Chapter 13—Domestic Training
Preparation for Marriage Is an Essential Part of Education—
Upon no account should the marriage relation be entered upon until
the parties have a knowledge of the duties of a practical domestic life.
The wife should have culture of mind and manners that she may be
qualified to rightly train the children that may be given her
Many ladies, accounted well-educated, having graduated with
honors at some institution of learning, are shamefully ignorant of
the practical duties of life. They are destitute of the qualifications
necessary for the proper regulation of family, and hence essential to
its happiness. They may talk of woman’s elevated sphere and of her
rights, yet they themselves fall far below the true sphere of woman.
It is the right of every daughter of Eve to have a thorough knowl-
edge of household duties, to receive training in every department of
domestic labor. Every young lady should be so educated that if called
to fill the position of wife and mother, she may preside as a queen in
her own domain. She should be fully competent to guide and instruct
her children and to direct her servants, or, if need be, to minister with
her own hands to the wants of her household. It is her right to under-
stand the mechanism of the human body and the principles of hygiene,
the matters of diet and dress, labor and recreation, and countless others
that intimately concern the well-being of her household. It is her right
to obtain such a knowledge of the best methods of treating disease
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that she can care for her children in sickness, instead of leaving her
precious treasures in the hands of stranger nurses and physicians.
The idea that ignorance of useful employment is an essential char-
acteristic of the true gentleman or lady is contrary to the design of God
in the creation of man. Idleness is a sin, and ignorance of common
duties is the result of folly, which afterlife will give ample occasion to
bitterly regret
1
Pacific Health Journal, May, 1890
.
2
Fundamentals of Christian Education, 75
.
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