Can't really reconcile this chain of thought, but married women teachers may become pregnant (oh, shameful word) and you didn't flaunt that condition in public- as in being a teacher. Now of course-birth control was not as reliable as it became in later years and the lots of kids came from large families, and they all knew that we didn't have a large population of storks flying over Kansas City, nor PA for that matter. Think I just might research where this custom originated in the States..but in the old western movies the school "Marm" was always a spinster and if the wealthy, handsome rancher married her, then they looked for a replacement. Or they feared that a pg teacher just might go into labor and give birth in the school room, with no one there to boil the water and deliver the infant. Lots of scenarios possible. The male teachers in my schools were generally married- kept them away from the nubile teenagers in high school and only male teachers in grade school taught shop and phys ed-(didn't' have a lot of interesting men for the gals at East High to have a crush on either-mostly married men whose kids were in our classes or 4'F's from the draft). Exciting,eh what? In a message dated 1/5/2009 3:08:30 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, JohnOBrien@kc.rr.com writes: Back in Pennsylvania in the small town where I grew up, prior to about 1950, woman school teachers were not allowed to be married. I don't remember if it was the same for men. Looks like it was the same in KC and maybe all over. Anyone know why woman teachers could not be married? Was it the same for men? ----- Original Message ----- From: <Hawkshaw1927@aol.com> To: <kansascity@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 3:17 PM Subject: Re: [KANSASCITY] the Kansas City Mailing List members >Only widows or maiden ladies were hired by the KCMO school board..but we > did have some private schools. The parochial schools had Nuns back then. ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to KANSASCITY-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message **************New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000026)