleep with their goings and comings
and their whoops and yells and their
boy friends. They will spend all of
your money on gasoline and sport
clothes and costume jewelry and soft
drinks and cigarettes. They will
trample your every right under foot,
and you will spend your time wonder
ing what the fool-killer was doing that
he didn't get you on the day you mar
ried their mother.
Why. only parents who have the love
and patience and humility that par
enthood brings are enabled, by reason
of their superior fortitude and the
mercy Of heaven, to live through their
children's adolescence. For one not
thus miraculously sustained. the ordeal
is unbearable even for the most ad-
venturous.
nON'T deceive yourself into thinking
~ that, If you marry this woman
! with her half-grown girls, she will
side with you and hold up your hands
when you try to discipline them. She
will not. She will 60 over to the
enemys camp every time, and align
herself with the children and think
and tell you how mean and cruel and
tyrannical you are. when you think
@La ~,
be made to behave themselves and not
be permitted to run wild. In prac-
tically every family it Is mother and
the girls against father, even when 1t
is their own father, and what hap
pens to a stepfather when he faces
that consolidated opposition is too
horrible to think of.
Being a stepfather is the toughest
job that any man ever tackles. It Is
really harder for q man to be good
stepfather than 1t is for a woman to
be a good stepmother. because most
women have some maternal instinct
that makes them fond of children and
gives them some intuitive knowledge
of them. but few men are endowed by
nature with much paternal instinct.
That is something that has to be de-
veloped in them by their own children.
Children are an acquired taste with
men, so to speak.
II X Il r.
NEAR MISS DIX: My husband and
~ have been married almost four
years. No children. No happiness. be-
cause We are just two opposite types