Introduction The articles that are printed in this book made what was in my opinion the most important, the most constructive, series on a single subject that Good Housekeeping has published in the quarter century and more that I was its editor. And they might so easily never have been written—just a little item in a newspaper missed, or its significance overlooked, and these sincere and helpful articles would still be locked up in the... more...

MARRIAGE AND LOVE The popular notion about marriage and love is that they are synonymous, that they spring from the same motives, and cover the same human needs. Like most popular notions this also rests not on actual facts, but on superstition. Marriage and love have nothing in common; they are as far apart as the poles; are, in fact, antagonistic to each other. No doubt some marriages have been the result of love. Not, however, because love... more...

INTRODUCTION   I have called this little collection of articles which I have written “THREE THINGS” because to me there seem to be just three essentials to strive after in life. Truth—Common Sense and Happiness. To be able to see the first enables us to employ the second, and so realise the third. And in these papers I have tried to suggest some points which may be of use to others who, like myself, are endeavouring to... more...

Chapter I.—What Is The Christian Home? Section I.—Home In The Sphere Of Nature. "My home! the spirit of its love is breathing   In every wind that plays across my track, From its white walls the very tendrils wreathing   Seem with soft links to draw the wanderer back. There am I loved—there prayed for!—there my mother   Sits by the hearth with meekly thoughtful eye, There my young... more...

About the Maces David and Vera Mace have spent almost forty years making a vital relationship of their own marriage, and, because of their inherent sense of purpose, consequently have enriched the lives and marriages of innumerable persons in some sixty countries around the world. David Mace's first degree was in science from the University of London. Earlier family influence led him on to Cambridge University, a degree in theology, and work... more...

WHY WOMEN ARE CONSERVATIVE We have often heard discussions of the reason we do not find women, as a sex, in the vanguard of world affairs; why the great educators, strong figures in progressive or revolutionary movements, are men rather than women; why these movements, themselves, are made up almost entirely of men rather than women. People have asked over and over again why, in the fields of the arts, the sciences, in the world of "practical... more...

Paris smiled, for an hour or two, in the year 1801, when, amidst Napoleon's mighty projects for remodelling the religion and government of his empire, the ironical satirist, Sylvain Maréchal, thrust in his "Plan for a Law prohibiting the Alphabet to Women."[1] Daring, keen, sarcastic, learned, the little tract retains to-day so much of its pungency, that we can hardly wonder at the honest simplicity of the author's friend and biographer,... more...

PREFACE The study of social hygiene means the study of those things which concern the welfare of human beings living in societies. There can, therefore, be no study more widely important or more generally interesting. I fear, however, that by many persons social hygiene is vaguely regarded either as a mere extension of sanitary science, or else as an effort to set up an intolerable bureaucracy to oversee every action of our lives, and perhaps... more...

INTRODUCTION A Threefold Aim.—This book is based upon three theses—namely, first, that the monogamic, private, family is a priceless inheritance from the past and should be preserved; second, that in order to preserve it many of its inherited customs and mechanisms must be modified to suit new social demands; and third, that present day experimentation and idealistic effort already indicate certain tendencies of change in the... more...

"CATCHING COLDS" Mothers frequently wonder where their children get colds. Briefly we will point out some of the sources from which these apparently inexplicable colds may come. A. Sitting on the Floor.—Children should not be allowed to sit or crawl upon the floor at any season of the year, but especially during the winter months. There is always a draught of cold air near the floor. It is a bad habit to begin allowing a child to play... more...