may be carried on by the parents, but it is for social improvement and
as a member of society that they do this. Here is where our parents,
who constitute society, fail to see the nature and extent of their
work. They have an exaggerated idea of "parental responsibility" to
the child, and no idea at all of social responsibility to the child.
That social development which has enlarged the mind and soul of the
beast-savage to our present capacity for love and service we still
imagine to be purely parental, and endeavour to concentrate it all on
our own children, failing utterly in our duty to each other's
children.
No such gross error can work good results. This disproportionate
concentration of feeling on the individual child, and neglect of the
child in general, produces a world full of people with a congested
family life, full of morbid sensitiveness and potential difficulty and
suffering, and a weak, anæmic social life, full of mutual neglect and
dereliction of duty.
The well-known illustration of education can be used again still
farther to show this. Suppose a small community, wherein the parents
are all very anxious for the education of their own children and
profoundly indifferent to the education of anybody's else children.
Suppose these parents all labour religiously to buy books, pictures,
statues, music, and to have the best of tutors for their own children.
It can be seen without much mathematical effort how inferior would be
the supplies purchasable by the individual parent's funds compared to
those purchasable by their collective funds. Separately, they could
not compass a good teacher to each family, nor good pictures, nor
many books and instruments, nor any statuary and music to speak of.
Collectively and for less money, they could have all these things in
far higher degree of excellence.
It is social parentage, such as we have, which gives us the school as
we have it. It is the weakness and irresponsibility of our social
parentage which leaves the school as it is, and fails to push on to
something far fuller and better. What thought, what care, what
service, does the average mother give to other people's children?
None. She does not imagine it to be her duty. She imagines that her
duty lies only toward her own children, and that it is no faintest
fault of hers if other children suffer. If she sees little ones
visibly neglected and injured, she merely blames their individual
parents, and gives no further thought to the matter.
Now, once for all, what is the advantage of living in a society
instead of living alone? It is that we do not have to spend all our
time and strength in very imperfectly taking care of ourselves, as the
separate individual would be obliged to do, but are more and more
perfectly taken care of by one another. We all share in the advantages
of living together,--the protection not only of numbers, but of our
specialised defenders, civil and military; the vast accumulations of
knowledge and skill acquired by many and transmitted to all; the
increasing measure of mutual love, in which we thrive and grow. The
more perfectly a society can distribute these advantages to all its
citizens, the more swiftly and healthfully does it advance and
improve.
Public peace and safety, public justice, public education, the public
hall, the public road, the public library and gallery and museum and
bath,--these are what react so favourably upon the individual, and
make better homes and citizens. The father is, to some extent, awake
to the duties of social parentage; the mother, hardly at all. The
difference is this: the father serves his children by means of serving
other people; the mother serves her children personally, with her own
hands. Suppose a number of families (we cannot call it a community,
because it would not be one), wherein the fathers endeavoured to
serve their children personally with their own hands only, each man
building, weaving, farming, fishing, blacksmithing, making dishes and
tools and instruments, and trying in all ways to meet the family needs
_himself_ personally.
It will readily be seen how little the families of these men would
have. The time, strength, and skill of one man do not go far, if he
tries to do all things himself. Why do women imagine that their time,
strength, and skill severally will serve better than in combination?
Why are they content to give their children only what they can do
themselves alone, thus depriving them of the rich possibilities of
civilised motherhood, combined, collective, mutually helpful?
The term "city fathers," and its painful lack of companionship in city
mothers, shows the wide gulf between the development of social
parentage in men and women. The accidents to little children from
electric and cable cars are pitifully numerous. What mother has taken
any steps to prevent these accidents? Individually, each tries to
protect her own, as does the animal or savage. Collectively, they do
nothing; yet it is the lack of this collective motherhood which makes
our cities so unsafe for children. The idea that, if each takes care
of her own, all will be cared for, is as false for women as it is for
men. If each man took care of his own, and not of the others, we
should have no soldiers, no policemen, no government, no society, only
that social chaos called anarchy.
Social health and progress demand collective action, the largest
mutuality, the care and service of _all_, which is the only guarantee
of safety and prosperity to each. Our fatherhood is to a considerable
degree socialised. Our motherhood is flatly anarchistic, refusing all
co-ordination.
An earnest--hotly earnest--woman once disputed this suggestion of
mutual service in motherhood, thus: "When I make the bed for my child,
I put some of my _personality_ between the sheets. My child sleeps
better if I make his bed for him." I gazed at her calmly.
"Does your child walk better if you make his shoes for him?" I asked.
It is a pretty sentiment that the mother's love in some mysterious
way makes all she does for the child superior to what another could
do. But apply the test of fact. Can she, with all her love, make as
good a shoe as the shoemaker? as good a hair-brush, tooth-brush,
tumbler, teacup, pie-plate, spoon, fork, or knife, as the professional
manufacturers of these things? Does mother-love teach her to be a good
barber? Can she cut her darling's hair so as to make him happy? Can
she make a good chair or table or book or window? How silly it is to
imagine that this "personality" inserted between the sheets makes the
bed more conducive to healthy sleep than any other clean, well-aired,
well-made bed!
Let the mother put the child to bed by all means, if she wishes. In
the last sweet words and the good-night kiss is truly the place for
personality. That is a mother's place, and not a tradesman's. But
there is no more need for maternal personality between the sheets of a
bed than between the leaves of a book or the bricks of a wall.
In our narrow-mindedness we have assumed that to care for any other
children would mean to neglect our own. As if the human heart, the
mother-heart, could love but one or six, and not more! As a matter of
fact, we neglect our own by not caring for others. That is, we fail to
take those general measures for the protection and development of all
children which would so greatly benefit our particular children. Only
to-day, at last, we see in some few advanced communities the mothers'
club and congress, the women's civic associations, and other forms of
union for the improvement of social conditions, all helping to enlarge
the application of mother-love, and set that great force free to bring
on the better day for children. These clubs and societies are jeered
at by the majority of mothers, who proudly say that they are too busy
taking care of their children to go to a mothers' congress and learn
how.
Imagine, again, a majority of men, each saying he was too busy
teaching his children to go to a school meeting and plan for the
education of them all! It is not a shifting of duty that is
required,--to cease to take care of one's own in order to take care of
others instead. So ingrained are our primitive habits, so unable are
we to conceive of anything but the one-woman method, that our only
idea of change is a simple exchange of responsibility. It is not
exchanging that is needed, but an enlarging, an embracing of the less
in the greater.
The mothers of the world are responsible for the children of the
world; the mothers of a nation, for the children of a nation; the
mothers of a city, for the children of a city. We may ignore and deny
this claim; but it is there none the less, and, because we do not do
our duty as social parents, a corrupt society injures our children
continually. The diseases of other children infect ours. What have the
mothers ever done to prevent these diseases? They nurse their own sick
little ones religiously, and bury them with tears; but what do they do
before or after to learn the cause and prevention of these "family
afflictions," to spread their information, and enforce measures to put
a stop to them? The bad habits of other children affect ours,--their
ignorance, their ill manners, their sins. Our children suffer
individually from bad social conditions, but cannot be saved
individually.
When the Philadelphia water supply is so foul as to poison young and
old, mothers are responsible for not doing their share to make the
city water fit for their families to drink. It is not a private filter
on a private faucet that will do it, but public purity in the public
works.
In Boston in 1899 the Society of Collegiate Alumnæ exposed a
disgracefully insanitary condition in the public schools,--undisturbed
filth in cellar and vault, unwashed floors, a slovenly neglect of the
commonest sanitary decency worthy of an Oriental slum. Any mother in
Boston would have been filled with shame to have such an exposure of
her own private housekeeping. There is room for shame at this exposure
of their public housekeeping, school-house-keeping, city-keeping.
Like an ostrich with his head in the sand, the mother shuts herself up
in the home and imagines that she is safe and hidden, acting as if
"the home" was isolated in space. That the home is not isolated we are
made painfully conscious through its material connections,--gas-pipes,
water-pipes, sewer-pipes, and electric wires,--all serving us well or
ill according to their general management. Milk, food, clothing, and
all supplies brought in bring health or disease according to their
general management. The mere physical comfort of the home needs
collective action, to say nothing of the psychic connection in which
we all live, and where none is safe and clean till all are safe and
clean.
How far does the duty of the State extend, and how much should be left
to individual responsibility? This is the working point to which this
discussion tends. A more serious sociological question could hardly be
propounded.
Seeing that progress is the law of nature, that the human race is
under pressure of every force--conscious and unconscious--to go on, to
improve, to grow better, and that we, as social beings, move forward
through social improvement, the main weight of care seems to rest on
society rather than the individual. It is astonishing to see how far
this has gone already. Whereas once the beast father and mother were
the only ones to protect or serve the young, now society does far
more for the child than the parents. The father does more than the
mother, and that by means of his social relation. He provides for his
child by being a carpenter, lawyer, mason, or other social
functionary. In this social relation he is able to provide for it the
comfort and safety of a modern society. Out of that relation he would
be able to provide for it only with his bare hands alone, and less
competent than the hardy savage.
We need not be alarmed at some new overtures on the part of society,
if we but look at what society is doing now. That we do not think of
this is due to our tradition that we "take care of ourselves." We do
not. No civilised man "takes care of himself." We take care of each
other. But, granting this to some degree, we have heretofore supposed
that the benefits of civilisation belonged only to adults,--for that
matter only to adult males!--and were to be distributed to children
through the individual parent. Thus, if the parent was inferior, the
child was expected not only to inherit his inferiority, but to suffer
from it always through inferior maintenance, breeding, and education.
The gradual reaching out of society to protect and care for the child
is one of the most interesting lines of historic development. The
parent had power to kill a child. The State denied the right, and
protected the child against the parent. The parent had power to sell
the child. The State denied that. The parent might cast off and
neglect the child. The State compels him to maintain it, if he can;
and, if not, the State supports the child. The parent might teach the
child, have it taught, or leave it untaught. Now the State orders that
the child must be taught, either at home or at school, and furnishes
the school free. So far the line of advance has been from absolute
parental control to a steadily enlarging State control, from absolute
parental support to more and more of State support. The question of
more or less in present details may be debated indefinitely to no
conclusion. The principle is what we should study.
The condition of childhood in our human sense, the long period of
immaturity, is a social condition. As we advance in social relation,
becoming more and more highly specialised, the gulf between infancy
and maturity increases. The young animal and the adult animal are far
more alike than a Gladstone and his baby.
It does not take very long to mature the group of faculties required
for maintaining individual life. It does take long to mature the group
of faculties required to maintain social life. To rear a man--_i.e._,
an adult male of _genus homo_--is no very difficult task. It is
accomplished by Bushmen, Hottentots, Eskimo, every living kind of
human creature. To rear a physician, an engineer, a chemist,--this
takes longer. Incidentally, this is one reason why a girl's "majority"
is placed at eighteen, a boy's at twenty-one. She is supposed to need
only individual maturity,--physical maturity. He is supposed to take
more time to become a man because he is a member of society, and so
has to learn more things. It is not a question of adolescence, of
physiological change. The boy of eighteen could be a father as well as
the girl a mother; but he is not as well able to take his social
position, to serve mankind in his craft, art, trade, or profession.
Note here the early maturity and marriage of the less developed
grades of society, filling those simpler social functions which
require less specialisation, and the proportionate postponement of
this period in the more highly specialised. Our long period of
immaturity is a social condition, and not an individual one. That we
may reach the full growth needed in the advanced member of society, we
must be minors longer than would be necessary if we were not members
of society. The exceeding childishness of the civilised child is also
a social condition.
The nearer we are to the animals, the more capable and bright the very
little ones. In the South it was common to set a little black child to
take care of an older white one: the pickaninny matures much more
rapidly. So, again, in our own lower social grades the little children
of the poor are sharper, better able to care for themselves, than
children of the same age in more developed classes. It is no proof of
greater intelligence in the adult. It is retrogression,--a mark of bad
social conditions.
Civilised society is responsible for civilised childhood, and should
meet its responsibilities. The sweet confidence of a modern child, as
compared to the alert suspicion of a baby savage, shows what ages of
social safe-guarding have done. In the beautiful union of our
civilised growth, even so far, we have made possible the Child; and it
is for us still further to protect and develope this most exquisite
social product,--this greatest social hope and power. Society's
relation to the child is impersonal. It is not limited by parenthood.
The parental relation is lower, more limited. Parentally, we care only
for our own: socially, we care for all. Parentally, we are animals:
socially, we learn to love one another. We become, approximately,
Christians.
Christianity is a social condition. In our present degree of social
progress, we produce by our specialised co-ordinate activities that
safe and comfortable material environment, those comparatively
developed virtues which we call "civilisation." But, in applying this
common product to the advancement of the child,--which is our best and
quickest way to incorporate progress in the race itself,--we allow
the incapacity of the individual parent to limit the child's
advantages. We deny to the child the conditions necessary to his best
development, unless his particular father is able to provide them. Our
theory here is that the father would not work so hard if the State
provided for his child; some thinkers combating even the public school
and public library on this ground. This is an outworn economic
fallacy. The inferior father cannot work beyond a certain grade
because he has not the capacity; and, if the child has only the
advantages the inferior father can provide for him, he grows up to be
another inferior father and low-grade worker. The most deadly result
of this foolish neglect of the young citizen is seen in the ensuing
action of the biological law, "Reproduction is in inverse proportion
to specialisation." Because we leave the child to grow up
unspecialised, untrained, save for the puny efforts of his single
low-grade parent, therefore he, in turn, helps fill the world with
very numerous and very inferior progeny.
We are hampered by the rapid reproduction of the very lowest classes
of society, weighted down by their defects and limitations, forced to
wait--the most advanced of us--for the great rear-guard of the
population. We must wait because a society is alive, and includes all
its members. It cannot outstrip its own inferior parts, however
neglected and behindhand they may be. And their numbers--_numbers
resultant from their low condition_--complicate the problem
hopelessly. That is, hopelessly on this old fallacious notion that the
child can have no help from all the strong, rich world, save what his
father and mother can filter through their personal limitations. We
are beginning to change this by our efforts at free public education.
We shall change it more and more as we grow consciously awake to our
true social responsibility to the child.
We cannot afford to have one citizen grow up below the standards of
common comfort, health, and general education. To the scared cry,
"But, if you take the responsibility off these people, they will
simply flood the world with wretched babies!" comes the answer of
natural law, "Improve the individual, and you check this crude
fecundity." It is because they are neglected and inferior that they
have so many children. Make higher-class people of the children, and
you check this constant influx of low-grade life, and gradually
introduce a better-born population.
When the wise, beneficent parental love of Human Society for its young
really does its duty, tenderly removing obstructions from the path of
all our little ones, we shall give to them those common human
advantages without which they cannot grow to the happiness which is
their right, the usefulness which is their duty. All parents who are
able to do more for their children would be free to do so, as those
who can afford private schools, or educate their little ones at home,
are not compelled to send them to the public schools.
As now society provides the school for the young citizen, on the
ground of public advantage, without regard to the inability of the
parent, so we must learn to provide a far richer and more complete
education, and all else that the parent falls short in, because it is
necessary for the good of society, and because we love our children.
Index.
Absence of mind, 54.
"Acquired traits not transmissible," 9.
experiments with guinea-pigs, 11.
Action, bodily, directed by mental processes, 57.
Adult, our houses built only for the, 121.
Age, the presumption of, 156.
not necessarily superiority, 159.
Aged persons, cause of the respect and care for, 160.
Ambition of youth a force to lift mankind, the, 23.
American Revolution, the, mentioned, 35.
Animal mother, the authority of the, 42.
Animals, obedience in, 29.
Arbitrary punishment, effect on the moral sense of, 84.
Authority of the animal mother, the, 42.
effect of, coming between the mind and action of the child, 60.
Babies confided to the care of lower races, 134.
Baby, impressions of a, 49.
considered as a plaything, 175.
our disrespectful treatment of the, 171.
often neglected mind-growth of the, 250.
Baby-garden, a public, 124.
example of the advantages of a, 139.
a private, 125.
Babyhood, education not thought of in connection with, 135.
Bible, the, 114.
Biological advantage of a longer period of immaturity, the, 18.
law of reproduction, 296.
Bodily action directed by mental processes, 57.
Boston, 289.
Brain, effect of obedience on the, 41.
training of children, the, 46.
the office of the, 47.
in early forms of life, 48.
function of the child, 49.
improvement, progress of humanity made through, 149.
Breakfast, unpunctuality at, 149.
Bushmen, the, 293.
Callous child, treatment of the, 92.
Casabianca, 30.
Census Report, United States, 233.
Character, comparatively small progress in the human, 251.
development of, assisted by right education, 252.
Chastity, the virtue of, 26.
Child, importance of the first fifteen years of the life of the, 21.
exercise of the will of the, in games, 22.
trained to obey, 31.
reasons why obedience is demanded from the, 37.
brain function of the, 49.
the, should be trained to presence of mind, 55.
advantage taken of the credulity of the, 56.
what the, feels and thinks ignored, 57.
the mind of the, 57.
effect of authority coming between the mind and action of the, 60.
culture of the, 63.
table manners, teaching the, 63.
early impressions of a, 77.
result of the deed of a, dependent upon parental knowledge, 82.
the naughty, 90.
a group of growing faculties, 90.
treatment of the callous, 92.
games, the daily lessons of the, 108.
teaching generosity to the, 109.
delicacy of perception of the, weakened by false impressions, 111.
perception in the place of the State of the, 119.
mother and, no separation of, 125.
treatment of the, at home, 170.
attitude of the family towards the, 171.
personal rights of the, 174.
no excuse for contemptuous treatment of the, 177.
necessity for recognising the citizenship of the, 182.
treatment at table of the, 183.
teaching a, consideration, 187.
the need for consideration between mother and, 187.
tendency to repetition of a, 191.
excessive sacrifice of the mother injurious to the, 193.
harmful effect of the mother's sacrificial devotion to the, 197.
effect of association with domestic servants on the, 235.
influence of surroundings on the, 237.
physical conditions of the household a danger to the, 238.
duty of the mother to benefit the, 261.
relation of the State to the, 278.
social responsibility of parents to the, 280.
gradual protection by society of the, 292.
Child-culture and house service, the relation between, 233.
the study of, 265.
Child-training, obedience in, 36.
honesty lacking in, 109.
Childhood, the condition of the brain in, 49.
naturally inconsiderate, 91.
careless, 93.
clumsy, 93.
permanence of, as a human status, 119.
the status of, 180.
Childish faith, an expression of, 56.