If the functions of the home are briefly enumerated under three heads,
no hint of exaggeration will attach to the assertion that by _its_
atmosphere children are modified in soul and body, and that upon _its_
outlook depends the ideals and health of all its occupants.
The first function of the home may be fitly defined as _Protective_.
If its evolution be traced it will be found that home life originated
in a craving for warmth, safety, and shelter; in the desire for a place
where the weary could rest and where security from ill was assured.
Physical comfort, sympathy and sanctuary are, or should be, primary
characteristics of every home.
The second function of the home is _Educational_. It is largely
responsible for the systematic formation of good habits, which should
here be stimulated by example and precept, and every advantage taken of
the imitative instincts so powerful in early life. Within its precincts
care can be exercised to afford opportunity for the development of
individuality; it is also, _par excellence_, the place for early
training in the judicious expenditure of energy and in the acquirement
of self-control. Such training improves brain power, relieves nervous
tension, and obviates the tendency to mental and moral confusion and
disorderliness which is associated with its absence. In a good home the
child's sanitary education should be fairly complete, at least in its
main principles, before the infection of bad habits from without can
interfere with automatic practice or weaken faith in home standards and
conduct. Regular washing of the teeth, for instance, should be early
inculcated, and rigid conscientiousness in matters of personal
cleanliness:--external, by bathing, rubbing, and brushing; internal, by
strict daily attention to the bodily functions. Slow and thorough
mastication of food should be cultivated, as well as good habits of
posture, of enunciation, and of regular exercise. Last, but not least,
habits of prompt and cheerful obedience, of truthfulness, and in due
course of moral purity, must be wrought into the very fibre of a child's
being. The discipline of home ought to be above all things consistent;
gentle, though firm and well considered. The virtues of obedience, of
self-restraint, and of respect for others should become instinctive
almost from infancy; for they sow the seeds of physical morality in
later life.
The third function of the home is _Social_. Before the present era of
"only" children, the exaggerated individualism was uncommon, of which
many of them are now unfortunately the victims. When large families
were the fashion, the give-and-take in nursery and schoolroom gave
early training in the duty of participation in the interests, the
pleasures, or the sorrows of others; it rubbed off the rough angles
of selfishness and gave invaluable lessons in consideration for those
whose circumstances varied from immediate individual experience. The
wider social sphere, for which much of the rough and tumble of
family life was an excellent preparation, was not familiar then to
young children as it is now, when the modern child's premature
introduction to its attractions is not only a constant source of
physical detriment and of mental exhaustion, but tends to disguise
its real character and to stimulate precociously the capacity to
respond to its demands. Occasional glimpses of this larger life are
a desirable part of home education; but constant familiarity with
its excitements is to be sternly deprecated in the causes of health
and of mental stability.
Where and when, then, are "only" children to receive this necessary
social training, occupants as they are of solitary nurseries; or where
are these qualities to be developed in the millions of children reared
under circumstances of such acute overcrowding and poverty that the
amenities of life are obscured by its fierce and exhausting conditions?
Observation shows that the function of accomplishing this training is
steadily devolving upon the school. Unfortunately, though the school
_does_ offer necessary opportunities for social intercourse, this
intercourse is relatively of an advanced type, which presupposes some
previous training in the more elementary principles of community life,
most fitly acquired at home. This tendency to force the school to
_supplant_ instead of to _supplement_ home training must be resisted, as
it involves loss to parents as well as to the children themselves.
The stress here laid upon the social function of the home may seem to
some exaggerated, and its association with the subject of this paper
may appear far-fetched; but to the writer its pressing importance calls
for this emphasis, for its connection with habits of sanitary practice
within and without the home is of the closest. The social spirit is the
very essence of sympathy; it exercises the imagination, it widens the
horizon, it quickens the sense of duty and of self-respect. If
graduation through the school of domestic, social training be omitted
in childhood, the realisation of personal responsibility is too often
indefinitely postponed. Consideration for others, care for their
welfare and personal sacrifice for their protection, must ever bulk
largely in importance throughout life, and must always be associated
with self-respect and self-control. When this sense of personal
responsibility is habitual, conduct which makes for limitations of
health in self, family, or neighbours will appear unjustifiable; and
neglect of either domestic or civic duties will become as unpardonable
as it is unpatriotic.
But antecedent to the attainment of this ideal, fundamental even to its
entertainment, is the adjustment or readjustment of home influences
or methods, as the case may be, to a higher standard. A better
understanding of the constitution of those for whose welfare the home
is established must also be insisted upon as an integral part of
general education.
It may be wise to point out that no proposal to sweep away in wholesale
fashion all the domestic traditions and family methods of this or any
other phase of civilisation is even suggested. Apart from the
impossibility of such a holocaust, treasures of great worth have been
handed on to us by our forebears, of which the majority only need some
slight readjustment to enrich many generations yet to come.
To take a somewhat extreme example. The mention of such homely,
old-fashioned, domestic remedies as black-currant tea for a bad cough,
or soap and sugar plasters for a boil--genuine relics from our
grandmothers--now usually excite a smile of derision; nevertheless they
have been instanced by one of our most able living pathologists[120] for
their admirable adaptation to their purpose, and have been shown to rest
upon a hitherto unsuspected basis of physiological therapeutics.
Another illustration may be drawn from the nursery tradition that bad
temper is often effectually cured by a dose of rhubarb.[121] Carefully
conducted observations upon children confirm the conventional
connection of peevishness with disordered digestion. It has been found
that gastric indigestion produces oversensitiveness, fretfulness, and
irritability, while chronic constipation results in erratic conduct,
stupidity, languor, headache, and moodiness. These effects may be so
far-reaching that, for no other reason than chronic constipation,
children may lose a large proportion of the advantages provided in
school life; they may even run the risk of being classed as "backward,"
from the interference with mental progress of the food poisons
reabsorbed into their circulation.
Modern methods of child training lay great emphasis upon the prevention
of these or kindred conditions by early formation of good habits; or,
when carelessness necessitates curative treatment, our old nurse's
panacea of drugs is the last resort; the first consists in attempts to
re-establish normal functions by the more natural means of suited food
and special exercise.
It is time, too, that the so-called "hardening fallacies," responsible
for the maiming of countless lives, were finally exposed and exploded.
The idea, for example, dies hard that beneficial endurance is cultivated
by exposure to cold; therefore, bare necks, arms and legs are lauded as
means of developing a Spartan spirit in young children. Now no profound
study of hygiene is required to demonstrate the close interdependence of
warmth with growth and nutrition, or to show that the chilly and
underclothed, sedentary child is both stunted and starved; whereas the
suitably clothed and freely active child is able to carry on unhampered
the necessary processes of growth and development.[122] So important is
warmth to the infant, that _eighty per cent._ of the total energy
derived from its food is utilised for the maintenance of the body
temperature essential to growth and for the activities of the organic
and muscular systems.
Children, in accordance with the law of the relation between mass and
surface in a cube, have, relatively to their mass, about thrice the body
surface possessed by an adult. The greatest loss of heat occurs by
radiation from the skin and by the evaporation of sweat, therefore undue
loss from this extensive area should be prevented by its suitable
covering; otherwise the child is placed at a far more serious
disadvantage than would be suffered by an adult similarly situated; for
in his case growth as well as equilibrium must be maintained. Few
parents realise the further fact that the power of heat regulation is
very imperfect at birth; indeed its slow development accounts for the
instability of a child's temperature for many years after. The fallacy
therefore of seeking to strengthen a young life by inadequate clothing,
by enforced and prolonged inactivity, or by abstinence from the source
of all energy--food--must be persistently exposed. Quite recently, also,
Dr. Eurich has advanced evidence to show that the quality of sleep is
adversely affected where the sleeper is insufficiently protected from
cold, thus emphasising the injury to health associated with going to bed
with cold feet.
All parents are ambitious that their offspring shall be distinguished by
the energy, the stability, the endurance and the power which
characterise the cream of humanity. The lives of young people are
carefully planned with this object in view. The waking hours of most
girls and boys are distributed in ordered sequence between what is
intended to be concentrated work and vigorous more or less exciting
play. But the fact has been very commonly ignored that these young
people are built up of young cells, which cells are passing through
almost every conceivable phase of instability in the course of
development; consequently recurring periods of leisure and rest are as
important to nutrition and nervous stability, more especially in the
case of girls, as are the most elaborate arrangements for exercise. Thus
it comes about that many youths and maidens suffer from chronic though
unrecognised fatigue, while others are unable to employ pleasurably even
a short space of "time to themselves," finding no interest in
occupations from which excitement is absent. The habitual limitation of
the hours of sleep among the rising generation is equally serious. The
loss which would be unbearable,[123] says Dr. Acland, even among our
most favoured children, were it not for the indulgence permitted them
during their long holidays. Is it not a parental duty to insist upon the
necessary provision for rest being made in every school, and ought not
inviolable rules upon the subject be laid down in their home circles?
Sleep, be it remembered, is the property of animals possessed of brains
and endowed with consciousness; it affords mechanical rest, and is
accompanied by a respite from the chemical changes which are
particularly rapid during childhood and adolescence. The intense
activity of the child's waking hours must be counterbalanced by ample
periods of entire rest. Habits of prolonged profound sleep are said to
be the best investment against mental instability and insanity; yet
parents permit a constant loss of from two to four hours' sleep each
night throughout the long period of immaturity.[124] Our newspapers and
lunatic asylums bear evidence to the price paid for this now inexcusable
carelessness.
Many more examples might be given of similar fallacies which apply to
later periods of life. How soon will a loving daughter allow herself to
learn that the consumption of large quantities of highly nutritious food
will not make for the prolongation of an aged parent's life? The fact
that abstemiousness and rigid conformity to the "simple life" are not
coincidents of longevity, but contributory to it, should be now common
knowledge. When will the day come that the fact will be accepted that
alcohol does not warm and protect the consumer, but actually lowers the
temperature, and by this means, in cold weather, renders him a more
ready prey to the effects of exposure. When will the value of good work
cease to be measured by the exhaustion it brings about or the breakdown
to which it conduces? Is it not, time that the housewife should be
abashed rather than self-commiserating when a bad cold runs through her
household, for observation of certain elementary principles of
disinfection would go far to avert such a catastrophe? When will the
fallacy be destroyed which gauges the strength of a disinfectant by the
pungency of its odour? The knowledge now available on these and many
other points only awaits assimilation by the housekeepers of the empire,
to serve as a powerful lever by which to raise the standard of health in
its every part.