(e) Their experience in college makes them desire a standard of living
higher than that of their own families or of the men among whom they
were brought up. They become resistant to the suit of men who are of
ordinary economic status. While waiting for the appearance of a suitor
who is above the average in both intelligence and wealth, they pass the
marriageable age.
(f) They are better educated than the young men of their acquaintance,
and the latter are afraid of them. Some young men dislike to marry girls
who know more than they do, except in the distinctively feminine fields.
These and various similar causes help to lower the marriage-rate of
college women and to account for the large number of alumnae who desire
to marry but are unable to do so. In the interest of eugenics, the
various difficulties must be met in appropriate ways.
Marriage is not desirable for those who are eugenically inferior, from
weak constitutions, defective sexuality, or inherent mental deficiency.
But beyond these groups of women are the much larger groups of celibates
who are distinctly superior, and whose chances of marriage have been
reduced for one of the reasons mentioned above or through living in
cities with an undue proportion of female residents. Then there are,
besides these, superior women who, because they are brought up in
families without brothers or brothers' friends, are so unnaturally shy
that they are unable to become friendly with men, however much they may
care to. It is evident that life in a separate college for women often
intensifies this defect. There are still other women who repel men by a
manner of extreme self-repression and coldness, sometimes the result of
parents' or teachers' over-zealous efforts to inculcate modesty and
reserve, traits valuable in due degree but harmful in excess.
When will educators learn that the education of the emotions is as
important as that of the intellect? When will the schools awake to the
fact that a large part of life consists in relations with other human
beings, and that much of their educational effort is absolutely
valueless, or detrimental, to success in the fundamentally necessary
practice of dealing with other individuals which is imposed on every
one? Many a college girl of the finest innate qualities, who sincerely
desires to enter matrimony, is unable to find a husband of her own
class, simply because she has been rendered so cold and unattractive, so
over-stuffed intellectually and starved emotionally, that a typical man
does not desire to spend the rest of his life in her company. The same
indictment applies in a less degree to men. It is generally believed
that an only child is frequently to be found in this class.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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