Parenting - A Fair Division Of The Home

( Originally Published 1914 )

IN the average American home there are many material conditions which make the providing of a right background for children's lives a perplexing undertaking. The home is for everybody in the family, not alone for the children. It would not only be intolerably uncomfortable for adults if every-thing were arranged to suit the children's needs, it would also be very bad for the children. Eliminate as conscientiously as we will all unnecessary factors of adult irritability, of conventionality, of mental inertia, of lack of insight, there remains a large body of stubborn facts which refuse to be eliminated with-out at the same time carrying with them the very life of the institution of the family. A family is a collection of human beings of varying ages and tastes and needs, which must be tactfully adjusted, even when all the members are relatively speaking of the same age. When the family is composed of children and adults the conflict of tastes, needs, and interests becomes acute. There is no getting around the fact that a rational, healthy life for children and a similar life for adults have very many points of utter dissimilarity.

Much that is both legitimate and desirable in adult-life is really and genuinely incompatible with much that is both legitimate and desirable in child-life. However much we may love the children, no one can deny this. It is true even when there is no fault to be found on either side. It is not a naughty act, quite the contrary, for a healthy boy to whistle or sing out of high spirits; but it is justly regarded as an unmitigated nuisance if done in the room where Mother is trying to entertain some friends. Running and jumping are splendid exercises for the young, but scarcely agreeable accompaniments to a meeting of Father's club. Great unhappiness and friction are caused to everyone if either side is required entirely to give up his own way of life to suit the other. It is as if an opera singer and a mathematician were shut up together in one small room. The one must have opportunity to sing and the other needs quiet and long silences. Two very estimable people would make each other mutually miserable through no willful fault of either. This is not, to put it mildly, in the least a new problem. It is as old as time and as wide-spread as the human race, and it has been solved in many different ways. At one extreme is the traditional English method, nowadays somewhat modified but still differing fundamentally from our own system. The typical English idea is that " children should be kept in the nursery, where they belong." A nurse to devote herself to the care of the children is a necessity, to obtain which English people of the least claim to gentility will pinch themselves in every way. The children eat with her, play with her, go out with her, are bathed, dressed, and undressed by her, and waking in the night call upon " Nursie " to quiet their fears or attend to their wants instead of upon " Mother." When the boys are old enough (from an English standpoint) to leave home, say at ten years of age, they are sent away to boarding-school, and the girls are turned over from Nursie to a governess.

Now, while I agree with the average American mother that nothing would induce me thus to bring up my children, it must be admitted that there are many advantages connected with the English system. English children are apt to be rosier, quieter, less nervous and irritable than ours, their digestion is better, and (as we are told to repletion) their manners are quiet and retiring, quite unlike the loudly self-assertive monopoly of the center of the stage supposed to be characteristic of the American child. This must be granted. But there are several other obvious and quite different results. It seems very odd to us, for instance, that Stevenson's " Child's Garden of Verses " should be dedicated, not to his mother, but to his nurse, and that in many other ways English men of letters testify as heartily as Stevenson that the priceless treasure of a child's first affection goes (as is natural) to the woman who devotes her life to care for him except when they testify bitterly to the dreariness of the child left only to a nursie, who is not a natural mother and who has only a hireling's perfunctory interest in him.

Furthermore, English literature is so full of pictures of the tragic remoteness and oftentimes animosity between father and son, and mother and daughter, that American readers (perhaps overestimating the importance of this testimony) feel like asking if there are no English parents who are intimate friends and boon companions of their girls and boys? It seems possible (if one must choose) that even our much-depreciated self-assertiveness is a happier attitude for children to have towards their elders than the pretty, shy, " good manners," which apparently so often cover a complete alienation from all family feeling.

Yet it is a pity to be obliged to choose between two such evils. With characteristic American self-confidence, one feels that somehow we ought to be clever enough to devise some other more desirable alternative.

One indisputable fact is that as the average American household is organized it is almost impossible to keep the children out of evidence. There is no nurse, there is no nursery; the children swarm all over the house because they have no other place to swarm. Even if we wished to, it would be a very troublesome matter to keep them out of adult life. But if we think it necessary, we do many other things which are troublesome. It is most upsetting and troublesome to go into quarantine for measles, and yet one does it. If one really could be convinced that it were for the best interests of the children to " quarantine" them, so to speak, thousands of conscientious American parents would put themselves to any in-convenience to accomplish that feat.

Here we have come to the only consideration worth a moment's thought. Is it for the best interests of the children? From this standpoint there are many reasons why children should neither be allowed nor forced to share constantly the adult-life and pursuits about them. An immense amount of the usual friction between elders and children, on which is based much of the usual " discipline," spankings, scoldings, dark closets, and the like, comes from the physical inability of two locomotives of different gauges to occupy the same track. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that 90 per cent. of the usual " naughtiness " in childhood will upon impartial analysis prove to mean " inconvenience to elders." And yet adults, even down-trodden American adults, have a right to somewhat convenient lives.

This is one side of the matter. On the other stands a consideration which, however one looks at it, outweighs everything else. If the child does not share the parents' life, and if the parents do not share the child's life, day by day, in small as well as great matters, in early childhood as in adolescence, both will have irrevocably missed the highest, sweetest, most valuable part of the filial relation a real intimacy between parent and child, a really deep knowledge of the character of each by the other. Only the perfect intimacy of happily married man and woman can equal this other gift of the gods as a bulwark against the sorrows and burdens of life.

In addition to this vital reason for having children live much with their parents, there are several others of almost as great importance. In no other way, can they absorb and assimilate so thoroughly and instinctively good standards of manners and morals. No amount of verbal exhortation to politeness will make the impression on a child's mind that is made by constant association with courteous and gentle-minded elders. Years of Sunday-school teaching may (and often do) lie on the child's mind like oil on water with no mixing as a result of the contact; but no child can be impervious to years of intimate association with adult lives founded on up-rightness, self-abnegation, and honesty. Most educators doubt the value of conscious instruction in moral values for the child. His ultimate morality depends, they believe, entirely upon what he unconsciously assimilates from the usual conduct of those about him. Even in the less fundamental but equally important realm of purely intellectual life there can be no doubt that constant contact with well-stored adult minds is more informing for the normal child than any schooling.

Let us now recapitulate and draw up in battle array the reasons for and against the presence of children in the ordinary, daily life of their parents.

Against it are the facts that the interests and desires of children and of adults are often unavoidably at odds; that children's nerves need and can endure less stimulation than those of adults ; that there are adult conversations and activities, perfectly right and legitimate, into which children would better not enter. To offset these considerations we have found that in no other way than by daily and hourly life in common can intimate acquaintanceship and hence deep-founded affection exist between parent and child ; that in no other way can permanent standards of right and wrong be established in the child's con-science ; that in no other way can so valuable a stock of general information be absorbed by the child's mind. A formidable array of antagonistic facts which it would seem almost hopeless to try to reconcile !

But there is a general under whose practical leadership we often see marching in amicable rank and file facts even more discordant. He is variously named, but he is best known as " Ordinary Horse Sense." If he is given full command we shall see him swing our opposite facts into line together and start them off in a stirring quickstep towards their common goal the best interests of the child.

In other words, ideal child-life, like ideal adult-life, should be arranged as flexibly as possible, with a large amount of " play," as it is called in mechanics, and as small an amount of rigidity as is consistent with coherence and continuity. Varying conditions should be met with varying devices. Life in common with their elders should be a pleasant condition very easily attained for children, rather than either an enforced necessity or an undreamed-of possibility. Children should be able to enjoy it by conforming to a few simple rules governing all reasonable social life, and should be able blamelessly to escape from it when its rigors weigh on their young souls. Adults in their turn should profit and be governed by the same conditions.

For the most part this ideal condition can be at least approximated by attention to the simple rule of physics, that two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time. If either adult or child wishes to indulge in some occupation which virtually makes him occupy all the space within given boundaries, he must retire from the part of space occupied by the family, and he should be able to retire ! To offset every prohibition placed on a harmless pursuit there should be an alternative possibility. If the children have a room of their own, their very own, plainly furnished and never required for show purposes, the command, " Do stop that messy whittling ! " can be replaced by the remark, as of one reasoning being to another: " See here, Pete, you can whittle if you want to, but you mustn't litter up the living-room ! "

The sacrifice of some part of the house as the children's very own room is not enough, although it is an essential part of this plan. There should be some outdoor fastness of childhood also, where life that seems rational to children can be lived without interference with adult eccentricities in the way of flower-beds, lawns, and neat paths. And again, providing of an outdoor " own place " for the children is not enough. Adults should loyally apply the " alternative " rule to themselves. With any sort of other retreat possible, there is no righteousness in making the living-room hold its breath while Father reads the evening paper to himself or Mother writes a letter; and there is no justice in pained reproaches when it does not hold its breath, as Twentieth Century Young America is little given to doing. Reading and writing and other adult pursuits which require perfect quiet about them are as anti-social occupations as throwing a ball or frying onions, and are no more legitimate in a room dedicated to the general life of the family. If anyone wishes to practice on the cornet or spin tops or to read philosophy let him betake himself to a nook where be can indulge his harmless tastes without interfering with the average normal activities and desires of the family.

This method does not in the least presuppose a many-roomed mansion, but only a systematic division and employment of the space in the home which is usually much of it wasted in a manner which would cause heart-failure to a scientific factory manager. There is the living-room which should be the center of the home and used for living that is truly " social." Then there is the dining-room now, as a rule, the sterile abode of the proprieties in the shape of the table and chairs and nothing else, kept (as a matter of gentility) entirely unoccupied except during the family meals. In a small house which has no library or its equivalent the dining-room might well be the retreat sacred to pursuits which need quiet, such as reading for adults or coloring pictures and stringing beads for children. What if it is not always neat and empty of all but dining-room objects?

There is the further retreat of the bedroom, now used only as a sleeping- and dressing-room. A writing desk in her bedroom, if it were only a deal-table with a five-cent bottle of ink and a penny penholder, would save the mother of the family from repressing the cheerful noise of the children by " shs " and " Do keep still ! " as she tried to write her letters or keep her accounts.

As to the rough-and-ready sanctum for the children, the more in the nature of a shed, barn, or attic that is, the better the children will like it, and the less the mother's tendencies towards adult neatness and order will be harrowed up by the use made of it by its occupants. If there is absolutely no extra corner to give the children, give them the extra bed-room. If there is no extra bedroom, give them the room in which they sleep. The only essential is that it be plainly and strongly furnished and be intended for use, and never to be shown off.

Not the least valuable element of this division of the home is the fact that the children can with perfect justice be held to an observance of their part of the bargain, that it can be made clear to them that they have no more right to invade the living-room with a troop of playmates and to start a game of tag there, innocent as is that amusement, than their elders have to go into the children's sanctum to try to read or to sleep off a headache. It is as bad for the children as it is disagreeable for the grown-ups to allow them to swarm all over the house, so that there is not a corner in which a peace loving adult may apply his mind to a quiet game of solitaire. It may be it often is better for Mother's desk not to be in the living-room, but the spot where it is should be inviolably dedicated to quiet and silence. A fair division of the home should not in the least mean turning it over to the children any more than it means turning them out into the gutter as their only playground.

Acute readers may have noticed that so far in this consideration of how adults and children may live together peaceably a vital question has been entirely ignored. The assumption has been, without examination of the facts, that the child would profit more by close association with his own parents than by association with any other adults. So far I have taken quite grandly for granted that mothers and fathers are always reasonable, well-informed, well-balanced people, with equable nerves, animated by a single-hearted devotion to the interests of the children, and endowed by nature with a special knowledge of what is best for them. This, of course, is what we parents think of ourselves, and it may do us good to face definitely the fact, usually tactfully concealed from us, that the world has not at all that opinion of us, and that it is coming more and more forcibly to act on quite the opposite conviction.

The school, which is the oldest form of asserting that other people are better for children than their own parents, is so familiar to us that we fail to see its significance; but nevertheless the school, with its ever-increasing paternalism and its varied interests, is taking more and more of the child away from his parents, and now, into the comparatively few hours left of a modern child's life out of school come step-ping nonchalantly a number of new figures, all of the friendliest outward aspect scout masters, leaders of camp-fire girls, supervisors of public play-grounds, visiting trained nurses, kindergarten and Montessori teachers, etc. And what they tacitly say to us is nothing more or less than this : " See here, the child is the most valuable asset of the State ! It is far too valuable to be left to the haphazard care of the incompetent, untrained, and preoccupied couple who chance to be his father and mother."

Now, if there is this wide-spread movement with this grim meaning under all its attractive front, surely there must be some truth in its main contentions. It may be that instead of searching our brains to devise ways for the children to associate with us without too much trouble for us, we would do well to search our hearts to see if it is worth the children's while to associate with us at all.

Except for the accident of birth, why should our children turn to us? Is the life of the homes we give them worth their making an effort to share it? Is the conversation at meal times or around the lamp in the evenings or on the porch in the afternoons really better for them than the British expedient of banishment to a nurse and a nursery or to the various attendants hired by the State or municipality, which are the American substitutes for English practice?

We take what care we can that our children do not associate with. " low " or " common " people, from whom they might learn profanity or vulgar slang. But when from our own talk they learn envy of those richer than we, malice towards our neighbors, and uncharitableness towards the weak and erring, are they so very much better off? Is profanity so very much worse than interest in the scandals served up in the morning papers? Does slang, even very vulgar slang, corrupt a child's mind more than hearing his mother lie about his age to the conductor of a train? Could anything be worse for a child than constant association with parents whose joys are always connected with getting ahead of other people; whose sorrows always come from having other people get ahead of them?

It would be a regenerating experience for most of us to undertake during a day or two a disinterested survey of our lives to see what, if anything, there is in them of any possible value to our children. Imagine, for instance, that you are the clear-headed, large-hearted, experienced head of an orphan asylum, investigating possible homes for orphans. Listen to the talk which fills your home ; look at the faces which come and go there ; examine the purpose (or lack of it) which animates the efforts of the family; make your soul sensitive to the spirit which pervades the life of the home and you may have a great surprise.

It may be that you will find that if you were a conscientious superintendent of an orphan asylum you would pass by that prosperous, comfortable residence which you call Home, and send the children into the small, cheerful, loving home of the Danish emigrant around the corner or up to a rugged tonic, hard-working life on a stony farm.

Nowadays we are all joining pure-food leagues to protect our families from the insidious benzoate of soda (or whatever it is), although its deleterious effects are so doubtful that experts never agree about them ; but who of us consistently bars out from the home the poison of spite and bad temper, the microbe of scandal and evil report? We are exhorted in every magazine we pick up to take heed that our children get enough oatmeal and pure milk to build bone and muscle. But who reproaches us for not providing our children steadily, day by day, with the calming and fortifying food of an elevated view of life. We no longer let our little ones sit up late at night, because we know that physically they need much rest and quiet to balance the huge expenditure of energy used in their rapid growth. But we take no care to shield them from the fretting and wearying concern over trivial matters, which fills so much of our own lives. A child frequently sees his mother roused to indignation over the failure of a dress to fit or of a cake to rise; he sees his father rejoicing in a state of business which involves the failure of a commercial rival. How often is he aware that there is a righteous indignation over the wrongs of the oppressed or a worthy spiritual joy in the passage of a needed enlightened law or in the prevention of an iniquitous war? He observes that his elders are pleased over an invitation to a select social function and displeased at a fancied slight from a person of influence. Does he often see them warmed to a genuine glow of pleasure in a fine poem or a sunset or an act of heroism? Did he ever know his mother to make an effort to control her irritation over a small domestic calamity, such as a broken vase or a kettle of jelly which boils over, by visibly and openly calling to her aid the philosophical thought of its unimportance in the whole scheme of things? Will he learn from association with her the good cheer that is to be had from the hearty appreciation of some homely act of good-will, as when the grocer takes the trouble to put a single piece of candy in a bag to please the two-year-old? Will he unconsciously absorb from either parent the habit of making his daily mental diet out of large, impersonal, uplifting interests ; enlightened tenement-house regulation, the playground movement, the improvement of the schools? Will they teach him to refresh his mind with the solacing esthetic or studious pursuits, with training himself to judge a picture from an artist's point of view, with tracing in the confusion of general history the long spiral of human development? Will their example lead him to turn for relaxation to harmless, cheerful amusements a good game of tennis, a well kept garden, a well-written novel?

It may be in such a disinterested survey of your home you would find the finest influence in your children's lives is the sunny good cheer and unconscious bracing philosophy of the young Irish or Swedish girl in your kitchen. It may be you would find that the only sense of literary animation in their lives comes during the weekly story-telling or poetry-reading hour at school. It may be that the only experience of simple, wholesome joy in life for the sake of living reaches them through the jolly, good-natured negro, who comes to help out at house-cleaning time ; and that the satisfaction which results from a worthy task well performed is revealed to them for the first time by the perspiring pride of a market-gardener in his long, well-kept rows of cabbages and tomatoes. Have we, as a matter of fact, any secret of spiritual joy and beauty to teach our 'children? The spiritual food on which we ourselves live is all that we can provide for them. Have we any philosophy of life? Is it a good one? Do we nourish ourselves on the noble things of the spirit, the great things of the mind, and suitable, wholesome pleasures for the body? Or are we feeding our souls on vanity and envy, our brains on trivialities, and our bodies on weakening indulgences of sloth and appetite?

In other words, if you were a child, able consciously to choose a home and parents, who would help you to equip yourself for the hard business of living some threescore-and-ten years, with intelligence and fortitude, and good cheer, would you choose the home you are giving your children?

Of course, the only honest answer anyone can make to such a penetrating and solemn question is a shuddering " No!" and the only use of putting it in such a radical and thoroughgoing way that it cannot help harrowing up one's soul with the revelation of one's shortcomings is to direct one's efforts to bettering matters. We frail and unworthy parents, who are but plain human beings in spite of the great responsibilities placed upon us, cannot hope to be ideal companions and leaders for our children, but after all we are their parents, the only ones they can ever have. It hardly seems too much for us to hope that we may be as good companions as scout-masters or educative play-leaders, or playground supervisors, who are, in spite of their imposing modern names, only human beings themselves. The point is that no longer having a monopoly of the job of bringing up the children, we no longer enjoy the monopolist's immunity from competition. We must look to our guns and keep our powder dry if our fortress of the family is not to be captured by our more worthy competitors ; and what is more to the purpose, we must steal the ammunition of the other side. An alert business man does not meekly let a rival supply all the market with a desirable commodity. An alert father might see to it that the scout-master does not supply his boys with all the comradeship and manly ideals of honest work and fun they know. An alert mother might see to it that her girls do not make up their ideals of good taste and culture and refined womanliness solely from the various teachers on whom they bave " crushes."

It is considered one of the hardships of a parent's life that in the matter of being an ideal for his children, he cannot compete with the other adults, be-cause his children see him every day in the terribly searching dry light of ordinary life, whereas others they see only at intervals, through the illusory haze of special occasions. But in reality this is the parent's strongest hold, the unique advantage of his position. We can none of us hope to seem perfect to our children if they know us well, for the simple reason that we are not perfect. But we can hope to seem to them something that is better than perfect, and that is honestly endeavoring to live better each day than on the day before. That achievement, and it is as fine as the finest, is within the reach of the most faulty of us. We may not hope always to be perfectly reasonable and just in our dealings with children, but we can, if we will, show to them the steady example of an honest effort to be reasonable and just. We may not even be able always to control our tempers, but we can at least make manifest our honest remorse at having been bad-tempered. We have the chance which no one else less intimately associated with the children can have, of initiating them gently into the great truth, the redeeming fact in life, that human beings may be very imperfect and yet be worthy of respect, admiration, and affection.

An esteem which is founded solidly on the intimate and ruthless knowledge between members of a family is an enduring ideal that will stand all the hard knocks of later disillusionment. It will be bedrock under the feet of the young travelers among the very uncertain stones of their earthly pilgrimage.

The knowledge gained insensibly through repeated experiences that his mother is trying hard to rise above pettiness will certainly be more stimulating to similar effort on the part of a, child than contemplation from a distance of a character already entirely purified from pettiness, if any such exists! And by this I do not mean that a mother should spend all her time reading Bergson and take no interest in her clothes, I mean simply that a mother should try hard to realize that her clothes are not the most important things in her life, and should apply her philosophy to the cooking of a meal.