394 CAROLINE H. ROBINSON 



supplied themselves with superior as well as plentiful husbands, it appears 

 that they were only seemingly dumb bunnies? Unless, alas! it is found 

 that men prefer dumb bunnies? I suspect they do. Thus the studious 

 college girl is brought face to face with that spiritual problem which all 

 brainy people confront: namely, not to obtrude their brains and especially 

 their linguistic bent to the discomfort of other people. Girls should remem- 

 ber that young men feel uncertain of winning their place in the world and 

 it is a real need which they suffer: to be encouraged to feel superior, not 

 merely adequate, by the women with whom they associate. 



The unmarried woman may reply: Does not a woman have this need too? 

 The answer, if any, is that superiority is a feeling gained within the con- 

 ventional social frame and the facts of courtship and afterwards of home- 

 making are supposed to confer kudos upon women, and since they are 

 supposed to confer it, they do confer it. Actually women do usually rule 

 the home, the chief social unit. It should be remembered that while men 

 do not usually care to take the trouble of ruling it, they do insist on adher- 

 ence to the convention that it is the man who leads the walks and talks. 



I examined the subsequent careers of the 24 girls who received over 90 in 

 mathematics or science but remained single. They were all teachers except 

 7. A similar large majority had specialized in modern languages as teacher 

 or undergraduate or both, 3 being heads of very large high-school language 

 departments. Shall one suspect that prowess with the tongue is unfavor- 

 able to matrimony? 



One teacher and 1 political worker were the only ones winning much 

 public recognition — both of them propagandists of world peace. Other- 

 wise, these 24 women were pretty well hidden, either in the classroom or, 

 one of them, as an "office" lawyer, one of them as "assistant" to the manager 

 of a large dairy, 3 with no occupation reported, and one as investment 

 expert in a big bank (but the public is not allowed to know that a woman 

 selects the bonds). 



NUMBER OF CHILDREN 



The eugenist can never feel much interest at any time in the number of 

 children per marriage (table 5). Whenever it is high, it may merely mean 

 that a lot of the group preferred single life to late childless marriage, and 

 if it is low it may merely mean the reverse. The "per capita" for the whole 

 group married and single, and the "rates by different ages at marriage" 

 (table 4) are the only summaries of significance. 



The modal year of age for marriage is 25 for women 11 and 27-28 for men, 



II Both mode and mean were about a year and a half later than similar figures for the 

 professional classes in the Milbank Memorial Studies — our mean being 26+. 



