sinister condition of modern life that forbids early marriage to so
many men and all chance of suitable marriage to so many women who
really desire that relationship with all their hearts. We must go
about its remedy with open eyes, and from frankly accepted reasons,
for the sake of better family conditions.

=The Increasing Tendency of Women Toward Celibate Life.=--There is,
however, another condition, many-sided and complex, often operating
upon the persons most involved unconsciously and seldom treated with
clarity or frankness, which works against the family as an
institution. This condition is the increasing tendency of many of the
ablest women to marry very late or to refuse to marry at all. These
are not the women who feel defrauded that they are not mothers in
their own person, still less that life has cheated them in not
furnishing a husband. They are usually those who in youth began some
specialized form of vocational service which holds their interest and
leads toward pecuniary profit and social recognition.

They are the modern spinsters, happy and busy, who often feed their
motherly instincts by caring for other people's children and feel a
sense of relief that it is a voluntary service, which they may rightly
indulge in vacations, and not a bond that never releases from duty.
They are the maiden aunts who spend affection and money upon the
families of their relatives; who help their younger brothers and
sisters through college; who take care of the aged and invalid in the
family connection, and act often as stay and prop to all the weaker
and more burdened of their kin. What many families would do without
this type of unmarried woman is hard to tell. They are often grateful
for their release from wearing domestic cares and enjoy their sense of
power in general serviceableness to those they love while at the same
time appreciating with keen satisfaction their own joy of
craftsmanship in some chosen profession. Except for a brief hour now
and then, when sister has a new baby or brother takes a new wife, they
feel anything but troubled over their condition of single blessedness
until, perhaps, a premonition of lonely old age stirs regret.

=The Demand of Eugenists.=--From the point of view of the eugenists,
who demand more fecundity on the higher and less on the lower levels
of life, one of the most sinister of all influences inimical to family
life is this large and increasing band of superior and happy si