200,000 Children Whose Fathers Are Students

From "The Woman's Voice's" readings in the American press

Among the familiar sights in the universities of America this year is a student of twenty-three, his books under his arm, accompanied by his wife of twenty-two, pulling her child along in a carriage.

It is, no doubt, a sight with something strange and anomalous in it, for married life — with its problems and its complications, its responsibility and its clashing circumstances — does not agree with the free, unfettered life of the student. And our astonishment at the situation grows when we learn the number of these married students and how they are spread among the universities.

The number of official universities in the United States today is 132, comprising 400,000 students. The proportion of married men in this number is exactly half — 200,000, two hundred thousand students — and this is truly striking in its anomaly and strangeness. We cannot but ask:

Who are these students?

These young men are the soldiers who came back from the war crowned with victory. They are still nursing wounds in their bodies that were once grave. The long months in the hospitals, waiting to be healed, set them thinking about their future and what tomorrow held in store for them. They found themselves — most of them still at the dawn of their third decade — with wives and children without whom life would not be sweet; for they had married girls they loved shortly before joining the army. Now the war has laid down its burdens and these soldiers have returned to America, and when the government asked them what they had decided for themselves, they asked to return to the universities, to satisfy a pressing desire in their souls and to obtain a degree in medicine or law or engineering.

The American government helps these young men by paying all their fees and the cost of their school supplies, and allots each student 90 dollars a month. It gives compensation for every disability or impairment of health resulting from military service, this compensation being in proportion to the disability or impairment; and the nearer the student comes to complete recovery, the smaller the compensation grows, until it ceases. There remains, as steady income, only the ninety dollars, and this must suffice for the rent of a lodging, for food and clothing, and for all incidental expenses. Here we find the young wife managing wisely, not spending beyond their single income, and cooperating with her young husband in shaping the budget and studying it so that they do not fall into material deficit.

And does this income suffice?

These husbands declare that their life was happy and comfortable until the child was born, whereupon its parents were forced to deny themselves certain necessary things in order to supply it with a few of the many things that modern, healthful life imposes: milk, essential food, clothing, medical examinations, medicines, and so on... And despite this continual struggle on the part of the valiant parents to keep the material balance, we see the two hundred thousand children, most of them thin of body and quick to be upset in temperament — because the standard of their food and of the care given them falls below what this age demands in the means of rearing children. Especially since these children are not so ill-fated as all that: they are the children of the doctors, engineers, and professors of tomorrow, and it is not right that they should be denied the enjoyment of a moderate life.

These young men do not try to load the responsibility for their families onto their fathers and mothers. They have come of age and freed themselves materially, preferring a life of independence, despite the stumbles and hard stretches that inevitably run through it. They face life with courage and with confidence in themselves, to fulfill their ambition and satisfy their desires.

Some may object that it is the height of dependence for these married young men to study with no income other than the government's. But public opinion in America feels that this income is an absolute right of these young men, who risked their lives and suffered grave wounds in the service of the flag and the repelling of the enemy. And now that they have triumphed and been healed of their wounds, is this government income of theirs a lawful right? On that no two people disagree.

The reason this discussion has been stirred up in America today is the feeling of American public opinion that these two hundred thousand families in their anomalous situation are suffering torments in keeping the material balance and overcoming difficulties, while keeping up, to some extent, with the appearances of healthy and social life. And the reason it is impossible to turn a blind eye to this situation is the child — the child whose upbringing demands necessities in which no economy is permissible.