FOR ANY WOMAN
Dr. Marshall Sees Menace in Career Wives. Believes Their Ambitions Threaten Home Life. Grants Exceptions for Economic Necessity.
A girl who is not willing to give up her name, her career, her own selfish ambitions, for her husband's sake had better stay out of marriage, for she will not create a successful, happy home. This is the theory of Dr. Peter Marshall, Pastor of New York Avenue Presbyterian church, who bases his opinion on his wide experience in helping young people solve their problems.
"Many girls today are unwilling to make marriage a full-time job," said Dr. Marshall. "They prefer a career to a home or try to mix both. The idea of a woman's taking time out from business to start a family is not only absurd, but it is breaking down the fundamental ideals of family life.
"Of course, there are many exceptions, and I am not referring to those married women who are forced by economic necessity to continue working........"
Ambition, desire for luxuries, and boredom with domestic life are many married women's incentives for jobs or careers, Dr. Marshall believes. Such an attitude, plus economic independence, accounts for many unhappy homes and eventually leads to divorce, he maintains.......
Woman's greatest chance for making marriage a success depends upon her willingness to lose her life in that of her husband, Dr. Marshall holds. He means that the wife's interests must be those of her husband, she must be willing to make little sacrifices to help him along the way......
"Despite the fact that one marriage in every six in this country ends in divorce, young people want to make their marriages succeed, and they want it desperately. I can testify to the deep sincerity of purpose in the hearts of the young men and women who speak to me about being married. Yet, aware of the pitfalls and dangers that lie ahead in modern marriages and armed with sincerity of purpose, still many of them fail. From this, one must conclude that the average modern view of marriage must be wrong, and that the old-fashioned idea of marriage must be the soundest after all"*
* The Washington Post, Dec. 23, 1938 publication as quoted from the book A MAN CALLED PETER by Catherine Marshall