In one of the letters of Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, to her mother,
Queen Victoria, she writes: "I try to give my children in their home
what I had in my childhood's home. As well as I am able, I copy what you
did."
There is something essentially British in this point of view. The
English mother, whatever her rank, tries to give her children in their
home what she had in her childhood's home; as well as she is able, she
copies what her mother did. The conditions of her life may be entirely
different from those of her mother, her children may be unlike herself
in disposition; yet she still holds to tradition in regard to their
upbringing; she tries to make their home a reproduction of her mother's
home.
The American mother, whatever her station, does the exact opposite--she
attempts to bestow upon her children what she did not possess; and she
makes an effort to imitate as little as possible what her mother did.
She desires her children to have that which she did not have, and for
which she longed; or that which she now thinks so much better a
possession than anything she did have. Her ambition is to train her
children, not after her mother's way, but in accordance with "the most
approved modern method." This method is apt, on analysis, to turn out to
be merely the reverse side of her mother's procedure.
I have an acquaintance, the mother of a plump, jolly little tomboy of a
girl; which child my acquaintance dresses in dainty embroideries and
laces, delicately colored ribbons, velvet cloaks, and feathered hats.
These garments are not "becoming" to the little girl, and they are a
distinct hindrance to her hoydenish activities. They are not what she
ought to have, and, moreover, they are not what she wants.
"I wish I had a middy blouse, and some bloomers, and an aviation cap,
and a sweater, and a Peter Thompson coat!" I heard her say recently to
her mother: "the other children have them."
"Children are never satisfied!" her mother exclaimed to me later, when
we were alone. "I spend so much time and money seeing that she has nice
clothes; and you hear what she thinks of them!"
"But, for ordinary wear, for play, wouldn't the things she wants be more
comfortable?" I ventured. "You dress her so beautifully!" I added.
"Well," said my acquaintance in a gratified tone, "I am glad you think
so. _I_ had _no_ very pretty clothes when I was a child; and I always
longed for them. My mother didn't believe in finery for children; and
she dressed us very plainly indeed. I want my little girl to look as I
used to wish _I_ might look!"
"But she doesn't care how she looks--" I began.
"I know," the child's mother sighed. "I can _see_ how _her_ little girls
will be dressed!"
Can we not all see just that? And doubtless the little girls of this
beruffled, befurbelowed tomboy--dressed in middy blouses, and bloomers,
and aviation caps, and sweaters, and Peter Thompson coats, or their
future equivalents--will wish they had garments of a totally different
kind; and _she_ will be exclaiming, "Children are never satisfied!"
If this principle on the part of mothers in America in providing for
their children were confined to such superficialities as their clothing,
no appreciable harm--or good--would come of it. But such is not the
case; it extends to the uttermost parts of the child's home life.
Only the other day I happened to call upon a friend of mine during the
hour set aside for her little girl's piano lesson. The child was
tearfully and rebelliously playing a "piece." Her teacher, a musician of
unusual ability, guided her stumbling fingers with conscientious
patience and care. A child of the least musical talent would surely have
responded in some measure to such excellent instruction. My friend's
little girl did not. When the lesson was finished, she slipped from the
piano stool with a sigh of intense relief.
She started to run out of doors; but her mother detained her. "You may
go to your room for an hour," she said, gently but gravely, "and stay
there all alone. That will help you to remember to try harder tomorrow
to have a good music lesson." And the child, more tearful, more
rebellious than before, crept away to her room.
"When I was her age I didn't like the work involved in taking music
lessons any better than she does," my friend said. "So my mother didn't
insist upon my taking them. I have regretted it all my life. I love
music; I always loved it--I loved it even when I hated practising and
music lessons. I wish my mother had made me keep at it, no matter how
much I objected! Well, I shall do it with _my_ daughter; she'll thank me
for it some day."
I am not so sure that her daughter will. Her music-teacher agrees with
me. "The child has no talent whatever," she told me. "It is a waste of
time for her to take piano lessons. Her mother now--_she_ has a real
gift for it! I often wish _she_ would take the lessons!"
American mothers are no more prone to give their children what they
themselves did not have than are American fathers. The man who is most
eager that his son should have a college education is not the man who
has two or three academic degrees, but the man who never went to college
at all. The father whose boys are allowed to be irregular in their
church attendance is the father who, as a boy, was compelled to go to
church, rain or shine, twice on every Sunday.
In the more intimate life of the family the same principle rules. The
parents try to give to the children ideals that were not given to them;
they attempt to inculcate in the children habits that were not
inculcated in themselves.
I know a family in which are three small girls, between whom there is
very little difference in age. These children all enjoy coming to take
tea with me. For convenience, I should naturally invite them all on the
same afternoon.
Both their father and mother, however, have requested me not to do this.
"Do ask them one at a time on different days," they said.
"Of course I will," I assented. "But--why?" I could not forbear
questioning.
"When I was a child," the mother of the three little girls explained, "I
was never allowed to accept an invitation unless my younger sister was
invited, too. I was fond of my sister; but I used to long to go
somewhere sometime by myself! My husband had the same experience--his
brother always had to be invited when he was, or he couldn't go. Our
children shall not be so circumscribed!"
There is not much danger for them, certainly, in that direction. Yet I
rather think they would enjoy doing more things together. One day, not a
great while ago, I chanced to meet all three of them near a tearoom. I
asked them--perforce all of them--to go in with me and partake of ice
cream. As we sat around the table, the oldest of the three glanced at
the other two with a friendly smile. "It is nice--all of us having ice
cream with you at the same time," she remarked, and her younger sisters
enthusiastically agreed.
To be sure, they are nearer the same age and they are more alike in
their tastes than their mother and her sister, or their father and his
brother. Perhaps their parents needed to take their pleasures singly;
they seem able quite happily to take theirs in company.
I have another friend, who was brought up in a household in which, as
she says, "individuality" was the keynote. In her own home the keynote
is "the family." She encourages her children to "do things together."
Furthermore, she and her husband habitually participate in their
children's occupations to a greater degree than any other parents I have
ever seen.
[Illustration: THREE SMALL GIRLS]
Their friends usually entertain these children "as a family"; but not
long ago, happening to have only two tickets to a concert, I asked one,
and just one, of the little girls of this household to attend it with
me. She accepted eagerly. During an intermission she looked up at me and
said, confidingly, "It is nice sometimes to do things not 'as a family,'
but just as one's self!"
Then, for the first time, it occurred to me that she was the "odd one"
of her family. All its pleasures, all its interests, were not equally
hers. She needed sometimes to do things as herself.
In matters of discipline, too, we find the same theory at work. Parents
who were severely punished as children do not punish their children at
all; and the most austere of parents are those who, when children, were
"spoiled." Almost regardless of the natures of their children, parents
deal with them, so far as discipline is concerned, as they themselves
were not dealt with.
This implies no lack of love, no lack of respect, for the older
generation. On the contrary, it is the sign and symbol of a love, a
respect, so great as to permit of divergences of opinion and procedure,
in spite of differences of age.
"I am not going to bring up the baby in the way I was brought up, mamma,
darling," I once heard a mother of a month-old baby (her first child)
say to the baby's grandmother.
"Aren't you, dear?" replied the older lady, with a smile. "Why not?"
"Oh," returned the daughter, "I want her to be better than I am. I think
if you'd brought me up conversely from the way you did, I'd have been a
much more worth-while person."
She spoke very solemnly, but her mother only laughed, and then fondly
kissed her daughter and her granddaughter. "That is what I said to _my_
mother when _you_ were a month old!" she said whimsically.
Children in American homes, it might be supposed, would be affected by
such diversity in the theories of their parents and their grandparents
concerning their rearing. They might naturally be expected to "take
sides" with the one or the other; or, at any rate, to be puzzled or
disturbed by the principle of "contrariwiseness" governing their lives.
From their earliest years they are aware of it. The small girl very soon
learns that the real reason why she finds a gold bracelet in her
Christmas stocking is that mother "always wanted one, but grandma did
not approve of jewelry for children." The little boy quickly discovers
that his dog sleeps on the foot of his bed mainly because "father's dog
was never allowed even to come into the house. Grandpa was a doctor, and
thought dogs were not clean."
This knowledge, so soon acquired, would seem to be a menace to family
unity; but it is not--even in homes in which the three generations are
living together. The children know what their grandparents wished for
their parents; they know what their parents wish for them; but, most of
all and best of all, they know what they wish for themselves. It is not
what their parents had, nor what their parents try to give them; it is
"what other children have."
Perhaps all children are conventional; certainly American children are.
They wish to have what the other children of their acquaintance have,
they wish to do what those other children do. It is not because mother
wanted a bracelet, and never had it, that the little girl would have a
bracelet; it is because "the other girls have bracelets." Not on account
of the rules that forbade father's dog the house is the small boy happy
in the nightly companionship of his dog; he takes the dog to bed with
him for the reason that "the other boys' dogs sleep with them."
Even unto honors, if they must carry them alone, children in America
would rather not be born. A little girl who lives in my neighborhood
came home from school in tears one day not long ago. Her father is a
celebrated writer. The school-teacher, happening to select one of his
stories to read aloud to the class, mentioned the fact that the author
of the story was the father of my small friend.
"But why are you crying about it, sweetheart?" her father asked. "Do you
think it's such a bad story?"
"Oh, no," the little girl answered; "it is a good enough story. But none
of the other children's fathers write stories! Why do _you_, daddy? It's
so peculiar!"
It may be that all children, whatever their nationalities, are like this
little girl. We, in America, have a fuller opportunity to become
intimately acquainted with the minds of children than have the people of
any other nation of the earth. For more completely than any other people
do American fathers and mothers make friends and companions of their
children, asking from them, first, love; then, trust; and, last of all,
the deference due them as "elders." Any child may feel as did my small
neighbor about a "peculiar" father; only a child who had been his
comrade as well as his child would so freely have voiced her feeling.
We all remember the little boy in Stevenson's poem, "My Treasures,"
whose dearest treasure, a chisel, was dearest because "very few children
possess such a thing."
Had he been an American child, that chisel would not have been a
"treasure" at all, unless all of the children possessed such a thing.
Not only do the children of our Nation want what the other children of
their circle have when they can use it; they want it even when they
cannot use it. I have a little girl friend who, owing to an accident in
her infancy, is slightly lame. Fortunately, she is not obliged to depend
upon crutches; but she cannot run about, and she walks with a
pathetically halting step.
One autumn this child came to her mother and said: "Mamma, I'd like to
go to dancing-school."
"But, my dearest, I'm afraid--I don't believe--you could learn to dance
--very well," her mother faltered.
"Oh, mamma, _I_ couldn't learn to dance _at all_!" the little girl
exclaimed, as if surprised that her mother did not fully realize this
fact.
"Then, dearest, why do you want to go to dancing-school?" her mother
asked gently.
"The other girls in my class at school are all going," the child said.
Her mother was silent; and the little girl came closer and lifted
pleading eyes to her face. "_Please_ let me go!" she begged. "The others
are all going," she repeated.
"I could not bear to refuse her," the mother wrote to me later. "I let
her go. I feared that it would only make her feel her lameness the more
keenly and be a source of distress to her. But it isn't; she enjoys it.
She cannot even try to learn to dance; but she takes pleasure in being
present and watching the others, to say nothing of wearing a 'dancing-
school dress,' as they do. This morning she said to her father: 'I can't
dance, Papa; but I can talk about it. I learn how at dancing-school. Oh,
I love dancing-school!'"
Her particular accomplishment maybe of minute value in itself; but is
not her content in it a priceless good? If she can continue to enjoy
learning only to talk about the pleasures her lameness will not permit
her otherwise to share, her dancing-school lessons will have taught her
better things than they taught "the other children," who could dance.
That mother was her little girl's confidential friend as well as her
mother. The child, quite unreservedly, told her what she wanted and why
she wanted it. It was no weak indulgence of a child's whim, but a
genuine respect for another person's rights as an individual--even
though that individual was merely a little child--that led that mother
to allow her daughter to have what she wanted. May not some subtle sense
of this have been the basis of the child's happiness in the fulfillment
of her desire? She _wanted_ to go to dancing-school because the other
children were going; but may she not have _liked_ going because she felt
that her mother understood and sympathized with her desire to go?
A Frenchwoman to whom I once said that American parents treat their
children in many ways as though they were their contemporaries remarked,
"But does that not make the children old before their time?"
So far from this, it seems, on the contrary, to keep the parents young
after their time. It has been truly said that we have in America fewer
and fewer grandmothers who are "sweet old ladies," and more and more who
are "charming elderly women." We hear less and less about the "older"
and the "younger" generations; increasingly we merge two, and even
three, generations into one.
Only yesterday, calling upon a new acquaintance, I heard the four-year-
old boy of the house, mentioning his father, refer to him as "Henry."
His grandmother smiled, and his mother said, casually: "When you speak
_of_ father, dear, it would be better to say, 'my father,' so people
will be sure to know whom you mean. You may have noticed that grandma
always says, 'my son,' and I always say 'my husband,' when _we_ speak of
him."
"Does he call his father by his Christian name?" I could not resist
questioning, when the little boy had left the room.
"Sometimes," replied the child's mother.
"He hears so many persons do it, he can't see why he shouldn't. And
there really _is_ no reason. Soon enough he will find out that it isn't
customary and stop doing it."
This is a far cry from the days when children were taught to address
their parents as "honored sir" and "respected madam." But, it seems to
me, the parents are as much honored and respected now as then; and--more
important still--both they and the children are, if not dearer, yet
nearer one another.
In small as well as in large matters they slip into their parents'
places--neither encouraged nor discouraged, but simply accepted.
Companions and friends, they behave as such, and are treated in a
companionable and friendly manner.
The other afternoon I dropped in at tea-time for a glimpse of an old
friend.
Her little girl came into the room in the wake of the tea-tray. "Let
_me_ pour the tea," she said, eagerly.
[Illustration: THE BOY OF THE HOUSE]
"Very well," her mother acquiesced. "Be careful not to fill the cups too
full, so that they overflow into the saucers; and do not forget that the
tea is _hot_" she supplemented.
The little girl had never poured the tea before, but her mother neither
watched her nor gave her any further directions. The child devoted
herself to her pleasant task. With entire ease and unconsciousness she
filled the cups, and made the usual inquiries as to "one lump, or two?"
and "cream or lemon?"
"Isn't she rather young to pour the tea?" I suggested, when we were
alone.
"I don't see why," my friend said. "There isn't any 'age limit' about
pouring tea. She does it for her dolls in the nursery; she might just as
well do it for us here. Of course it is hot; but she can be careful."
There are few things in regard to the doing or the saying or the
thinking of which American parents apprehend any "age limit." Their
children are not "tender juveniles." They do not have a detached life of
their own which the parents "share," nor do the parents have a detached
life of their own which the children "share." There is the common life
of the home, to which all, parents and children, and often grandparents
too, contribute, and in which they all "share."
This is the secret of that genuine satisfaction that so many of us
grown-ups in America find in the society of children, whether they are
members of our own families or are the children of our friends and
neighbors.
A short time ago I had occasion to invite to Sunday dinner a little boy
friend of mine who is nine years old. Lest he _might_ feel his youth in
a household which no longer contains any nine-year-olds, I invited to
"meet him" two other boys, playmates of his, of about the same age.
There chanced also to be present a friend, a professor in a woman's
college, into whose daily life very seldom strays a boy, especially one
nine years old.
"What interesting things have you been doing lately?" she observed to
the boy beside her in the pause which followed our settling of ourselves
at the table.
"I have been seeing 'The Blue Bird,'" he at once answered. "Have _you_
seen it?" he next asked.
No sooner had she replied than he turned to me. "I suppose, of course,
_you've_ seen it," he said.
"Not yet," I told him; "but I have read it--"
"Oh, so have I!" exclaimed one of the other boys; "and I've seen it,
too. There is one act in the play that isn't in the book--'The Land of
Happiness' it is. My mother says she doesn't think Mr. Maeterlinck could
have written it; it is so different from the rest of the play."
Those present, old and young, who had seen "The Blue Bird" debated this
possibility at some length.
Then the boy who had introduced it said to me: "I wonder, when you see
it, whether _you'll_ think Mr. Maeterlinck wrote 'The Land of Happiness'
act, or not."
"I haven't seen 'The Blue Bird,'" the third boy remarked, "but I've seen
the Coronation pictures." Whereupon we fell to discussing moving-picture
shows.
During the progress of that dinner we considered many other subjects,
lighting upon them casually; touching upon them lightly; and--most
significant of all--discoursing upon them as familiars and equals. None
of us who were grown-up "talked down" to the boys, and certainly none of
the boys "talked up" to us. Each one of them at home was a "dear
partner" of every other member of the family, younger and older, larger
and smaller. Inevitably, each one when away from home became quite
spontaneously an equal shareholder in whatever was to be possessed at
all.
A day or two after the Sunday of that dinner I met one of my boy guests
on the street. "I've seen 'The Blue Bird,'" I said to him; "and I'm
inclined to think that, if Mr. Maeterlinck did write the act 'The Land
of Happiness,' he wrote it long after he had written the rest of the
play. I think perhaps that is why it is so different from the other
acts."
"Why, I never thought of that!" the boy cried, with absolute
unaffectedness. He appeared to consider it for a moment, and then he
said: "I'll tell my mother; she'll be interested."
Foreign visitors of distinction not infrequently have accused American
children of being "pert," or "lacking in reverence," or "sophisticated."
Those of us who are better acquainted with the children of our own
Nation cannot concur in any of these accusations. Unhappily, there are
children in America, as there are children in every land, who _are_
pert, and lacking in reverence, and sophisticated; but they are in the
small minority, and they are not the children to whom foreigners refer
when they make their sweeping arraignments.
The most gently reared, the most carefully nurtured, of our children are
those usually seen by distinguished foreign visitors; for such
foreigners are apt to be guests of the families to which these children
belong. The spirit of frank _camaraderie_ displayed by the children they
mistake for "pertness"; the trustful freedom of their attitude toward
their elders they interpret as "lack of reverence"; and their eager
interest in subjects ostensibly beyond their years they misread as
"sophistication."
It must be admitted that American small boys have not the quaint
courtliness of French small boys; that American little girls are without
the pretty shyness of English little girls. We are compelled to grant
that in America between the nursery and the drawing-room there is no
great gulf fixed. This condition of things has its real disadvantages
and trials; but has it not also its ideal advantages and blessings?
Coöperative living together, in spite of individual differences, is one
of these advantages; tender intimacy between persons of varying ages is
one of these blessings.
A German woman on her first visit to America said to me, as we talked
about children, that, with our National habit of treating them as what
we Americans call "chums," she wondered how parents kept any authority
over them, and especially maintained any government _of_ them, and _for_
them, without letting it lapse into a government _by_ them.
"I should think that the commandment 'Children, obey your parents' might
be in danger of being overlooked or thrust aside," she said, "in a
country in which children and parents are 'chums,' as Americans say."
That ancient commandment would seem to be too toweringly large to be
overlooked, too firmly embedded in the world to be thrust aside. It is a
very Rock of Gibraltar of a commandment.
American parents do not relinquish their authority over their children.
As for government--like other wise parents, they aim to help it to
develop, as soon as it properly can, from a government of and for their
children into a government by them. Self-government is the lesson of
lessons they most earnestly desire to teach their children.
Methods of teaching it differ. Indeed, as to methods of teaching their
children anything, American fathers and mothers have no fixed standard,
no homogeneous ideal. More likely than not they follow in this important
matter their custom in matters of lesser import--of employing a method
directly opposed to the method of their own parents, and employing it
simply because it is directly opposed. This is but too apt to be their
interpretation of the phrase "modernity in child nurture." But the
children learn the lesson. They learn the other great and fundamental
lessons of life, too, and learn them well, from these American fathers
and mothers who are so friendly and companionable and sympathetic with
them.
Why should they not? There is no antagonism between love and law.
Parents are in a position of authority over their children; no risk of
the strength of that position is involved in a friendship between
parents and children anywhere. It is not remarkable that American
parents should retain their authority over their children. What is
noteworthy is that their children, less than any other children of the
civilized world, rebel against it or chafe under it: they perceive so
soon that their parents are governing them only because they are not
wise enough to govern themselves; they realize so early that government,
by some person or persons, is the estate in common of us all!
One day last summer at the seashore I saw a tiny boy, starting from the
bath-house of his family, laboriously drag a rather large piece of
driftwood along the beach. Finally he carefully deposited it in the sand
at a considerable distance from the bath-house.
"Why did you bring that big piece of wood all the way up here?" I
inquired as he passed me.
"My father told me to," the child replied.
"Why?" I found myself asking.
"Because I got it here; and it is against the law of this town to take
anything from this beach, except shells. Did you know that? I didn't; my
father just 'splained it to me."
American fathers and mothers explain so many things to their children!
And American children explain quite as great a number of things to their
parents. They can; because they are not only friends, but familiar
friends. We have all read Continental autobiographies, of which the
chapters under the general title "Early Years" contained records of
fears based upon images implanted in the mind and flourishing there--
images arising from some childish misapprehension or misinterpretation
of some ordinary and perfectly explainable circumstance. "I was afraid
to pass a closed closet alone after dark," one of these says. "I had
heard of 'skeletons in closets'; I knew there were none in our closets
in the daytime, but I couldn't be sure that they did not come to sleep
in them at night; and I was too shy to inquire of my parents. What
terrors I suffered! I was half-grown before I understood what a
'skeleton in a closet' was."
An American child would have discovered what one was within five minutes
after hearing it first mentioned, provided he had the slightest interest
in knowing. No American child is too shy to inquire of his parents
concerning anything he may wish to know. Shyness is a veil children wear
before strangers; in the company of their intimates they lay it aside--
and forget it. In the autobiographies of Americans we shall not find
many accounts of childish terrors arising from any reserve in the
direction of asking questions. In American homes there are no closets
whose doors children are afraid to pass, or to open, even after dark.
"American children are all so different!" an Englishman complained to me
not long ago; "as different as their several homes. One can make no
statement about them that is conclusive."
But can one not? To be sure, they do vary, and their homes vary too; but
in one great, significant, fundamental particular they are all alike. In
American homes the parents not only love their children, and the
children their parents; their "way of loving" is such that one may say
of them, "Their souls do bear an equal yoke of love." They and their
parents are "chums."