Marriage Rate of Nurses 



511 



Training School on the same incomplete 

 basis, since the complete rate has already 

 been presented above (34%). The 

 total number of graduates up to and 

 including 1916 is 1,102. The annual re- 

 port gives the following summary of 

 their records : 



Private nursing 283 



Married 268 



Institutional work 119 



At home 148 



Social work 58 



Practising medicine 14 



Deceased 139 



Army 3 



Unknown 30 



Still in school 40 



1,102 



Dividing the total, 1,102, into the 

 number of married, 268, gives a mar- 

 riage rate of 25%. Since the five schools 

 whose rates were computed on this in- 

 complete basis are little higher than 25% 

 it is by no means certain that their com- 

 plete rates will be much higher than the 

 complete Bellevue rate (34^). 



No amount of optimism can bring one 

 to conclude that the marriage rate of 

 trained nurses — or at least of the grad- 

 uates of the best training schools- — is 

 even reasonably high. 



WELL FITTED FOR MARRIAGE 



On the whole, the education of a 

 nurse fits her admirably for home-mak- 

 ing and mothercraft. It might be sup- 

 posed that such women would be in 

 great demand as wives. The fact that 

 they marry to such a small extent may 

 indicate : 



(a) That men do not use good judg- 

 ment in selecting wives (this criticism 

 has been heard more than once from 

 graduates of women's colleges,) or that 

 there is something in a nurse's educa- 

 tion which men object to. 



(b) That the nurses prefer to remain 

 single. Many of them doubtless are set 

 on a career, but evidently not all, for of 

 the living, unmarried graduates of Belle- 

 vue, who have left school but whose 

 whereabouts are known, 16% are not 

 following their profession, but have 

 apparently given it up and are living at 

 home. It is doubtless true that nurses. 

 ha\'ing careers offering abundant em- 



ployment and good pay, can be and are 

 much more exacting in their require- 

 ments of a suitor, than are girls who have 

 no future in sight except matrimony. 

 Their celibacy can not be very largely 

 due to lack of opportunities to meet men, 

 for their opportunities in this respect are 

 notably good. It may be that their 

 work sometimes results in pessimism or 

 cynicism with regard to men and mar- 

 riage. 



CAUSES NOT EASILY DEFINED 



Any attempt to analyze the causes of 

 this low marriage rate must be futile, 

 until some data are available; for the 

 factors involved are doubtless mostly 

 complex psychological influences. But 

 there is one simpler cause that may be 

 suspected — age. Ten or 15 years ago, 

 the age of admission to good training 

 schools was from 21 to 25 years. The 

 average age of girls at graduation was 

 certainly not less than 25. The nurses 

 who graduated from the four large 

 schools cited at the beginning of this 

 study, in classes prior to 1902, were 

 therefore well toward the end of the most 

 marriageable period in a woman's life, at 

 the time of their graduation. Lately 

 the age standards of training schools 

 have been steadily reduced, twenty per- 

 haps being an average minimum, al- 

 though many schools will now admit 

 pupils at the age of 19. The average 

 age of graduates is therefore now about 

 23, according to those who are in a posi- 

 tion to form an intelligent opinion. This 

 decrease of age alone should tend to 

 increase the marriage rate of the more 

 recent graduates, as compared with 

 those a decade or two ago. 



The standards of selection of nurses 

 are believed likewise to be changing, 

 more girls taking up the profession in 

 place of teaching school and similar oc- 

 cupations. This should mean a further 

 increase in the marriage rate. 



That such an increase is needed, in the 

 interests of eugenics, will be generally 

 recognized. It would be of much in- 

 terest to know the birth rate among 

 married nurses. Possibly some member 

 of the American Genetic Association is 

 in a position to investigate this. 



