As it is the custom in fashionable society in New York to prevent the
increase of families, it is natural no doubt to try to destroy childhood
in those who are permitted to see the light.
The fashionable child of New York is made a miniature man or woman at the
earliest possible period of its life. It does not need much labor,
however, to develop "Young America" in the great metropolis. He is
generally ready to go out into the world at a very tender age. Our
system of society offers him every facility in his downward career. When
but a child he has his own latch-key; he can come and go when he pleases;
he attends parties, balls, dancing-school, the theatre and other evening
amusements as regularly and independently as his elders, and is rarely
called upon by "the Governor," as he patronizingly terms his father, to
give any account of himself. He has an abundance of pocket-money, and is
encouraged in the lavish expenditure of it. He cultivates all the vices
of his grown-up friends; and thinks church going a punishment and
religion a bore. He engages in his dissipations with a recklessness that
makes old sinners envious of his "nerve." His friends are hardly such as
he could introduce into his home. He is a famous "hunter of the tiger,"
and laughs at his losses. He has a mistress, or perhaps several; sneers
at marriage, and gives it as his opinion that there is not a virtuous
woman in the land. When he is fairly of age he has lost his freshness,
and is tired of life. His great object now is to render his existence
supportable.
Girls are forced into womanhood by fashion even more rapidly than boys
into manhood. They are dressed in the most expensive manner from their
infancy, and without much regard to their health. Bare arms and necks,
and short skirts are the rule, even in the bleakest weather, for
children's parties, or for dancing-school, and so the tender frames of
the little ones are subjected to an exposure that often sows the seeds of
consumption and other disease. The first thing the child learns is that
it is its duty to be pretty--to look its best. It is taught to value
dress and show as the great necessities of existence, and is trained in
the most extravagant habits. As the girl advances towards maidenhood,
she is forced forward, and made to look as much like a woman as possible.
Her education is cared for after a fashion, but amounts to very little.
She learns to play a little on some musical instrument, to sing a little,
to paint a little--in short she acquires but a smattering of everything
she undertakes. She is left in ignorance of the real duties of a woman's
life--the higher and nobler part of her existence. She marries young,
and one of her own set, and her married life is in keeping with her
girlhood. She is a creature in which nothing has been fully developed
but the passions and the nerves. Her physical constitution amounts to
nothing, and soon gives way. Her beauty goes with her health, and she is
forced to resort to all manner of devices to preserve her attractions.
It is a habit in New York to allow children to give large entertainments
at fashionable resorts, without the restraining presence of their elders.
Here crowds of boys and girls of a susceptible age assemble under the
intoxicating influence of music, gas-light, full dress, late suppers,
wines and liquors. Sometimes this juvenile dissipation has been carried
so far that it has been sharply rebuked by the public press.