Chapter 3: How can Money Help or Hinder? 3. Shall Both Work Outside?

In many families it is a practical necessity for the wife to work outside as well as the husband, and when this is necessary it should be accepted. Freedom of women to work for wage or salary has advantages. In some cases it relieves the necessity of undue postponement of marriage. In others, special abilities of the wife make it desirable for her to work outside the home. Yet marriage itself is the finest sort of a career, and it is detrimental to family life when those women who should be devoting their best talents and energies to the high profession of being wives, mothers and homemakers are compelled to give so much of themselves to the outside world that they have only margins of time to give to their homes. The wife working efficiently at home is a real producer, in some cases saving quite as much as she would earn elsewhere.

When the wife has a job more help will be needed at home. As the two are both working away from the home during the day it will be all the more fun doing things together in the evening. In those occasional cases in which the wife's earnings are larger than those of the husband, this fact should not cause him any embarrassment so long as he is doing some useful work and doing it well, and especially if he is striving to improve himself in his work. The wage received is not necessarily a gauge of personal worth.