Yet if it finds honest
employment for her and for all the unemployed wives and mothers,
it must find new places in the world for women; and in so doing it
must achieve for them economic independence of men. And when this
is done, can we feel sure that any woman will consent to be a wife
and mother (not to mention the less respectable alternative)
unless her position is made as eligible as that of the women for
whom the Labor Exchanges are finding independent work? Will not
many women now engaged in domestic work under circumstances
which make it repugnant to them, abandon it and seek employment
under other circumstances? As unhappiness in marriage is almost
the only discomfort sufficiently irksome to induce a woman to
break up her home, and economic dependence the only compulsion
sufficiently stringent to force her to endure such unhappiness,
the solution of the problem of finding independent employment
for women may cause a great number of childless unhappy marriages
to break up spontaneously, whether the marriage laws are altered
or not. And here we must extend the term childless marriages to
cover households in which the children have grown up and gone
their own way, leaving the parents alone together: a point at
which many worthy couples discover for the first time that they
have long since lost interest in one another, and have been united
only by a common interest in their children.
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