treated with justice. If it is reduced to two only,--if there is only
mother and child to decide between,--the decision should be fairly
balanced. The practical issues of daily life are almost always open to
a child's understanding.
Mamma, we will say, is reading. Mabel is busy with doll's dressmaking.
"O mamma! will you please get me the scissors?"
"Can you not get them as easily, dear?"
"I don't know just where they are, and I've been fussing ever so long
with this yoke; and now I've got it just right, and I'm afraid, if I
put it down, I'll forget again!"
Mamma looks at the flushed, earnest little face, lays her book down,
and gets the scissors.
Again. Mamma is stuffing the turkey. "Mabel, will you please bring me
down the largest needle on my cushion?"
"Oh, but, mamma, I'm so busy with my paints!"
"Yes; but you are upstairs already, and my hands are in the stuffing.
Please hurry, dear."
Mabel brings the needle promptly. She knows that mamma is considerate
of her, and she is considerate of mamma.
It is by no means necessary to argue over every little service, but a
few test cases keep in mind the idea of justice. If what a child wants
will give more pleasure to the child than trouble to the adult, do it.
If it is more trouble to the adult than pleasure to the child, do not
do it; and let the child understand, first, last, and always, the
balance of human rights.
I knew a girl of thirteen who had not yet learned to keep herself
covered at night. She slept with her mother; and, if she wakened
chilly, she would murmur, without opening her eyes, "Mother, cover me
up!" And her mother would do it. This was unfair to the child. It
allowed her to commit a gross injustice; and her mother was
"compounding a felony," as it were, in indulging her. The child was
already awake, and quite capable of pulling up the blankets. There was
no reason why her tired mother should lose sleep for the purpose. The
practical way to exhibit this would be for the mother to waken the
child with the same demand. A few applications would be sufficient. If
verbal remonstrance was preferred (usually an inferior method), the
mother might quietly reply: "By no means. You are perfectly able to do
it. It is not fair to waken me for that. I do not get to sleep again
as quickly as you do, and am tired next day." A child already
reasonably trained would easily see the force of that argument.
A big boy is persistently late to breakfast. This annoys his mother at
the time, and delays her work afterward. She saves and keeps hot
various viands for him, taking many extra steps; and her day's work
is rendered a little more difficult. If the breakfast hour is that
most convenient to the family needs, simply explain to the boy that
breakfast is at such a time only; that he will be called in due
season; and that, if he is not down within the given time, he will
find no breakfast whatsoever. This course, firmly followed, works like
a charm. Most people dislike going without breakfast. A child should
have sufficient sleep, of course; but, if his hours are reasonable,
there is no justice in incommoding the working mother for the sake of
a little natural laziness. With very little children we ingeniously
manage to ignore some of their really important questions and actions,
and at the same time to let them trample on our ears and brains with
senseless iteration of unnecessary words.
A small boy is eating his supper, while his mother puts little sister
to bed.
"Mother!" he bawls. "Mother! Mo-o-ther!"
At last she leaves her task to come to him, he still shouting; and
this is his communication: "Mother! This is baker's bread!"
"Yes, dear," says the too tender mamma, and goes back again.
That child should have been met, not with anger or punishment, but
with very simple sarcasm and protest.
"Yes, that is baker's bread,--and that is a plate,--and that is a
spoon. I knew all these things when I arranged your supper. Do you
think it is fair to call me downstairs just to say that?"
The bubbling fluency of a child's mind, the tendency to repetition and
sometimes foolishness, is natural enough, and not to be blamed; but we
should help the child to outgrow it instead of submitting to his
wearisome reiterance.
"But, my dear, you said that before. I understand. Now do not say it
again."
To say, "Yes, dear," a dozen times to the same question or statement
is not strengthening to the child's mental habits. Similarly, when a
child asks palpably foolish questions,--foolish by his own
standard,--he needs not consideration, but mild ridicule. And, if he
can answer his own question, let him: it is no kindness to do all his
work. Children are not benefited by a too soft and yielding
environment, nor do they always love best those who treat them with
too much consideration. Fairness, not severity nor constant
concession, is what a child appreciates. If we behave fairly to the
child (as we would to a grown person), giving to him the healthy
reaction of common justice, we help him to live easily and rightly in
the world before him.
Even love is open to measurement by results. The love we have for our
children is not developed in us as a pleasurable exercise, but is
distinctly for the child's benefit. "The maternal sacrifice" is what
our scientific friends call it. In studying early forms of life, we
find the mother sacrificing everything for the good of the young, from
which we draw the general inference that it is for the good of the
young to have the mother sacrifice everything. More discriminating
study will show us a great difference in maternal methods. Where the
mother's loss is the gain of the young, she cheerfully submits to it;
but, where the young is not benefited by her loss, we do not find it.
The eggs of the hen are carefully brooded by the mother; the eggs of
the frog are left floating on the water in suitable places. There is
no special virtue in the hen's brooding or vice in the frog's neglect;
the mother does what is necessary for the young. The mother-cat licks
her little ones elaborately, and teaches them to make their toilettes
similarly. The cow licks the calf for a while, but gives it no
instructions in washing its ears with its paws.
The mother-love is essential to the best care of the young, and
therefore it is given us. It is the main current of race preservation,
and the basis of all other love-development on the higher grades. But
it is not, therefore, an object of superstitious veneration, and in
itself invariably right. The surrender of the mother to the child is
often flatly injurious, if carried to excess. To put it in the last
extreme, suppose the mother so utterly sacrifices herself to the child
as to break down and die. She then robs the child of its mother, which
is an injury. Suppose she so sacrifices herself to the child as to
cut off her own proper rest, recreation, and development. She thus
gives the child an exhausted and inferior mother, which is an injury
to him. There are cases, perhaps, where it might be a mother's duty to
die for her child; but, in general, it is more advantageous to live
for him. The "unselfish devotion" of the mother we laud to the skies,
without stopping to consider its effect on the child. This error is
connected with our primitive religious belief in the doctrine of
sacrifice,--one of those early misconceptions of a great truth.
It is necessary for the good of humanity that the interests of the one
be subordinate to the interests of the many, but it does not follow
that an indiscriminate surrender of one's own interests always
benefits society. On the contrary, a steady insistence on the rights
of the individual is essential to the integrity of the social
structure and its right workings. So it is necessary for the good of
the child that the interests of the mother be subordinated to his
interests, but it does not follow that her indiscriminate surrender
of personal interests always benefits him. On the contrary, a too
self-sacrificing mother tends to develope a selfish, short-sighted,
low-grade personality in the growing life she seeks to benefit, where
her honest maintenance of her own individual rights would have had a
very healthy effect. Not what the child wishes, nor what the mother
wishes, is the standard of measurement, but what is really beneficial
to the child. If the mother is frankly and clearly unselfish in their
daily intercourse, and then as frankly and clearly demands her own
share of freedom and consideration, the child gets a fairer view of
human rights than if he simply absorbs his mother as a natural victim.
Little Mary has a visitor. Her mother is most polite and entertaining,
is with them when they desire it, and lets them alone when they
prefer. Then her mother has a visitor. "Mary," she says, "I am to have
company this week. I shall of course have to give a good deal of time
and attention to my friend, as you did to Hattie when she was here.
So you must not feel badly if you do not see as much of mamma as
usual."
There must be the previous polite conduct of mamma to point to. The
childish mind needs frequent and conspicuous proof that mamma is
forgetting herself for his pleasure; and then he should be rationally
called upon to forget himself for her pleasure, when it is plainly
fair and necessary.
The beautiful principles of kindergarten teaching are frequently
misapplied in the too conciliatory and self-denying methods of the
well-meaning mamma. Kindness, politeness, constant love, and all due
consideration the child should have; but justice is as important to
him as affection. It must always be remembered that the mother's love
is not an end in itself, nor the expression of it a virtue in itself.
It is to be measured, like every other natural function, by its use.
When a child is reared in an atmosphere of unreasoning devotion and
constant surrender, he grows up to expect it, and to carry a sense of
grievance if he does not get it. The natural tendency of the mother
to love her own young is strong in us,--the maternal passion; but,
like all passions, it needs conscientious and rational restraint. The
human soul has grown to such a stage of development that we are
capable of loving and serving great numbers of people. The woman, who
is still confined to the same range of interests which occupied her in
the earliest grades of human life, inherits her share of this socially
developed power of loving, and concentrates it all upon her own
immediate family.
Like an ever-enlarging burning glass, still focussed upon one spot,
the healthy, natural affection of the animal mother for its young has
grown to what is really an immense social affection, too large for one
family to profitably sustain. The child will get a far more just and
healthful idea of human relation when he finds himself lifted and led
on by a mother whose life has a purpose of its own, than when he finds
himself encompassed and overwhelmed by a mother who has no other
object or interest than himself.
The whole question has to be constantly measured by comparing it with
the rest of life. Are our methods with children those which best fit
men and women for doing their share to maintain and develope human
life? Does not the most casual survey of life to-day show people
practising much amiability and devotion at home, strenuously loving
their own immediate families and friends, and most markedly deficient
in that general love for one another which is not only the main
commandment of our religion, but the plainest necessity for social
progress? And is not this deficiency to be accounted for, not by any
inability on our part for social devotion,--for every day's list of
accidents shows the common fund of heroism and self-sacrifice to be
large,--but by the training which makes it the habit of our lives to
love and serve only those nearest to us?
The mother is the strongest formative influence in the child's life.
If he sees that she thinks only of him, lives only for him, what is he
to learn by it? To think only of himself? Or only of her? Or only of
his children? Does the best care of a child require the concentrated
and unremittent devotion of an entire mother?
A larger intelligence applied to the subject may show us that there
are better ways of serving our children than those we now follow. The
woman who grows up in the practice of considering the needs of people
in general, and of so ordering her life as to benefit them, will find
a new power and quality in her love for her own dear ones. With that
widening of the soul-range of the mother will come a capacity to judge
the child as one of the people of the world, besides being her own
especially beloved. A study of what all children need will help her to
understand what her own child needs far more accurately than when she
thinks of him as the only one. The continuous application of the
mother to the child is not so advantageous as the quality of her
companionship and influence, and her sacrificial devotion too often
weakens his sense of justice and makes him selfish.
XI.
SIX MOTHERS.
Broad-minded mothers of this time are keenly interested in
child-study, in that all too familiar and yet unknown field of "infant
psychology." They are beginning to recognise not only the salient fact
that "all children are different," but the equally important one that
all children have points in common.
The need of union and discussion among mothers is resulting in the
mothers' clubs and parents' congresses, which form so noble an example
of the progressive thought.
But so far, with all the kindly interest and keen desire for improved
methods of child-culture, the mother has to return and grapple with
her individual problem alone.
Here are one or two simple and practical suggestions, the careful
pursuance of which, with some clear record of proceedings, would not
only be of immediate assistance to the mothers concerned, but to all
the other mothers yet to be aroused to the importance of such action.
Let us suppose six mothers, to take a very low number,--six mothers in
one town, one village, or one city, even in the open country, so that
they could reach each other easily; six mothers, who were friends and
"social equals," and who were willing to admit the deficiencies of our
general present methods of child-culture, and also willing to improve
those methods. It is permissible for each mother to imagine that her
own methods are superior to those of the other mothers, as this will
give her a beautiful sense of helpfulness in allowing these superior
methods to be observed and studied by the less able.
A conscious sense of inferiority is also no obstacle, for a mother
having that feeling would be eager to improve by study of the better
ways.
These six mothers divide the working days of the week among them,
agreeing that each shall on her chosen day take charge of the children
of the other five. This might be for a part of the day or the whole
day, as is thought best,--let us suppose it merely for the afternoon;
and it could be limited, as desired, to children of a certain age,
and still further reduced, as a mild beginning, to one child apiece
from each family.
This would give, as a minimum, five extra children on one afternoon a
week to each mother. The maximum would be of course uncertain; but, if
all the children of each mother were thus to go visiting for any part
of the day, it would give to each one day in which that larger
responsibility was undertaken, and five days free. There would remain
Sunday, in which each family, complete, would be at home.
Now let us take a hypothetical case, and suppose that our six mothers,
with considerable trepidation, have chosen one child apiece that they
were willing to intrust for the afternoon to the watchful care of
these familiar friends. The children, be it rigidly insisted, are to
know nothing whatever of the purposes or methods involved. All that
little Johnny Black knows is that Mrs. White has asked him to come
over on Monday afternoon and play with Alice and Billy White, and some
other children that he knows, too; that presently Mrs. Green has them
come to her house on Tuesday, and Mrs. Brown on Wednesday; that his
mamma lets them all come and play with him on Thursday,--in short,
that his afternoons have become full and rich and pleasantly exciting,
like some wonderful procession of parties.
"Not like regular parties, either," Johnny would explain. "You don't
have to dress up--much,--just be clean, to begin with. And they don't
have ice-cream and macaroons,--only just milk and crackers when you
get hungry; and--well, 'tisn't so much regular games and p'r'aps
dancin'--like a party,--we just play. And Mrs. White, or whichever one
'tis, she generally has some nice young lady in with her; and they
sort of keep things going,--as if 'twas a real party. It's nicer some
ways, I think."
"And which place do you like best, Johnny?"
"Oh, I do' know! Billy White has the biggest yard. But Jim Grey has
the best swing; and there's a pond at Susy Green's,--a real pond,--and
nothing but girls live there! Then it's lots of fun when they come to
our house, 'cause I can show 'em my rabbits and make Jack do all his
tricks."
Yes, the children all enjoy it. It means variety, it means company, it
means a wider and closer acquaintance and all the benefits of
well-chosen association and larger environment. It fills a part of the
day. There is no more aimless asking, "What shall I do now?" with the
vague response, "Oh, run away and play!" or the suggestion of some
well-worn amusement.
It means, too, a little more sense of "company manners" and behaviour,
and, on the other hand, a better appreciation of home life.
And to the mother,--what good will this do her?
Each mother would have one day in the week in which to carefully
observe children,--_not_ her own specially beloved children, but just
children, as such. Her observation and care should be absolutely
unobtrusive: the moment the little ones knew they were being watched,
the value of the plan would be greatly impaired; and, to stop at a
minor detail, from the palpable necessity for doing this work without
the child's consciousness, mothers would learn to cover the machinery
of government at home. It is one of our grossest and most frequent
errors in the management of children that we openly discuss our
efforts and failures. They know that we are struggling to produce
certain results in their behaviour, usually in a futile manner.
With, however, a large and definite purpose resting so absolutely on
the child's unconsciousness, more wisdom in this line would soon
develope.
The mother who now says, "What would you do with a child like that?"
or "I'm sure I don't know what to do with that child!" before the
child in question, would soon perceive that such an attitude in an
educator does not produce confidence in the object of the education.
Quietly and unostentatiously, and often with the assistance of some
keen girl-friend, these mothers would soon learn to observe
accurately, to generalise carefully, to reduce cautiously, and then to
put the deduction into practice and observe the results.
As beginners, pioneers, they should make their first steps very
modestly. For the first season some one trait should be chosen for
study,--say self-control or courage or consideration of others. Having
decided on their line of observation, let each mother make a little
note of how high each child in the group stands in this line.
How much self-control has my Johnny, as measured by his age?--as
compared with others of his age? When did I first notice self-control
in Johnny? When have I seen it greatest? Does he gain in it? What
should be done to help Johnny gain in self-control? And then go over
the same questions with regard to the other children.
Then, with self-control as the characteristic, the natural development
and best education of which they wish to study, the afternoon parties
begin. At first the children might be left absolutely free to play in
ordinary lines. Then, after the first observations were recorded,
delicate experiments could be introduced, and their results added to
the record.
It is very difficult for the individual mother to rightly estimate
her own children. "Every crow thinks her babe the blackest."
Yet the character of the child is forming without regard to any fond
prejudice or too severe criticism; and his life's happiness depends on
his interaction with people in general, not simply with beloved ones
at home. The measure of Johnny's self-control may not seem important
to the parental love which covers or the parental force which compels;
but to Johnny's after-life its importance is pre-eminent. When one
sits for a portrait to a fond and familiar friend, and sees all
fondness and familiarity die out from the eyes of the artist, feels
one's personality sink into a mass of "values," it brings a strange
sense of chill remoteness. So, no doubt, to the mother heart the idea
of calmly estimating Johnny's self-control and comparing it with Jim
Grey's seems cold enough. To have Mrs. Grey estimate it,--and perhaps
(terrible thought!) to estimate it as less than Jim's,--this is hard,
indeed.
Yet this is precisely what is to be obtained in such a combination as
this, and in no other way,--the value of an outside observer, through
Mrs. Grey's estimate.
Nobody's opinion alters facts. The relative virtues of Johnny and Jim
remain unchanged, no matter what their respective mothers think or
what their irrespective mothers think. But each mother will derive
invaluable side-lights from the other mother's point of view.
Each opinion must be backed with illustration. Instances of observed
behaviour must be massed before any judgment has value.
"I think your Jim is so brave, Mrs. Grey. When the children were with
me the other day, the cow got loose; and the girls all ran. Some boys
ran, too; and Jimmy drove her back into the cow-yard."
"But Jimmy was the oldest," says Mrs. White. "Perhaps, if he'd been as
young as my Billy, he wouldn't have been so brave."
"And he is afraid of the dark," says Mrs. Brown. "At my house he
wouldn't go into the back cellar after apples, even with the other
children. Isn't he afraid of the dark, Mrs. Grey?"
Mrs. Grey admits this, but cites instances to show courage in other
directions. And always five dispassionate observers to the one deeply
loving and prejudiced.
If it should happen that Jimmy is generally admitted brave beyond his
years, with the one exception of fearing darkness, and that exception
traceable to a nurse-maid's influence, the mother of Jimmy is
rejoiced; and a strong light is thrown on the nurse question. If it
prove that by general opinion there is a lack of courage such as
should belong to his years, there is cause for special study and
special action in this line. Most valuable of all, the habit of
observing a child's behaviour as an expression of character is formed.
The six mothers would of course meet to compare notes, preferably in
evenings, when children were all in bed and fathers could be present;
and the usual difficulty of leaving home in the evening could be met
in such an important case as this by engaging some suitable person to
come in for an hour or two and stay with the sleeping little ones.
All such details would have to be arranged according to personal and
local conditions; but the end to be attained is of such enormous value
that considerable effort is justified in reaching it. Even in the
beginning, a usefulness would be found in the united interest, the
mutual helpfulness of the combined women, drawn together by the
infinite and beautiful possibilities of their great work. In the light
of other eyes, they would see their own children in new lights, and,
by careful following of agreed lines of treatment, soon learn with
some finality what would and what would not be useful in a given case.
The observations and experiments of one earnest group of mothers like
this would be a stimulus and help to uncounted thousands of ungrouped
mothers who are struggling on alone.