But countless numbers of mothers never understand that any different
method is necessary with different children; they just go on in the
old way they have been taught when young themselves, if they trouble
at all about the matter.
Every woman who has a child ought to ask herself these questions: Who
is responsible for this child being in the world? Am I and my husband
responsible, or is the child responsible itself? The answers are
ridiculously obvious, and, when realised, the remembrance of them
should entail grave obligations upon the parents.
The mother should look ahead and try to determine whether or no what
seems to be showing as the result of the ideas of up-bringing in the
past fifteen years is good or bad.
The main features of that system being the relaxation of all
discipline and the cessation of the inculcation of self-control,
because the standards suddenly became different. Formerly, to perform
Duty (spelt with a big D!) was the only essential matter in life, and
to obtain happiness was merely a thing by the way. In the past fifteen
years the essential goal sought after has been happiness, and duty has
been merely the thing by the way. But a very large number of the
mothers of England have not perhaps begun to develop sufficient scope
of brain to enable them to judge what will eventually bring happiness;
they can only see the immediate moment, and to indulge their
children's every desire seems to be the simplest way. But they forget
that during this short and impressionable stage of life all strength
and will-power and self-control ought to be enforced and encouraged,
to enable the loved children to withstand hardships and to attract
happiness in the long after years. A mother should ask herself if it
is worth while, in securing a joyous and irresponsible childhood and
adolescence, to leave her children at the end of them unarmed and at
the mercy of every adverse blast. The great dangers which seem to be
resulting from the system of upbringing in the last fifteen years are
that at seventeen or eighteen most young people are satiated with
pleasure and blase with life, while they have no definite aim or end
of achievement in view, and absolutely no sense of duty or
responsibility to the community.