How Can Parents Understand Their Children?
- Author:
Margaret Otis, Ph.D.,
Philadelphia, Pa.
The lack of a place in our educational system for preparation of the young for the duties devolving upon them as parents is, sadly enough, too glaring a defect to be longer overlooked. Spencer’s comment upon this point will bear repeating: “But though some care is taken to fit the young of both sexes for society and citizenship, no care whatever is taken to fit them for the still more important position they will ultimately have to fill?the position of parents.” Such a comment calls attention to a need which is definitely felt in our society. His urgent plea that the “theory and practice of education” be introduced as a subject of study into our school curriculum finds unanimous agreement in every thinking mind that reads his essay on moral education. But how? Has the need been met sufficiently by the courses in home economics that are at present so much in vogue? Or has the work been accomplished by the mothers’ clubs and social-center work that is being pushed by our ardent social workers? How can the art of understanding and awakening intellect and providing for its further development be taught? Many courses have been introduced, looking to the physical comfort of the home. The art of home-making?is it not to keep the home clean and attractive, to make war vigorously on all germ life, to study house decoration, to investigate the mysteries of dietetics, to cook inviting meals, and so on. The physical care of children has also been much dwelt upon. A nurse’s course of training is desirable, including a thorough-going study of nutrition. Truly a maiden must have a college course in all these departments before she may say yes to the man who asks her in marriage.
Alas! She may have had all this and more, and yet fail in the essential understanding of the child she is endeavoring to rear. Understanding is not easily acquired by taking courses of study. A child is an individual not like any one else in the world. His destiny, pointed by inheritance, is woven from the rich world of experience that supplies the material for his mental life; his body a growing organism, his mind a complex of ideas, impulses, and emotional experiences constantly changing, leaving indelible impressions that determine the character of his later life. How to understand the proper moment for suggesting the right activity is the mother’s task. Woman’s instinct and mother-love may do much. Can science help her to do more? To steer a youth through the difficult time of adolescence requires more enlightenment than is now present in many homes. To know oneself and one’s own need, which is the first step toward self-guidance, is difficult to acquire. How much more so, to teach this to another! How many mistakes proper guidance will save the young boy or girl!
To the thinking mind a study of failures well repays the effort spent. The present results from this study are rich in warning as to what not to do. These negative results are sometimes as valuable to science as great discoveries. A study of wrong conditions perhaps may prove to be the best guide to the right. The study of causes and conditions that lead to delinquency reveals a noted lack of mother care and understanding. In a school for delinquents, an investigation of 200 cases shows that lack of proper mothering occasions at least 80 per cent of these failures in life, for failures at their very start they are judged to be by society, whatever the future may hold for them. Studies of particular cases furnish excellent comment on this need of understanding a girl’s nature. The following story illustrates how a very good mother may be a very inefficient guardian or companion to her own daughter:
Olive Rosenbloom, a Jewess, grew up in a home where the sternest code of morality was observed. As the youngest child and only daughter, she easily became an important member of the household. Her older brothers at first regarded her as a plaything, a doll-like creature made expressly for their entertainment. Then “Sissy” was sometimes in the way and they ordered her around and bullied her. At hardly any time in her life had she been regarded seriously. She slept late if she chose; practiced the piano if she wished, otherwise not. Her mother was a hard-working woman and kept the comfortable home neat and clean. She cooked and sewed for her family and thought the world of her pretty daughter. Of an intensely practical nature herself, she felt she had done her duty when the house was in order, the ironing done, and Olive’s best dress was hanging in the closet ready for the next school entertainment. Olive never knew what it was to be in need of even a ribbon. All was thought out and planned for her. No unpleasant tasks were assigned, and when at home from school she was free to do as she pleased. Yes, Olive’s mother loved her.
Olive was a good-natured, fun-loving girl, and had not the slightest idea that she was made a baby at home. She was a member of a girls’ society, sang at entertainments, and went around with the young set of the town in which she lived. Well-developed and large for her years, she was often thought to be much older than she really was, and in the town passed for a young lady of at least eighteen, ready to “keep company”. She was in reality but fifteen, in the second year of high school, where she was taking a business course, at the advice of one of her practical brothers. She found it rather more difficult than she had imagined, became quite discouraged over her school work, neglected it, and sought to drown the reproofs of her conscience by seeking more amusement in the evenings. No one knew anything was the matter. Her mother thought that Olive was going around a little too much and began to make some rules about the time she should be in her room at night. This led to a few deceptions and white lies on the part of Olive,?”Oh, yes, mother, I was in at nine o’clock last night. I came in when you were kneading the bread in the kitchen and you didn’t hear me.” She would sometimes even come home at the right time, go to her room, and then slip out again when no one was looking.
At a dance at Rosie Schreiner’s, Olive met Jack Carter, a handsome fellow. No one seemed to know much about him, but he was good company and Olive had such “dandy” times with him. She walked with him outside during some of the dances. They were congenial comrades, and gave and took mutually in the way of repartee. She made him keep his distance when she wished, but flirted with him off and on all winter. One night he held her in his arms and kissed her. She grew hot and ashamed, pulled herself away, and ran home as fast as she could. She was now genuinely troubled and felt extremely uneasy. Did she confide in her mother? Why, no; her mother was always busy either canning fruit or interviewing some meat or grocery man. And why shouldn’t she have a good time with Jack Carter? She wasn’t going to marry him, of course. She felt secretly ashamed of some of his rough, coarse ways; but Jack’s sensual nature had been roused and he seemed obsessed to get the girl. He watched his chance, and one night, as Olive was hastening home after a stolen evening of enjoyment, he intercepted her. She was too frightened to resist. He claimed she had jilted him and reproached her, saying: “You promised to marry me, and, by thunder, I’ll blow your brains out if you don’t.” Olive had never been instructed in any way that would have proved helpful at this crisis, so she yielded to his impetuosity and went off with him that night to a neighboring town. He gained his purpose and then left her. It turned out that he was a married man, whose wife was seeking a divorce, the cause for which he had already given many times over. Olive was afraid to go home. She had heard her father and brothers speak at times in the severest way of women who had lapsed from morality. It seemed there would be no hope of pardon from any of the stern moralists of her family. She thought despairingly of each of her three brothers, much esteemed as they were in the town. All of them held positions of importance in the community and were getting up in the world. Now she was condemned, an outcast doomed to perdition. Where could she go? Who would take her in? In her home she had been petted and babied, but in no way given a training that would enable her to become a womanly woman. And now, in her failure to stand in one of life’s difficult pathways, she naturally would meet with only condemnation and contempt.
At length she did succeed in finding employment as clerk in a small shop and remained in hiding for a couple of months. Her mother, thoroughly alarmed at her daughter’s disappearance, had put a detective at work to search for her. When finally she was found, her motherly indignation knew no bounds when she learned all the details of Olive’s secret life of amusement, and had her sent immediately to a home for delinquent girls. It seemed to Olive that the world had come to an end for her. Her brothers, horrified at their sister’s misfortune, said they would never forgive her for disgracing the family in that flagrant way. Her mother was stunned by the blow and could not imagine why this terrible misfortune had come to her lot. To rear a daughter who could not keep straight! The disgrace of it!
In the Home, Olive, after a period of rebellion, seemed to come to herself. She learned to cook, to clean, to wash and iron. Never before had she done such menial tasks. The superintendent of the Home, kinder than her own family, assured her that she had a chance to redeem the past,?let her take heart and work her way out. The despised stenography even came to be a help to her, and she was given a chance to work evenings at her books. A place was found for her after some time by a friend of her own nationality and she worked hard to deserve the trust and confidence placed in her. A couple of years later she went home with a good record. Her mother, who had given her up for lost, was surprised to find her in such good trim and so capable in all that she did. Could this be Olive, the happy-golucky, ne’er-do-well? Why had she not been able to bring about this result herself? Wherein had she, as a mother, failed? Olive had good mental ability, good sense, and a wish to do well and get along in the world, but the mother knew not what was in her daughter. She had been a complete stranger to the real Olive.
This story is an instance of unnecessary failure. The girl in question, with common-sense guidance, would have developed to be a good, ordinary girl, fit to be the wife of a good, ordinary man. Mothers must conceive their task as something higher than that of a housekeeper or a nurse. The best and only advice to a mother, and advice to be oft repeated, may be given as an adaptation of the Greek: “Know thyself,” Mother, know thy child.
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