“I hear Emmy Lou is going to have a baby,” said the Soda Jerker to the Bank Clerk.
“That’s interesting,” said the Bank Clerk. “Let me see; she hasn’t been married a year, has she?”
“I should say not,” said the Soda Jerker. “She ought to be finishing in high school this year, and she up and ran away and got married last winter before she was even a senior. And now she’s expecting a baby and she just a kid. It’s a damn shame, I call it.”
“Nothing of the kind,” said the Bank Clerk. “It’s the finest thing in the world for her; the best thing for any woman.”
“But Emmy Lou’s just a kid herself,” exclaimed the Soda Jerker; “and a wild, harum-scarum, rattle-brained kid at that. She never had a serious thought in her life and aint no more fit to be a mother than I am. I think a girl ought to be old enough to know what she’s doing and be ready to sober up and settle down before she beings to have babies.”
“You’re all wrong,” said the Bank Clerk. “if they don’t have babies, some of them would never sober up and settle down.
“Nothing sobers a woman and settles her like motherhood. Most women never have a serious thought about life or feel any responsibility of any kind until they go down into the Valley of the Shadow of Death and bring a baby into their lives. It is the first sacrifice the average woman makes and no character is ennobled or well formed until it has made some great sacrifice.
“Emmy Lou has indeed been one of the wildest and most irresponsible young females you and I ever encountered, but you’ll see a great change in Emmy Lou when she trundles that baby of hers down the street in the spring. The devilish sparkle in her eyes will be gone and there will not be so much color in her cheeks; but her eyes will be bright just the same, and soft and lustrous with love. You will behold a new radiance in the face of Emmy Lou, the radiance of motherhood. We used to call her pretty; you will call her beautiful after her transfiguration. Childbearing works a transfiguration in all of them.”
“You can always out-talk me,” said the Soda Jerker, “But I stick to it that a woman ought to be 25 or 30 years old before she’s a mother. We have so darn many rattle-brained kids because we have too many immature and rattle-brained mothers. If women waited until they were old enough to know what they’re doing before thy have children, we would have better mothers and better children.”
“You are altogether unsophisticated,” said the Bank Clerk sadly. “If women waited until they knew how to manage children before they had children, then I’m afraid we would have a natin of childless homes. I’ve never seen a man or woman yet who was either old enough or wise enough to know just what to do in bringing up a kid.”
From the front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, Nov. 12, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn83025812/1926-11-12/ed-1/seq-1/
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