All this inculcated adult docility, which wrecks every civilization as
it is wrecking ours, is inhuman and unnatural. We must reconsider our
institution of the Coming of Age, which is too late for some purposes,
and too early for others. There should be a series of Coming of Ages for
every individual. The mammals have their first coming of age when they
are weaned; and it is noteworthy that this rather cruel and selfish
operation on the part of the parent has to be performed resolutely, with
claws and teeth; for your little mammal does not want to be weaned, and
yields only to a pretty rough assertion of the right of the parent to
be relieved of the child as soon as the child is old enough to bear the
separation. The same thing occurs with children: they hang on to the
mother's apron-string and the father's coat tails as long as they can,
often baffling those sensitive parents who know that children should
think for themselves and fend for themselves, but are too kind to throw
them on their own resources with the ferocity of the domestic cat. The
child should have its first coming of age when it is weaned, another
when it can talk, another when it can walk, another when it can dress
itself without assistance; and when it can read, write, count money, and
pass an examination in going a simple errand involving a purchase and
a journey by rail or other public method of locomotion, it should have
quite a majority. At present the children of laborers are soon mobile
and able to shift for themselves, whereas it is possible to find
grown-up women in the rich classes who are actually afraid to take a
walk in the streets unattended and unprotected. It is true that this
is a superstition from the time when a retinue was part of the state
of persons of quality, and the unattended person was supposed to be a
common person of no quality, earning a living; but this has now become
so absurd that children and young women are no longer told why they are
forbidden to go about alone, and have to be persuaded that the streets
are dangerous places, which of course they are; but people who are not
educated to live dangerously have only half a life, and are more likely
to die miserably after all than those who have taken all the common
risks of freedom from their childhood onward as matters of course.