This brings us to the point where we must consider those
characteristics that make up domesticity and homekeeping. Early
impressions and the consistent teaching of literature, stage,
press and religion have given to the home a semi-sacred
character, which is one of the great components of the desire to
marry, especially for women. The home is, in the minds of most of
those who enter into marriage, a place owned, peculiarly
possessed, and it offers freedom from the restraints of society
and the inhibitions of ceremony and custom. Both the man and
woman like to think that here is the place where their love can
find free expression, where she will care for him and he will
provide for her, and where their children can grow in beauty,
intelligence and moral worth under their guidance. But this is
only the sentimental side of their thought, the part they give
freest expression to because it is most respectable and "nice."
In the background of their minds is the desire for ownership, the
wish to say, "This is mine and here I rule." Into that comes the
ideal that the stability of society is involved and the
homekeeper is its most important citizen, but when we study the
real evolution of the home, study the laws pertaining to the
family, we find that the husband and father had a little kingdom
with wife and children as subjects, and that only gradually has
there come from that monarchical idea the more democratic
conception cherished to-day.
Men and women may be considered as domestic or non-domestic. The
domestic type of man is ordinarily "steady" in purpose and
absorbed more in work than in the seeking of pleasure, is either
strongly inhibited sexually or else rather easily satisfied;
cherishes the ideal of respectability highly; is conventional and
habituated, usually has a strong property feeling and is apt to
have a decided paternal feeling. He may of course be seclusive
and apt to feel the constraints of contact with others as
wearying and unsatisfactory; he is not easily bored or made
restless. All this is a broad sketch; even the most domestic find
in the home a certain amount of tyranny and monotony; they yearn
now and then for adventure and new romance and think of the
freedom of their bachelor days with regret over their passing.
They may decide that married home life is best, but the choice is
not without difficulty and is accompanied by an irrepressible,
though hidden dissatisfaction. On the whole, however, the
domestic man finds the home a haven of relief and a source of
pleasurable feeling.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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