Home Problems from a New StandpointHunt, Caroline Louisa
General
Home Problems from a New Standpoint
Hunt, Caroline Louisa
Home
He wishes to do. Who is there who does not occasionally say, “If I had
money, if I had time, I would do so and so?” This suggests the kind of
doing that is pleasurable, that is better than leisure, and which an
assured income cannot stop. It often happens that a man’s work borders
on this kind of activity. He is a teacher and loves his profession, but
in order to do his work satisfactorily he ought to have time for
independent study and research. If there were fewer papers to correct, a
little less routine, he might have time for original work which would
leaven all the rest. Or perhaps he is a draftsman working all day at
monotonous tasks, but amid surroundings that inspire him to do some work
on his own account, and to grow in his profession. The wide-awake,
educated woman has it in her power frequently to become conversant with
her husband’s work, to lessen his drudgery, and, having saved him a
little time for original work, to make it go further than it otherwise
would because of her intelligent coöperation and assistance.
If living consists in being healthy, in enjoying the pleasures of the
senses, in learning, in doing, and in loving, modern man stands a better
chance of living than his predecessor did. The reasons are many, and not
the least of them is the fact that his wife lives more.
Nor is the end in sight. If women’s opportunities to prepare themselves
for and to enter upon careers unconnected with the home multiply in the
future as they have in the past, men may be called upon to adjust
themselves to much more radical changes. But the indications are that
these changes will offer to them further opportunities for the
expression of disinterested affection and larger lives through the
expansion of the lives of those they love.
MORE LIFE FOR THE HOUSEHOLD EMPLOYEE
“I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the
same terms.” In these words of Walt Whitman’s can all of us who cherish
the democratic ideal of equality of privilege and opportunity express
our feelings with regard to domestic service, for when we are able to
rise above the trials and tribulations that the institution brings to
ourselves and to look upon it from an impersonal point of view, we find
that the chief source of our dissatisfaction with it is in the fact that
it gives benefits to one class by taking their counterpart from another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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