the woman—­with what results we shall later consider.  Practically the only constructive work left which the woman may not shift if she will to other shoulders, or shirk entirely, is the bearing of children and, to at least some degree, their care in early years.  The interests once centered in the home are now scattered—­the father goes to shop or office, the children to school, the mother either to work outside the home or in quest of other occupation and amusement to which leisure drives her.

[Illustration:  Photograph by Brown Bros.  Glove making.  Women, like their husbands, have followed work to the factories]

A second change in the conditions affecting home life is found in the increased educational aspirations of women.  Once the accepted and frankly anticipated career for a woman was marriage and the making of a home.  Her education was centered upon this end.  To-day all this is changed.  A girl claims, and is quite free to obtain, an education in all points like her brother’s, and the career she plans and prepares for may be almost anything he contemplates.  She may, or may not, enter upon the career for which she prepares.  Marriage may—­often does—­interfere with the career, although nearly as often the career seems to interfere with marriage.  Under the new alignment of ideals, there is less interest shown in homemaking and more in “the world’s work,” with a decided feeling that the two are entirely incompatible.

[Illustration:  Keystone View Co.  Employees leaving the Elgin Watch Company factory.  Thousands of women are away from their homes through long days of toil]

The girl, educated to earn her living in the market of the world, no longer marries simply because no other career is open to her; when she does marry, she is less likely than formerly, statistics tell us, to have children—­the only remaining work which, in these days, definitely requires a home.  Marriage and homemaking, therefore, are no longer inseparably connected in the woman’s mind.  Girls are willing to undertake matrimony, but often with the distinct understanding that their “careers” are not to be interfered with.  To them, then, marriage becomes more and more an incident in life rather than a life work.

[Illustration:  Photograph by Brown Bros.  A typical tenement house.  Congestion means discomfort within the home and decreasing possibility for satisfying there either material or social needs]

A third disintegrating influence as affecting home life is the great increase of city homes.  Urban conditions are almost without exception detrimental to home life.  Congestion means discomfort within the home and decreasing possibility for satisfying there either material or social needs; while on every hand are increasing possibilities for satisfying these needs outside the home.  Family life under such conditions often lacks, to an alarming degree, the quality of solidarity which makes the dwelling place