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Salient: An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria University, Wellington Vol. 24, No. 6. 1961.

Silly Parties

Silly Parties

Place yourself in the position of Mrs H.:—

Mrs H.: "I can't look forward to a future of nothing but housework, broken only by afternoon teas and hit-and-giggle tennis parties.

"I'm prepared to give up my profession till all the children are at school, but surely I can do something then?"

Mr H.: "If you wanted a career, you should not have married.

"Children are your full-time responsibility till they are adults. I should not permit you to work if I considered our children suffered by it in the slightest degree."

Mrs H.: "But can't you imagine how I feel?

"Housework is the most un-stimulating routine, hard on your ego, too. Suddenly you feel you've lost all your status."

Mr H.: "If I had contracted to do a job, as you did when you married, I should do whatever was asked of me, however boring, and to the best of my ability.'

That conversation shows the impasse, the essence of the conflict.

The professional woman is constantly torn between her real wish to be a satisfactory wife and mother on the one hand, and her desire to obtain again the status and independence her profession gives.

To this conflict between her two lives, there is no truly happy solution. Only compromises exist, none of which work perfectly.

The married woman graduate may:
  • Offload her family responsibilities on to relatives or paid help. But should she?
  • Delay return to professional life until her family is grown. But won't her training "get rusty," will she feel too old to try?
  • Forget her university training and settle down to domesticity. But won't that mean admitting her training, long and expensive, was thrown away?

In other words, they should choose deliberately in the first place between spinsterhood with a professional career or marriage and children.