Preparation for Marriage Is an Essential Part of Education-Upon no account should the marriage relation be entered upon until the parties have a knowledge of the duties of a practical domestic life. The wife should have culture of mind and manners that she may be qualified to rightly train the children that may be given her.1Pacific Health Journal, May, 1890. – {AH 87.1}
Many ladies, accounted well-educated, having graduated with honors at some institution of learning, are shamefully ignorant of the practical duties of life. They are destitute of the qualifications necessary for the proper regulation of family, and hence essential to its happiness. They may talk of woman’s elevated sphere and of her rights, yet they themselves fall far below the true sphere of woman. – {AH 87.2}
It is the right of every daughter of Eve to have a thorough knowledge of household duties, to receive training in every department of domestic labor. Every young lady should be so educated that if called to fill the position of wife and mother, she may preside as a queen in her own domain. She should be fully competent to guide and instruct her children and to direct her servants, or, if need be, to minister with her own hands to the wants of her household. It is her right to understand the mechanism of the human body and the principles of hygiene, the matters of diet and dress, labor and recreation, and countless others that intimately concern the well-being of her household. It is her right to obtain such a knowledge of the best methods of treating disease that she can care for her children in sickness, instead of leaving her precious treasures in the hands of stranger nurses and physicians. – {AH 87.3}
The idea that ignorance of useful employment is an essential characteristic of the true gentleman or lady is contrary to the design of God in the creation of man. Idleness is a sin, and ignorance of common duties is the result of folly, which afterlife will give ample occasion to bitterly regret.2Fundamentals of Christian Education, 75. – {AH 88.1}
Young women think that it is menial to cook and do other kinds of housework; and, for this reason, many girls who marry and have the care of families have little idea of the duties devolving upon a wife and mother.3The Ministry of Healing, 302. – {AH 88.2}
It should be a law that young people should not get married unless they know how to care for the children that are brought into their family. They must know how to take care of this house that God has given them. Unless they understand in regard to the laws which God has established in their system, they cannot understand their duty to their God or themselves.4Manuscript 19, 1887. – {AH 88.3}
Excerpt from Adventist Home by Ellen G. White A great book to have in your home.
