Evening Star Newspaper, November 29, 1931, Page 87

THE SUNDAY Analyzing Mo What Investigators Discovered About the Number of Hours the Average Mother Spends on Bridge, Movies, Clubs, Society —and WhatGood TheyDoHer. HE American mother has come in for a lot of cussion in recent years. Writers, psycologists and femi- nists have said that she is this, that and the other kind of person; that she does such and such things in her spare time and trat her ideas are so and so—— But no one has really known anything very definite about it. Now, however, two authorities in this field have submitted the results of careful surveys that have just been completed, and it is possible for the first time to get a fair idea of the truth about the lady One of trese authorities is Willie Melmoth PBomar, doctor of philosophy of Columbia Uni- versity and authority on home economics, who has just finished a Nation-wide study based on an extensive qucstionnaire. The other is Gladys Fisher, chairman of the Miss Gladys “ishker, who reveals what the avercge mother is like and how she puts in her time. National Committee for Public Aid to Mothers, and a former lecturer at Columbia. For many years she has been gathering material on mothers, and she has b2'n zble to draw certain deductions about the “average American mother.” And what conclu thorities reached? ns have these two au- ERE is the way Miss Fisher describes the average American mother: She is from 25 to 35 years old. . She is the mother of three children, and she probably is going to have one or two more eventually. She is the wife of a man who makes about $1.800 a year. Sh~ is in charge of a home of about five rooms. She has no servant, except that now and then she gets a little Felp with the laundry work. Her health is fairly good, and she is a gram- mar school graduate. That is the picture Miss Fisher paints. Dr. *Bomar, studying the r:iplies to her question- naire, sizes mother up as follows: She is, for the most part, a firm believer in prohibition, and usually prefers W. C. T. U. work to other activi 2 She likes to play bridge, and she devotes just a little less than three hours a week to this pursuit. She likes the movies, and goes anywhere from once a year to five times a week. When she goes she prefers som<t!ing romantic, with a “good moral” in second place, and an edu- cational film third. Twenty-five per cent of mothers belong to some woman’s club. So says Dr. Bomar, leafing through her questionnaire. The qu:cstions she asked some hundreds of mothers in all parts of the country —the answers to wrich provided the details for this little picture—included these: Do you belong to a woman’s club? what is its purpose? How much time do you give to bridge play- ing a week? How many times do you attend movies dur- ing the week? What type of film interests you most? If so, - Do you attend concerts given tn your town? If so, how often? Do you attend lectures given in your town? If so, how often? Do rou have “family parties,” when only members of the family congre- gate for a good time? If so, how often? What is the chief form of en- tertainment at these parties? NY woman who wants to see how she compares with this “average mother” ecan answer those questions herself and compare the results with Dr. Bomar's averages, compiled above. Miss Fisher, mean- while, has gone through her 1list of material to find out just how mother puts in her day. Here is the typical schedule, as she found it, for an average American mother: Seven o'clock—Rise, help younger children to dress, gel breakfast. Eight to 9— Get children off to school, wash dishes. Nine to 11—Make beds, go to mar- ket, tidy up the house. Eleven—Cook children’s lunch, set table, etc. Twelve to 1—Give children lunch, see that they are tidy for the after- noon school session. One to 2—Wash up after luncheon. Two to 5-——Sew, darn, take the baby out in his carriage for an airing, go shopping, visit school, go to movies or & party, receive callers—and so on. Fiv Prepare supper or dinner. Six—Serve evening meal to family, wash dishes. Seven to 9—Put children to bed, listen to radio, call on neighbors or receive calls, help youngsters with lessons, read paper or maga- zine. Nine to 11—Set bread, lock up hcuse, retire. That is the average mother's day, as Miss Fisher has it pictured. She found, also, that the average mother sets apart special days for special tasks, as follows: Monday or Tuesday—Family washing. Tuesday or V esday—Fanily ironing. Wednesday or Thursday—Window washing, odd jobs, and socmetimes “my day for taking it 1y or Saturday—Regllar weekly cleaning. Saturday—Extra coocking. Sunday—Preparing the most elaborate din- ner of the week. Now Dr. Bomar discovered that “community activities” do not take up a great deal of the average mother’s attention. When mother plays bridge and goes to the movies, she says, she doesn’t bother with community activities at all. Incidentally, Dr. Bomar has tabulated the figures about bridge-playing and movie-going in an interesting ranner. ELECTING various widely separated cities at random, Dr. Bcmar found that the average number of hours mother devotes to bridge each week is about as follows: In San Francisco, 3 hours; in Lincoln, Nebr., 2 hours and 54 minutes; in Atlanta, 3 hours and 36 minutes; in Spokane, 1 hour and 30 minutes; in Cranston, R. I, 3 hours and 10 minutes. Figures on movie attendance in those cities run as follows: In San Francisco, 87 per cent of the mothers go to the movies. In Lincoln, the percentage is 77; in Atlanta, 65; in Spockane, 87, and in Cranston, 89 And so it goes. Dr. Bomar found that few of these mothers cared greatly about commu- nity activities, or about lectures and concerts. Most of them, she adds, expiained that house- work took up so much time that they had lit'le left for commun work, Now Miss Fis , scanning these figures, doesn’t believe that there is anything in the least dismaying about them. “I cannot feel,” she says, ‘“that the fact that 50 per cent of American mothers seem to prefer the movies to committee work is par- ticularly alarming. In fact, T believe that the movies or bridge may be better recreation for mother, in her 10 important child-bearing years than the best-run club or community activity, “I once knew a voung mother whose story is apropes. She belonzed to all the clubs she could. There was no good deed done in her town but what her busy hands helped it on. “But when they inaugurated medical inspec- tion of school children, the report went home to this voung mother that all three of her own children were suffering from malnutrition. And if they had been children from the tenements, so it was said, the report might have called it plain starvation. “Because this is a true story, I have always regarded the mother too active outside of her STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, NOVEMBER 29, 1391, home, in the most important years of mother- hood, as somebody who might well be watched. “The average mother, in her most important child-bearing years, is intensely busy and often very tired. Her great danger, mentally, is vhe danger of dullness. Often her entire outside Interest is represented in the news father brings home from his great world outside. " ND so, I believe, when mother so very often prefers a movie thriller to a lecture on the milk supply, she is exercising rare good sense. Mother has plenty of problems at home. “Which leads me to ask two questions: Isn't She discovered that mother plays bridge nearly three hours a week . .. Dr. Willie Melmoth Bomar, who asked a lot of questions. it more reasonable for the average American mother to spend most of her energies at home? And should it not be the job of the social en- gineers to draft childless or older women for club and community work? Let the grand- mothers step forward and lend a hand. Let the suddenly lonely woman volunteer, the woman whose children have married and who feels the emptiness of changing houses. “Judge Anderson of Georgia, in a comment cn the Wickersham report, remarked that in large measure the problem of youthful crime was the problem of the bad boy, and that the bad boy was directly caused, in many instances, by some essential failing of the family. Often this was a mother at work all day long outside of her home ther's Spare T'ime y /_' k! “And for these reasons I am prompted to believe that we should all encourage our avere age mothers to save their zest for their prie mary tasks, and, if it amuses them, to find their recreation at the movies on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. For thus the average mother may be renewing her forces for budget building and menu planning all the rest of the week.”" * N trying to find out just what community ine terests the average mother has, Dr. Bomar submitted a long list of civic activities and asked each mother to rate them according to her opinion of their importance—and, in ade dition, to state which one she herself was ace tively engaged in. Her list includes the fole lowing activities: Proper care of dependent and economically. underprivileged children. Establishment or proper functioning of school and public clinics or health centers. Pure and adequate milk supply, including milk inspection. Enactment or enforcement of adequate child labor laws. Establishment or proper functioning of infant or maternity welfare centers. Provision of hot lunches for school children, Parent-teacher organizations. Establishment or operation of recreation centers. Establishment or upkeep of community lie braries or reading clubs. Boy and Girl Scout movements and Y. M, C. A. and Y. W. C. A. activities. Establishment or upkeep of night schools. By checking the order of importance in which mothers rated these activities, Dr. Bomar was able to get a good picture of ¢he average woman's attitude toward the currents of come munity life in her neighborhood. Soot Is Consumed by Fumes of Garbage ITH the coal-burning season at hand, the householder using soft coal may find it advanageous to put all his garbage in his fire, for the fumes have the property of consuming soot. Particularly is this so of orange sking angl grapefruit skins. A handful of ice cream salt thrown in the middle of a hot fire will gp far toward cleaning the soot from the sides of boilers, as will wornout dry cells. The chemical action of the zinc in the dry cells is largely the source of the anti-soot virtuze of the discarded drv cells,