That, however, only makes it seem the more important that we should somehow learn how to prevent the marriage of those who cannot make their union a success.

The part that social control can play in preventing the attempt to marry by the wholly unfit in body, mind, or work-capacity has been already suggested, and that pressure of the community upon the individual choice will, without doubt, largely increase as the bad results of too great individualism in the family relation are more clearly perceived.
=Social Restrictions on Marriage Choices.=--There will, in time, be a narrowing of the circle within which personal choices can be made, so that the markedly defective in mind, the victims of disease inimical to family well-being, and the pauper strains of inheritance will be ruled out before young people have a chance to marry according to their own inclination.
With such helpful narrowing of choices there would still remain many dangers to be avoided if the divorce statistics are to be held within bounds of social safety.
The part that the family elders once played in settling vital questions of adjustment within the marriage bond has now, for the most part, to be undertaken for consideration and decision by the young people themselves.

To name these most important questions of adjustment and discuss them in the light of modern ideals and desires is to get a better impression of the difficulties they indicate.
=Shall the Wife Take the Husband's Name ?=--In the first place, the matter of the name for the married couple must be now considered.
Shall it be one or two?
Shall the new sense of personal dignity, so common to the modern woman, increase the already spreading fashion of retention of the maiden name, her inherited family name, as permanently her own, untouched by the fact of marriage union?
No one can be cognizant of the conviction and practice of many feminists without understanding that this is a real problem to be settled surely before the marriage ceremony.

There is already in the field a "Lucy Stone League" to give the support of the practice of a great and beloved woman to the fashion of keeping one's own name.

The question of the desirability of having children bear the same name as both parents is left for the most part in abeyance by those who thus advocate two names for the married couple.