Children’s Diet in Home and School
- Author:
Louise E. Hogan. New
York: Doubleday, Page and Company (revised edition). 1910.
In a small book of two hundred pages, Mrs. Hogan has covered the whole subject of feeding a child from the first days of its life through the period of adolescence. For the most part it is a well-made compilation of advice from eminent authorities like Dr Rotch, of Boston, and Dr Freeman, of New York. It treats of the ‘how’ of nutrition, with just enough of the ‘why’ to make it acceptable to those who very properly require a reason before adopting new methods.
And to most of us, Mrs. Hogan’s ways of cooking for children will seem altogether new. Those of the older generation who were brought up to eat of everything upon the family dinner table without question, will smile, perhaps regretfully, at the carefully strained broths, “tender”’ omelettes, broiled chops, and judiciously selected vegetables of the modern child’s dietary. What would be the comment, we wonder, if this book were to come under the eye of a certain New England woman, who when nine years old won a pony which her father offered as a reward for eating the hated boiled squash every time it appeared on the table during one year.
To the concientious young mother of delicate children, Mrs. Hogan’s book will be of real assistance. Probably all children, puny or sturdy, would grow up with stronger bodies if they were scientifically fed by rule from the outset. But would they not miss a great deal on the way? How is a child to learn his own limitations if he is never permitted to make his own mistakes? Just when is the human animal to learn what he may not safely eat? We of this generation learned it, to our cost, at an early age. Will the lesson be any the easier for our children if the indulgence be postponed to a time when they shall have passed quite beyond parental control?
It is rare to find among the young fathers and mothers of to-day any of that genius for parenthood which allows the child freedom to explore life, to make experiments, to learn by blundering. Of neglect there is a sad abundance; of overwatchfulness on the other hand thereNEWS AND COMMENT. 147 is even more. Of the good judgment which knows when to let the child alone and when to save it from disaster, there is hardly a vestige. The mother who raises her children on the accurately measured receipts of Mrs. Hogan will doubtless lead a serene existence. She will not have to say, as many a stoical mother has said while bathing her offspring after a night of tribulation,?”Well, if you must make little pigs of yourselves!” And this is precisely the question,?sooner or later, must not children be either pigs or prigs? That piggishness is aesthetic, no one will assert. That within reasonable limits it is wholesome, it would be rash to deny. Probably the children themselves will, as ever, take matters in their own hands. Unripe fruit may be kept out of reach of the well-trained city child, but vacations come around every year, and to the end of time boys (and girls, too) will have to learn by experience the close relationship between stolen green apples and stomach-aches. A. T.
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