Some Contrasts in Women Employed in Two Types of Industries in Mississippi

Abstract

should be a similar provision. Both men and women should be helped to have an intelligent understanding of pregnancy, the care of the infant, and the principles of child training. For those in trouble in marriage or in family relationships there should be in any community large enough to maintain a high school an opportunity to get unemotional, objective, specialized counsel. In the training of those entering the professions of law, medicine, the ministry, and teaching there should be instruction revealing the problems of marriage and the family as these are related to the functioning of these professions. The fact that the training of each of these fields is already preoccupied and even overcrowded does not justify the present neglect of domestic experience. Even the doctor, whose preparation is crammed most of all, comes daily in contact with emotional situations of family origin, sex difficulties, and faulty parenthood practices which have the greatest importance for health. The time has come when there is need also of special attention to the needs of the aged. We are beginning to recognize that they demand a new emphasis in preventive medicine. They also are becoming a peculiar family problem and one that requires and deserves a community program absolutely new in motive and content. Another task that education needs to accept in its attempt to build vital family life in this country is the developing of an intelligent public opinion that will recognize the significance of marriage and the family and the need of protecting the interests of both through a more wholesome social life. This more intelligent civilization includes taxation, legislation, federal, state, and local, physical and psychic conditions of industry, the character and availability of recreation, political administration, judicial attitudes and practices, and the formation and functioning of social organizations. In each of these specialized interests an intelligent society demands an alert citizenship ever on guard to preserve and advance the welfare of the family.