[Illustration:  Pals.  The wise father will be companion as well as adviser to his children]

The children reared by this ideal father and mother in their ideal home will grow as naturally as plants in a well-cared-for garden.  With examples of courtesy and kindness, of cheerful work and health-producing play, ever before them in the lives of their parents, they may be led along the same paths to similar usefulness.  Their educational problems will be met by the combined effort of teachers and parents, and natural aptitude as well as community needs will dictate the choice of their life work.

That this ideal family is far removed from many families of our acquaintance merely proves the necessity of training for more efficient homemaking, and indeed for a better conception of homemaking ideals and problems.  If we are to teach our girls and our boys to be homemakers, we must consider carefully what they need to know.  If we are to counteract the tendencies of the past two or three decades away from homemaking as a vocation, we must show the true value of the homemaker to the community, and the opportunities which domestic life presents to the scientifically trained mind.

Education for homemaking necessarily implies teachers who are trained for homemaking instruction; and we may pause here to notice that no homemaking course in normal school or college can be sufficient to give the teacher true knowledge of ideal homes.  She must have seen such homes, or those which approximate the ideal.  Perhaps she has grown up in such a home.  More probably she has not.  If not, it must then necessarily follow that the lower have been the ideals in the home where the teacher had her training, the more she should see of other homes, and especially of good homes.  Her whole outlook may be changed by such contact; and with her outlook, her teaching; and with her teaching, her influence.

If all girls grew up in ideal homes, it seems probable that homemaking would appeal to them quite naturally as the ultimate vocation.  Indeed, we know that many girls feel this natural drawing, in spite of most unlovely conditions in their childhood homes.  The task of mother, teacher, and vocational counselor (who may be either) in this matter is a complicated one.  Some girls are not fitted by nature to be homemakers.  Some may with careful training overcome inherent defects which stand in the way of their success.  Some have the natural endowment, but have their eyes fixed on other careers.  Some have unhappy ideals to overcome.  The fact, however, confronts us that at some time in their lives a very large majority of these girls will be homemakers.  It is the part of those who have charge of them in their formative years to do two things for them:  first, to train them so that they may understand the tasks of the homemaker and perform them creditably if they are called upon; second, to teach all those girls who seem fitted for this high vocation to desire it, and to choose it for at least part of their mature lives.