The American Girl: Child, Then Young Woman

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No sooner does the summer vacation arrive than most schoolgirls have prepared for it a full program of work. Very rarely does the American girl spend the summer vacation resting at home, even if her family owns a house at a summer resort. She may keep two weeks for herself to rest, and spend the remainder in temporary employment.

A great number work as leaders of summer camps, or as typists in commercial establishments. During the fruit-picking seasons many move out to the orchards to work picking apples and cherries.

But the American girl's absorption in work has narrowed the horizon of her knowledge and left her limited in culture. This applies even to students in higher studies, though most of them are very skilled indeed in their field of specialization; and it is very rare that we find an American girl who commands a foreign language in addition to her own, or who knows even a little about the countries of the other worlds.

The girl admits this great gap in her knowledge. She says: I study and work at the same time, and sports and social life take up my free hours; so I cannot now attend to culture — I shall postpone that until after forty, and then I shall be permitted to give myself to literature, learning, and poetry!!

Faced with this unbridled desire of the American girl for work and self-reliance, one asks how she looks upon the future: is her aim in life only to secure a profession to live by?

It may be said that however far the American girl goes in study and work, her first wish is marriage; there is hardly a girl in the world who looks toward married life and fights to attain it like the American girl. For the sake of her marriage she is ready to sacrifice her work and her profession. Often a girl makes enrolling at the university a means of meeting a young man to marry.

Unlike the Arab girl, whose family still 'spares' her the trouble of choosing the right husband, the American girl is responsible for choosing her life's partner. She must undertake the search for him herself, even if it requires leaving her town and moving to live in a new community in another town.

But the American girl does not let her wish take command of the wheel of her life, or paralyze her activity in earning her living, so long as she is not bound to a fiancé or a husband.

I once asked a student in the physics courses the reason for her strenuous effort to gain her degree, since she said she preferred married life and the raising of children to it. She laughed and said: 'Of course my wish is marriage — but that does not mean that I must squat at home to "wait for my portion," as an Eastern girl would say. Here in America, unlike your countries, if a girl sits at home waiting for "the matchmakers," she is branded with idleness and laziness, and the young men keep away from her!'

Then she went on, enumerating the reasons that make her continue her studies: 'I must obtain a profession that secures my life financially if, say, I do not marry, for I hate to be a burden on my family. And there is another reason: if it should happen that I part from my husband, or that he leaves me with children, I would then be able to earn my living and support my children by the sweat of my brow.'

The American girl finds no difficulty in getting to know a young man she hopes to marry in the future, for American society is built upon the mixing of the sexes, and is tolerant to a great extent of a girl's keeping company with a young man. And we should mention that American schools, from the primary grades on, are mixed; the girl comes to know her classmate on the school benches from childhood, and no sooner does she reach fourteen than she begins going out with him to the cinema or to attend sporting events. Her mother encourages her to go out with her companions, but sets her an hour for her return home at night so long as she has not passed twenty.

American society shows its apprehension at the increasing freedom of the new generation (between the ages of 14 and 20), and great efforts are made to occupy the young men and girls with membership in clubs and in athletic and social institutions; the schools cooperate with the churches and the homes to keep the conduct of youth in check by means of these clubs.

I still remember last New Year's Eve, when the inhabitants of one village met and deliberated on holding an evening dance for their children, to keep them from going to the bars and dance halls on that night, and so escape being exposed to automobile collisions. One of the merchants volunteered that day to pay the expenses of the dance orchestra; the village school volunteered to hold the dance in its hall; and then the families joined in by contributing sweets and Coca-Cola and decorating the dance floor.

That night some two hundred boys and girls gathered and danced until midnight. Some of the parents stood watching the party from the windows, while the school principal and a group of her teachers themselves distributed the evening's favors — horns, balloons, and paper hats — among the dancers.

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And so that the reader may get a clear idea of how an American girl lives, take for example Helen, a girl of twenty-four who took her degree in commercial sciences and works today as an employee in an industrial company, drawing 250 dollars a month.

Two years ago she moved to live in the city of Chicago, some five hundred miles from her town, where her father lives with her young brother. Her father is a physician whose yearly income is about twenty thousand dollars.

Helen could have found work in her own town, but she preferred to move to Chicago, saying: Here I can widen the horizon of my knowledge and experience, and my distance from my family strengthens in me the spirit of self-reliance.

Helen lives in a small apartment which she rented with a girl companion who also works, in a bank in the city. The two go to work in the morning by bus and do not return home until five in the evening; Helen takes turns with her companion in preparing the supper each day.

On most nights of the week Helen keeps to the house in the evening, sometimes busy sewing herself a dress which she cuts out herself from a Pattern, or she goes with her companion to the cinema.

Helen works five days a week, and usually spends Saturday busy tidying the apartment and washing and ironing her clothes. She may also go to buy the week's groceries; and if the weather is bright on Sunday, she goes with her companion on a bicycle outing outside the city, or spends the afternoon viewing the halls of the city museum.

As for Saturday evening, it has great importance among American girls. It is set apart for gaiety and good cheer: the girl goes out with her escort to dinner, then to the cinema or to dance.

Helen had come to know, through her friend's fiancé, a young engineer, also twenty-four years of age.

About three months have passed since their acquaintance, and she has gone out with him every Saturday night since that time. I asked her whether there was any plan of engagement between them. She said: There is no doubt that I like him, and we are friends; but it is hard to think of marriage now, since no more than three months have passed since we met — so it is better that we get to know each other a while longer!