wife, so also the adjustment to single life is a process of years. With a woman it begins usually midway between twenty and thirty. She is then mature, but not so settled that adjustment to another personality would be difficult. She is physically best equipped for the bearing of children. She has completed her formal education. If she has been at work, she has served her apprenticeship. All that has gone before has been a preparation. Nature and custom define marriage and motherhood as the next step. But the same intangible factor which can make or mar marriage cuts across her path. She does not meet the man with whom she would mate.
This is not a decision that can be made finally. The possibility of marriage affects her plans for ten or fifteen years, or even longer. If, as now most single women do, she turns toward a career, she is not likely to make the same whole-hearted adjustment to it as that of which a man is capable. Uncertainty about the future renders it difficult for her to be constant in work.
Unless she finds opportunity for achievement in civic activities, or in business, she may develop a feeling of ineffectiveness because of what she may consider to be her failure to marry. She may
