Considerable Discussion Is Provoked by Vice-Chancellor Pitney’s
Assertion That She Does Not.
Vice-chancellor Pitney, of New Jersey, passing on an application to have
two children taken from their divorced mother and placed in charge of
their stepmother, is reported to have said:
I never knew of a stepmother who was a good mother. There may be such
instances on record, but I know of none, and I have had some
experience.
Naturally, the Vice-Chancellor has been strongly controverted. Thus the
New York _World_ says:
The stepmother of fiction has a sharp face and a sharp tongue, and
rarely misses an opportunity to wound sensitive young souls.
But the stepmother of fact is usually quite a different person.
Certain individuals of scientific habits who have dabbled in the
domestic relations believe that it would be better for most children
if they could be brought up by stepmothers instead of mothers.
The stepmother generally has all the maternal instinct that any
healthy child needs, while she is not likely to be a victim of the
delusion that her stepchildren are so much better than other people’s
children that it is an impenetrable mystery why they do not die young.
But, of course, there are stepmothers and stepmothers, and doubtless
the woman who makes a poor stepmother would make a poor mother if she
had children of her own.
As a popular prejudice the aversions to stepmothers has little more
basis in fact than the aversion to mothers-in-law. Most men, in spite
of the professional humorists, are on excellent terms with their
mothers-in-law, and most women who have married daughters are
excessively fond of their sons-in-law. At its best the mother-in-law
joke was never a very good joke. Its humor consists largely in its not
being true.
Vice-Chancellor Pitney may know a good deal about the kind of
stepmothers who get into court, but the opinion of Abraham Lincoln
about stepmothers is more valuable, because he was brought up by one.
The Macon (Georgia) _Telegraph_ indicates why stepmothers may do better
for children than a mother can.
The one defect in the God-like mother love is the inability to view
her offspring with an impartial eye, and see them as others see them.
And it would be far from a bold estimate to venture that the majority
of men who get into trouble in later life turn their thoughts back at
such times to an irresponsible childhood when a devoted and indulgent
mother’s love stood between them and the penalties of all childish
misdeeds.
The stepmother, on the other hand, endowed, as a rule, with the
maternal affection that springs eternal in the woman’s breast, but
unblinded by the other’s bias for the children of her flesh, more
frequently approaches her often thankless task, governed by a sense of
duty, rather than by affection merely, and many have there been as a
result, both men and women, Vice-Chancellor Pitney’s dictum to the
contrary notwithstanding, to rise up and call the stepmother blessed.