Evening star., 1936-12-24

my father loves my mother
dearly and Is very good to
- her, she feels that marriage
Is q terrible thing and is determined
that shall never marry. Her plan is
for me to fit myself to work in an Of
flee and earn my own living all my
life. But have other ideas. / want
to work few years. Then / want a
husband and children and a home.
have q sister who Is 40 years old and
an old maid as result Of mother
managing her life. She drove away
all OF my sisters suitors and now she
is lonely and unhappy and feels very
bitter toward mother. I don't want
this to happen to me, but / don't
know how to avoid it, as mother has
begun the same tactics with me. AL
though I am II and a senior in high
school, she will not let me have any
boy friends or 60 anywhere without
making q row about it. I have to
come home at o o'clock and am not
even permitted to choose the dress
wish to wear. love my mother, but
wish could make her see that
have a mind Of my own and q life to
live and that I have some right to
decide things for myself
CLARIBEL.
Answer-I wish I could tell you how
to 60 about making your mother see
what q terrible thing she has done to
your sister and is planning to do to
you, but it is easier to make the leop-
ard change its spots than it is to
change the nature Of a tyrannical
woman.
You see, one reason why mothers
are 80 impervious to any argument
about their right to dominate their
childrens lives is because they are SO
self-righteous about it. They are so
certain that they are wiser and know
better than their children do, and
that what they are doing is for the
children's good. They utterly ignore
the fact that their children may be of
an entirely different temperament,
have different tastes, needs and de-
sires; that the things that would make
them happy would make their children
miserable, and that Nature fitted them
for different career from theirs.
**
YOUR mother. from your account,
evidently is q celibate by nature.
Although she has q good husband,
she looks upon marriage as a sort of
purgatory from which she wants to
save her daughters You and your
sister, on the contrary, were cut out
for wives and mothers, and you will
never be happy outside Of your own
homes.
Mothers commit great crime when
they try to manage their children's
lives. Half the failures in the world
are men whose mothers forced them
TO be doctors, lawyers or preachers
when they should have been carpen-
ters, plumbers and bricklayers, or
artists, musicians or actors. Inrumer-
able unhappy marriages are the result
OF mothers picking out their daugh-
ters' husbands instead of letting them
marry the men they wanted, and there
are thousands Of other women who are
lonely old maids because mothers
wanted to keep their daughters for
themselves and scared all of their
beaux away.
And that mother sins against her
children with a perfectly clear con.
science doesn't palliate the harm
she does. but nobody can make her
believe that her child has a right to
live its own life in its own way, and
that 1t is happier doing the thing it
wants to do, even if it is hard and
brings no very glittering results, than
it would be living the life mother chose
| for 1t.
nEAR MISS DIX: am Q girl in
my late teens and outwardly one
OF the luckiest. I have q beautiful
home, all the clothes I want, lots Of
spending money. But, in reality, no
girl is more miserable. My home Is
. bedlam in which my parents quarrel
continually over my fathers attentions
to another woman. They use the
vilest language to each other and even
come to blows. AL the neighbors hear
them and am afraid to bring any
one to the house for fear my parents
will start . fight right before them.