shifting--all these have a direct relation to desertion.

The wife's competence and willingness to earn often seems to have a
causal connection with the man's failure as "provider."[12]

Corresponding to and complementing the man's industrial defects, and
springing from the same causes, is the woman's failure in the business
of being a housewife. The wife's laziness, incompetence, lack of
interest, and lack of skill and knowledge create, as one case worker
puts it, "the sort of home that tends to get itself deserted." These
faults of the wife are responsible for as many desertions, probably, as
are the faults of the husband. When the man and the wife are both
industrial failures we get the extremity of family breakdown to be found
in records of "chronic non-support" cases.

7. Wanderlust.--As a cause of family desertion this has probably been
overestimated. Some item of this sort appears in every list of causes of
desertion which has ever been compiled, and there are more or less
exceptional cases in which it probably plays a part. The boy who becomes
a vagabond in childhood and early takes to the road does not, however,
seem to be a marrying man; and the instances from case work in which it
is clear that the thirst for adventure was at the bottom of desertion
are rare. The man whose line of work before marriage led him from place
to place seems, in fact, hardly to contribute his quota to the ranks of
wife-deserters, and it is unusual to find sailors or other wanderers
from force of circumstance figuring among them.

8. Money Troubles.--As has already been said, it is impossible to show
any direct relation between small incomes and desertion. The connection
between low wage and non-support is of course a great deal closer. The