Does Your Career Conflict with His Interests?

aims and interests are mutualThis selection is written by Mrs. Dale Carnegie. In her introduction to this somewhat disturbing book with a very long title, How to Help Your Husband Get Ahead in His Social and Business Life, Mrs. Carnegie states:

“I wish I could guarantee that, by following the rules in this book, you would slowly but surely help your husband to become a millionaire. It isn’t inconceivable, but the odds are against it; great fortures are harder to amass these days, and the higher one goes up the ladder, the narrower it becomes . . . any woman who applies these principles intelligently and judiciously, will have removed many of the barriers that keep men low on the ladder. She will have gone very far indeed toward motivating and stimulating her husband’s natural impulse to give his best to the world, and that he will be a more secure and happier person she may rest assured.”

I think that says it all.

1953: Does Your Career Conflict with His Interests?

If you have a job or career of your own, would you be willing to give it up if it would advance your husband’s interests to do so?

If not, you’re reading the wrong book! You are more interested in promoting yourself than promoting your husband.

Helping a man attain success is a full-time career in itself. You just can’t hope to do it unless it is important enough to claim all your attention. . . .

I do not underrate the many wives and mothers who are forced by circumstances to work at jobs outside their homes ~ I salute them with profound respect. I believe that women should equip themselves to earn a living by their own efforts, since life is uncertain and none of us ever knows when she may have to become a breadwinner to feed, house and clothe her family. Sickness, death, unemployment and disaster can upset the best-laid plans.

But since we are discussing ways and means by which wives can help their husbands to succeed, we cannot ignore the fact that this is a big enough job in itself to demand single mindedness in a wife.

No wife who is conscientiously bending her efforts on a career of her own can have much excess energy left to promote her husband’s interests. There are exceptions to everything, but observation and experience have convinced me that husbands and marriages have a better chance when aims and interests are mutual.

So, the next important rule for being adaptable is:

Be willing to give up a career of your own if it conflicts with your husband’s happiness and best interests.

Source: Carnegie, Mrs. Dale (Dorothy). How to Help Your Husband Get Ahead in His Social and Business Life. New York: Greystone Press, 1953.
~ pp. 111, 113-14 ~