But the trouble is that the problem seldom comes to the case worker
until matters have progressed farther than this. The real question
is--not how to recognize pre-desertion symptoms, but how to get hold of
families when these symptoms are in the incipient stage.

Mr. Hiram Myers, manager of the Desertion Bureau of the New York
Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, who has made a
close study of the subject, holds the theory that the real period of
stress in marital adjustment comes not during the "critical first year,"
about which we have been told so much, but at a later period, which he
sets roughly at from the third to the fifth year after marriage. By this
time there are usually one or two babies, the wife's girlish charm has
gone, and the romance of the first attraction has vanished, while the
steady force of conjugal affection which should smooth their path
through the years ahead has not come to take its place. It is in this
middle period that longings for the delights of his care-free youth
begin to come back to a man; if he ever had the wandering foot, it
begins again to twitch for the road; of else his fancy is captured by
some other girl not tied down at home by children. It is at this time,
too, that endless discords and misunderstandings arise--that the last
bit of gilt crumbles off the gingerbread.

As a result of his observations, Mr. Myers feels sure that the majority
of first desertions take place somewhere from the third to the fifth
year after marriage. Miss Brandt's[53] careful statistical study of 574
deserted families shows that in nearly 46 per cent of the families the
first desertion took place before the fifth year of married life. Of
course the jars that may come in the earlier months of marriage are
seldom brought to the attention of social agencies, as it is usually the
presence of children in the family and the consequent burden upon the