THE GIRL’S RELATION TO THE HOME
The girl in the home is a member of the partnership plan of the family.
She should have the same financial, social and moral rights of her
brother. Her moral training should be no better than his. If she is
properly trained in the home, her services are as valuable as her
brother’s and she should have the same financial rights.
=The girl and her father.=--The father, if worthy of being such, should
have the confidence, respect and love of his daughter. She should feel
free to approach him with her wishes and her problems. His advice and
council will be of great value to her in her social relation with young
men. Many girls fail to show themselves interested in their father.
Girls should be attentive, kind and loving in their relations to their
father.
=The girl and her mother.=--A mother should not forget the experience of
her girlhood. Though busy and burdened with many cares, she should take
time to talk, often and intimately, with her daughter, of her own
girlhood, her own temptations, her own experiences in the various
vicissitudes of life. By wisely cultivating the relation of a
sympathetic companionship, the mother can often bridge her daughter over
that period of adolescence, when many girls come to regard their mothers
as “old fogies.” This is a stage of growth in a girl’s life. It usually
occurs when they are in the high school. They openly and unkindly
criticise their mother’s dress, speech, advice, council and religion.
This is a period of development that girls pass through. The right
relation between the girl and her mother would save the mother from many
tears and heartaches and the girl from many regretful memories of
misconception and blindness.
Fortunate, is the girl, who has never had an attack of “high school
snobbery,” who has never spoken lightly of the imaginary deficiencies of
mother; but, who has always found it a joy to divide gifts with mother,
to hand her the prettiest rose and to read her a choice story.
=The girl and her brother.=--Girls do not always appreciate the influence
they are exerting over their brothers. A boy’s estimate of woman is
often received from his sister’s influence. A sister has it largely in
her power to make her brother gentle, true and pure. She can make home
attractive and pleasant for him and thus save her brother from seeking
pleasures in questionable places and ways. Brothers and
[Illustration: CHUMS IN THE HOME]
sisters should grow up together, be educated together, play together
and, as far as possible, help each other. Their joys and sorrows, aims
and purposes should be mutual. Her lack of physical strength, her
natural tastes and aspirations, her duties and mission in life, being in
many respects different from her brother, require a line of preparation
unlike her brother receives.
=Her first and most valuable training.=--Marriage is not the only goal
toward which a young woman may turn, but it is the most natural,
important and worthy. Most all girls look forward to marriage as a
possible and desirable goal. Perhaps no woman would refuse marriage, if
the right man should propose. It is for this reason that every girl
should prepare herself thoroughly to be a housekeeper, a wife and a
mother. This should be her first and most thorough training. She should
not rest satisfied until she has learned every phase of how to keep
house, to care for the wants of small children and to manage hired help.
This training should begin in childhood. A girl should be able to dress
herself and to keep her own room by the time she is ten years old.
Whatever may be her career in life, she will always be the better off
because she is a good housekeeper. She may not have to be a housekeeper,
for she may have servants, still she is all the better off, as she will
understand how to manage the servants.
=The independent girl.=--In addition to having prepared herself for a
housekeeper, a wife and a mother, she should now prepare herself for
some vocation in life. The right man may not present himself, she may be
called upon to support an aged mother or father, or an invalid husband,
and she will need to know how to earn a living. A girl, unprepared to
support herself, waiting year after year for some man to come and marry
her, is an object of profound pity. If the right man comes along and
marries her, all is well. But she often marries the wrong fellow, or
waits for many weary years and yet, he never comes. A generation ago few
opportunities of earning a support were open to a girl. Conditions have
changed, woman’s ideals have grown and the world offers her other
vocations than housekeeping, wifehood and motherhood, and unless these
come in very attractive form she can choose the vocation of art, music,
teaching, stenography, book-keeping or some other calling. By the time
she is eighteen, a girl should be able to keep a house or earn a living
in some business way. This will give her an assurance of independence.
Regardless of the wealth of her parents, she should have these two
qualifications. If her parents are poor and she is ambitious, she can
now work her way through college, if she desires.
If the morals of a girl have been properly safeguarded by her mother’s
training and teaching, the independent girl is little more likely to
fall than the girl who remains at home and waits for a husband.
The independent girl who goes out into the world with her brother,
shoulders the same burdens, wrestles with the same problems, fights the
same battles and overcomes the same difficulties, will meet a better
class of men than those who would likely seek her out in her home. She
is more likely to be happily married, than if she remained at home. She
is now better fitted to be a housekeeper, wife and mother, than if she
had remained at home. She has learned how to produce a dollar, she now
knows the value of it and how, wisely, to spend it.
[Illustration: MOTHER’S RESPONSIBILITY.]