What is the position of the home toward us in youth? We have seen something of its effect upon the child, the wholly helpless child, who knows no other place or power. We have seen something of its effect upon the woman in her life-long confinement there. Between childhood and maturity comes youth; holding what is left of the child's pure heart and vivid hopes, and what begins to stir of man's or woman's power. The gain of a race, if there is a gain, must make itself felt in youth – more strength, more growth, more beauty, a larger conscience, a sounder judgment, a more efficient will.

Each new generation must improve upon its parents; else the world stands still or retrogrades. In this most vivid period of life how does the home meet the needs of the growing soul? The boy largely escapes it. He is freer, even in childhood; the more resistant and combative nature, the greater impatience of pain, makes the young male far harder to coerce. He sees his father always going out, and early learns to view the home from a sex-basis, as the proper place for women and children, and to push incessantly to get away from it.

From boy to boy in the alluring summer evenings we hear the cry, "Come on out and have some fun!" Vainly we strive and strive anew to "keep the boys at home." It cannot be done. Fortunately for us it cannot be done. We dread to have them leave it, and with good reason, for well we know there is no proper place for children in the so long unmothered world; but even in danger and temptation they learn something, and those who struggle through their youth unscathed make better men than if they had been always softly shielded in the home.

The world is the real field of action for humanity. So far humanity has been well-nigh wholly masculine; and the boy, feeling his humanity, pushes out into his natural field, the world. He learns and learns, from contact with his kind. He learns about all sorts of machinery, all manner of trades and businesses. He has companions above him and below him and beside him, the wide human contact in which we grow so rapidly. If he is in the city he knows the city, if he is in the country he knows the country, far more fully than his sister. A thousand influences reach him that never come to her, formative influences, good and bad, that modify character. He has far less of tutelage, espionage, restraint; he has more freedom by daylight, and he alone has any freedom after dark. All the sweet, mysterious voices of the night, the rich, soft whisperings of fragrant summer, when the moon talks and the young soul answers; the glittering, keen silence of winter nights, when between blue-black star-pointed space and the level shine of the snow stands but one living thing – yourself – all this is cut off from the girl. The real intimacy with nature comes to the soul alone, and the poor, over-handled girl soul never has it.

In some few cases, isolated and enviable, she may have this common human privilege, but not enough to count. She must be guarded in the only place of safety, the home. Guarded from what? From men. From the womanless men who may be prowling about while all women stay at home. The home is safe because women are there. Out of doors is unsafe because women are not there. If women were there, everywhere, in the world which belongs to them as much as to men, then everywhere would be safe. We try to make the women safe in the home, and keep them there; to make the world safe for women and children has not occurred to us. So the boy grows, in the world as far as he can reach it, and the girl does not grow equally, being confined to the home. In very recent years, within one scant century, we are letting the girls go to school, even to college. They pour out into the larger field and fill it at once. Their human faculties have some chance to grow as well as the over-emphasised feminine ones; and in our schools and colleges youth of both sexes finds the room, stimulus, and exercise it could not find at home.

The boy who does not go to college goes to business, to work in some way. To find an able-bodied intelligent boy in a home between breakfast and supper would argue a broken leg. But girls we find by thousands and thousands; "helping mother," if mother does the work; and if there are servants to do the work, the girl does – what?

What is the occupation of the daughter of the house? Let us suppose her to be healthy. Let us suppose her to have a fair share of ability and education. She has no longer the school or the college, she has only the home. Not that she is physically confined there. She may go out by daylight, giving careful account of her steps, and visit other girls in their homes. She may receive visits, both from girls and boys; and she may go out continually to all manner of entertainments. Perhaps she is expected to dust the parlour, to arrange the flowers, to "keep up her music." She has enough to eat, enough and more than enough to wear; but what exercise has she for body or brain? Perhaps in games and dances she keeps her body active – but what sort of occupation is that for a young human creature of this century, a creature of power? The young woman has the same race inheritance of ability, the same large brain-growth, as the man. The physical improvement of our times is reflected in them too; fine stalwart girls we see, tall, straight, broad-shouldered. She has had, in specific education, the same mental training as the boy.

How would her brother be content with a day's work of dusting the parlour and arranging the flowers; of calling and being called on? Amusement is good, sometimes necessary; best and most necessary to the tired, unhappy, and overworked. But youth – healthy, happy, and vigorous, full of the press of unused power and the accumulating ambition of all the centuries – why should youth waste its splendour in such unsatisfying ways?

If you ask the father, he will merely say that it is the proper position for a girl; he is "able to support her," she does not "have to work," she can amuse herself, and as for a field for her abilities – she will find that in her own home when she is married. Ask her mother – and she will tell you, making a sad confession all unknowingly – "let her enjoy herself now; she will have care enough later." There is a tacit agreement that girls shall have all the "good time" possible while they are girls, that they may have it to remember! Does this "good time" satisfy the girl? Is she happy in her father's home, just passing the time till she moves into her husband's?

Sometimes she is. Her education has been strong to make her so. The home atmosphere of predominant clothes and food has been about her from the cradle, and she still has clothes and food, and may elaborate them without limit. She may devote as much time to the adornment of the table as she wishes; and if her inclination take her also to the kitchen, perhaps even to the cooking school, that is more than well. She may also devote herself to the parlour and its adornment; but most naturally of all to the adornment of her own young body – all these are proper functions of the home. She may love and serve her immediate dear ones also, to any extent; that is the basic principle of it all, that is occupation enough for any girl. Yes, there is occupation enough as far as filling time goes; but how if it does not satisfy? How if the girl wants something else to do – something definite, something developing?

This is deprecated by the family. "Work" is held by all to be a thing no mortal soul should do unless compelled by want. We speak sadly, tenderly, of the poor girl whose father died and left her unprovided for, wherefore "she had to work." We have not learned to see that some kind of work is necessary to all human creatures to use their powers; not mere tread-mill repetition of small, useless things, but such range of action as shall exercise all the faculties. And least of all have we learned to see that a human soul, to be healthy, must love and care for more than its own blood relations.

What the girl, as a normal human being, wants is full exercise in large social relation; things to think about, feel, and do, which do not in any way concern the home. Race-babyhood may be content at home – it was first made for babies. But as we grow up into our modern human range of power, no home can or ought to content us. We need not, therefore, cease to love it, need not neglect or ignore it. We simply need something more. That is the great lack which keeps girlhood unsatisfied; the call of the human soul for its full field of action, the world. We try to meet this lack by a surfeit of supplies for lower needs.

Since we first began to force upon our girl baby's astonished and resisting brain the fact that she was a girl; since we curbed her liberty by clothing and ornament calculated only to emphasise the fact of sex, and by restrictions of decorum based upon the same precocious distinction, we have never relaxed the pressure. As if we feared that there might be some mistake, that she was not really a girl but would grow up a boy if we looked the other way, we diligently strove to enforce and increase her femininity by every possible means. So by the time her womanhood does come it finds every encouragement, and the humanhood which should predominate we have restricted and forbidden. Moreover, whatever of real humanness she does manifest we persist in regarding as feminine.

For instance, the girl wants friends, social contact. She cannot satisfy this want in normal lines of work, in the natural contact of the busy world, so she tries to meet it on the one plane allowed – in what we call "Society." Her own life being starved, she seeks to touch other lives as far and fast as possible. Next to doing things one's self is the association with others who can do them. So the girl reaches out for friends. Women friends can give her little; their lives are empty as her own, their talk is of the same worn themes – their point of view either the kitchen or the parlour. Therefore she finds most good in men friends; they are human, they are doing something. All this is set down to mere feminine "desire to attract"; we expect it, and we provide for it. Our "social" machinery is largely devoted to "bringing young people together"; not in any common work, in large human interests, but in such decorated idleness, with music, perfume, and dance, as shall best minister to the only forces we are willing to promote.

Is the girl satisfied? Is it really what she wants, all she wants? If she were a Circassian slave, perhaps it would do. For the daughter of free, active, intelligent, modern America it does not do; and therefore our girls in ever-increasing numbers are leaving home. It is not that they do not love their homes; not that they do not want homes of their own in due season; it is the protest of every healthy human soul against the-home-and-nothing-else.

Our poorer girls are going into mills and shops, our richer ones into arts and professions, or some educational and philanthropic work. We oppose this proof of racial growth and vitality by various economic fallacies about "taking the bread out of other women's mouths" – and in especial claim that it is "competing with men," "lowering wages" and the like. We talk also, in the same breath, or the next one, about "the God-given right to work" – and know not what we mean by that great phrase.

To work is not only a right, it is a duty. To work to the full capacity of one's powers is necessary for human development. It is no benefit to a human being to keep him, or her, in down-wrapped idleness, it is a gross injury. If a man could afford to put daughters and wife to bed and have them fed and washed like babies, would that be a kindness? "They do not have to walk!" he might say. Yes, they do have to, else would their muscles weaken and shrink, and beauty and health disappear. For the health and beauty of the body it must have full exercise. For the health and beauty of the mind it must have full exercise. No normal human mind can find full exercise in dusting the parlour and arranging the flowers; no, nor in twelve hours of nerve-exhaustion in the kitchen. Exhaustion is not exercise.

"But they are free to study – to read, to improve their minds!" we protest. Minds are not vats to be filled eternally with more and ever more supplies. It is use, large, free, sufficient use that the mind requires, not mere information. Our college girls have vast supplies of knowledge; how can they use it in the home? Could a college boy apply his education appropriately to "keeping house" – and, if not, how can the girl? Full use of one's best faculties – this is health and happiness for both man and woman.

But how about those other people's wages? – will be urged. Productive labour adds to the wealth of the world, it does not take away. If wealth were a fixed quantity, shared carefully among a lot of struggling beggars, then every new beggar would decrease the other's share.

To work is to give, not to beg. Every worker adds to the world's wealth, increases everyone's share. Of course there are people whose "work" is not of value to anyone; who simply use their power and skill to get other people's money away from them; the less of these the better. That is not productive labour. But so long as we see to it that the work we do is worth more than the pay we get, our consciences may be clean; we give to the world and rob no one. As to the immediate facts that may be alleged, "overcrowded labour market," "over-production," and such bugaboos, these are only facts as watered stock and stolen franchises are facts; not economic laws, but criminal practices. A temporary superficial error in economic conduct need not blind us to permanent basic truth, and the truth which concerns us here is that a human creature must work for the health and power and pleasure of it; and that all good work enriches the world.

So the girl need not stay at home and content her soul with chocolate drops lest some other girl lose bread. She may butter that bread and share the confections, by her labour, if it be productive. And by wise working she may learn to see how unwise and how unnecessary are the very conditions which now hold her back. At present she is generally held back. Her father will not allow her to work. Her mother needs her at home. So she stays a while longer. If she marries, she passes out of this chapter, becoming, without let or change, "the lady of the house." If she does not marry, what then? What has father or mother, sister or brother, to offer to the unmarried woman? What is the home to her who has no "home of her own"?

The wife and mother has a real base in her home: distorted and overgrown though it may have become, away in at the centre lies the everlasting founder – in the little child. Unnecessary as are the mother's labours now, they were once necessary, they have a base of underlying truth. But what real place has a grown woman of twenty-five and upwards in anyone else's home? She is not a child, and not a mother. The initial reason for being at home is not there. What business has she in it? The claim of filial devotion is usually advanced to meet this question. Her parents need her. And here comes out in glaring colours the distinction between girl and boy, between man's and woman's labour.

Whatever of filial gratitude, love, and service is owed to the parent is equally owed by boy and girl. If there is a difference it should be on the boy's side, as he is more trouble when little and less assistance in the house when big. Now, what is the accepted duty of the boy to the parents, when they are old, feeble, sick, or poor? First, to maintain them, that is, to provide for them the necessaries of life and as much more as he can compass. Then, to procure for them service and nursing, if need be. Also himself to bestow affection and respect, and such part of his time as he can spare from the labour required to maintain them. This labour he performs like a civilised man, by the service of other people in some specialised industry; and his ability to care for his parents is measured by his ability to perform that larger service.

What is the accepted duty of the girl to the parents in like case? She is required to stay at home and wait upon them with her own hands, serve them personally, nurse them personally, give all her time and strength to them, and this in the old, old uncivilised way, with the best of intentions, but a degree of ability measured by the lowest of averages.

It is the duty of the child to care for the infirm parent – that is not questioned; but how? Why, in one way, by one child, and in so different a way by another? The duty is precisely the same; why is the manner of fulfilling it so different? If the sick and aged mother has a capable son to support her, he provides for her a house, clothing, food, a nurse, and a servant. If she has but a daughter, that daughter can only furnish the nurse and servant in her own person, skilled or unskilled as the case may be; and both of them are a charge upon the other relatives or the community for the necessaries of life. Why does not the equally capable daughter do more to support her parent when it is necessary? She cannot, if she is herself the nurse and servant. Why does she have to be herself the nurse and servant? Because she has been always kept at home and denied the opportunity to take up some trade or profession by which she could have at once supported herself, her parents, and done good service in the world. Because "the home is the place for women," and in the home is neither social service nor self-support.

There is another and a darker side to this position. The claim of exclusive personal service from the daughter is maintained by parents who are not poor, not old, not sick, not feeble; by a father who is quite able to pay for all the service he requires, and who prefers to maintain his daughter in idleness for his own antiquated masculine pride – and by a mother who is quite able to provide for herself, if she choose to; who is no longer occupied by the care of little children, who does not even do house-service, but who lives in idleness herself, and then claims the associate idleness of her daughter, on grounds past finding out. Perhaps it is that an honourably independent daughter, capable, respected, well-paid, valuable to the community, would be an insupportable reproach to the lady of the house. Perhaps it is a more pathetic reason – the home-bound, half-developed life, released from the immediate cares, which, however ill-fulfilled, at least gave sanction to her position, now seeks to satisfy its growing emptiness by the young life's larger hope and energy. This may be explanation, but is no justification.

The value and beauty of motherhood depend on the imperative needs of childhood. The filial service of the child depends on the imperative needs of the parent. When the girl is twenty-one and the mother is forty-five, neither position holds. The amount of love and care needed by either party does not require all day for its expression. The young, strong, well-educated girl should have her place and work, equally with her brother. Does not the mother love her son, though he is in business? Could she not manage to love a daughter in business, too? It is not love, far less is it wisdom, which so needlessly immolates a young life on the altar of this ancient custom of home-worship. The loving mother is not immortal. What is to become of the unmarried daughter after the mother is gone?

What has the home done to fit her for life. She may be rich enough to continue to live in it, not to "have to work," but is she, at fifty, still to find contentment in dusting the parlour and arranging the flowers, in calling and receiving calls, in entertaining and being entertained? Where is her business, her trade, her art, her profession, her place in life? The home is not the whole of life. It is a very minor part of it – a mere place of preparation for living. To keep the girl at home is to cut her off from life.

More and more is this impossible. The inherited power of the ages is developing women to such an extent that by the simple force of expansion they are cracking the confining walls about them, bursting out in all directions, rising under the enormous pressure that keeps them down like mushrooms under a stone. The girl has now enough of athletic training to strengthen her body, balance her nerves, set her tingling with the healthy impulse to do. She has enough mental training to give some background and depth to her mind, with the habit of thinking somewhat. If she is a college girl, she has had the inestimable privilege of looking at the home from outside, in which new light and proportion it has a very different aspect.

The effort is still made by proud and loving fathers, unconscious of their limitations, to keep her there afterward, and by loving mothers even more effectually. They play upon the strings of conscience, duty, and affection. They furnish every pleasant temptation of physical comfort, ease, the slow corruption of unearned goods. To oppose this needs a wider range of vision and a greater strength of character than the daughter of a thousand homes can usually command.

The school has helped her, but she has not had it long. The college has helped her more, but that is not a general possession as yet, and has had still shorter influence. Strong, indeed, is the girl who can decide within herself where duty lies, and follow that decision against the combined forces which hold her back. She must claim the right of every individual soul to its own path in life, its own true line of work and growth. She must claim the duty of every individual soul to give to its all-providing society some definite service in return. She must recognise the needs of the world, of her country, her city, her place and time in human progress, as well as the needs of her personal relations and her personal home. And, further, using the parental claim of gratitude and duty in its own teeth, she must say: "Because I love you I wish to be worthy of you, to be a human creature you may be proud of as well as a daughter you are fond of. Because I owe you care and service when you need it, I must fit myself now to render that care and service efficiently. Moreover, my duty to you is not all my duty in the world. Life is not merely an aggregation of families. I must so live as to meet all my duties, and, in so doing, I shall better love and serve my parents."

Conscience is strong in women. Children are very violently taught that they owe all to their parents, and the parents are not slow in foreclosing the mortgage. But the home is not a debtor's prison – to girls any more than to boys. This enormous claim of parents calls for examination.

Do they in truth do all for their children; do their children owe all to them? Is nothing furnished in the way of safety, sanitation, education, by that larger home, the state? What could these parents do, alone, in never so pleasant a home, without the allied forces of society to maintain that home in peace and prosperity. These lingering vestiges of a patriarchal cult must be left behind. Ancestor-worship has had victims enough. Girls are human creatures as well as boys, and both have duties, imperative duties, quite outside the home.

One more protest is to be heard: "Most girls marry. Surely they might stay at home contentedly until they leave it for another." Yes, most girls marry. All girls ought to – unless there is something wrong with them. And, being married, they should have homes. But, to have a home and enjoy it, is one thing; to stay in it – the whole time – is quite another. It is the same old assumption that woman is a house-animal; that she has no place in the open, no business in the world. If the girl had a few years of practical experience in the world she would be far better able to enjoy and appreciate her own home when she had one. At present, being so much restricted where she is, she very often plunges from the frying-pan into the fire, simply from too much home.

"Why should she have married that fellow!" cries the father; "I gave her a good home – she had everything she wanted." It does not enter the mind of this man that a woman is something more than a rabbit. Even rabbits, well-fed rabbits, will gnaw and dig to get out – they like to run as well as eat. Also, the girl whose character has time to "set" a little in some legitimate business associations, instead of being held in everlasting solution at home, will be able to face the problems of domestic industry and expense with new eyes.

No men, with practical sense and trained minds, would put up for a week with the inchoate mass of wasted efforts in the home; and, when women have the same trained minds and practical sense, they will not put up with it much longer. For the home's sake, as well as her own sake, the girl will profit by experience in the working world.

Once she learns the pleasure and power of specialisation, the benefits of organisation, the advantages of combination, the whole tremendous enginery of civilised life, she can no more drop back into her ancestral cradle than her brother could turn into an Arcadian shepherd, piping prettily to his fleecy charge.