Parenting - Not Taking The Children Too Seriously

( Originally Published 1914 )

I AM credibly informed that parents may be broadly divided into two classes, the over-anxious and the too-negligent. At the very beginning I would take care to warn the too-negligent ones that not a word of this brief discussion is written for them, if I believed in the existence of that brand of parent. But I do not. I encounter them in books and in dreadful stories retailed to me by people who pretend to know actual instances of their selfish neglect of their children, but the parents I actually meet are without exception fairly sweating blood in an endeavor to do their duty by the children. We who are in the thick of this momentous experience talk of little else when we are gathered together. We know we annoy the childless-we have a faint, dim recollection of how we were bored, when we were childless but we cannot stop for that. Our hearts are too full of the distracting and fascinating perplexities of our new job. We must pour them out to each other endlessly. It seems to me in moments of discouragement that I have seen every variety of foolish parent who can possibly exist and have run across every outrageously misguided method of training children, but I have never yet encountered the spectacularly neglectful mother, who figures so largely in magazine stories and novels-with-a-purpose, who plays bridge all day and dances all night, leaving her children to learn profanity and filth in the gutter. It is my conviction that if such parents ever existed, they are now as extinct as the dodo.

And my further conviction is that when they disappeared there was lost with them a desirable element of life, entangled paradoxically, as desirable elements so often are, with their traditional perverse and way-ward habits. They may not have endured the heat and burden of the day, they may not have hoed and watered and weeded as we fatigued and harried parents do, but at least their predilection for comfortable chairs on the shady porch kept them from pulling up the little plants to see if their roots were growing. But we who remain have no such blessed repose; we have " thought ourselves tired," over the great crisis of parenthood, we are willing to give up the last drop of blood for the children. Alas ! there is no such simple and easy solution open to us. Giving up one's blood solves few problems : it leaves the giver little power to continue living and doing his duty; it would give the children nothing of any value to them. Healthy organisms can seldom profit from other people's blood, and children have plenty of blood in their own veins which suits their purposes better than ours could; and what is more, unless we live our own lives and make those lives purposeful and significant, we cannot be of service to any but very young children.

However, since one can never be sure of anything in this world, and since there may be still lingering on a lone specimen or two of the extinct species of parents who do not take their children seriously, I will, upon second thought, put down the warning I was considering, and say that not a word of what follows is meant for them. Having salved my con-science by this caution, let me ask those who are continuing to read to seek out a comfortable chair, to relax every muscle, and to take it easy while we em-bark upon a few considerations which may relieve the tension of our lives.

When my first baby was very young and I was bracing myself with all the serious-minded intensity of the modern young mother to do the right thing or die in the attempt, I remember seeking out my doctor with this impassioned plea for a definite rule of hygiene. " I want your trained scientific conclusion on a matter which people seem to differ radically about. One set of old women tell me the baby will certainly have cholera morbus and die if she isn't swathed in woolen, and another set say she will burst into prickly heat and hives if she has anything but the finest linen next her delicate skin. Now, which is right? "

The doctor looked at me whimsically. " Let me tell you one thing, although doctors usually keep it a secret from mothers. A healthy baby is very apt to grow up all right, no matter what form of mania his mother's conscientiousness takes. Whether you use linen or cotton or woolen, if you keep your baby warm and dry and clean and comfortable, you can't keep her from growing up, no matter how much you worry over her ! "

At the time I thought this the most evasive of generalizations and could extract only a chilly comfort from it, but the conversation has come back into my mind many times, and I have learned to smile with my wise doctor over the needless trouble we all put ourselves to " when hot for certainties in this our life." I have begun to see the folly of trying to be the motive power in the rushing advance of the children on to maturity. It is not only wise but infinitely comforting to realize that we have done everything humanly possible when we keep the boat comfortable, scraped clear of barnacles, and headed in the right direction ; and that we must, whether willing or not, leave the rest to a power immeasurably greater than any we personally can furnish. We cannot do the children's growing for them. All that we can do is to supply the right background for their growth.

If it were not a spectacle so infinitely familiar to us all, it would be astounding to observe the almost perfect unanimity with which from wholesome, healthy homes and sane and cheerful families there emerges a new crop of wholesome, healthy, sane inhabitants of the world, We are blunted to wonder of it by the same dullness of eye which pre-vents our taking in the miracle of gardening. We put a row of seeds in the ground, pull out the worst of the weeds beside them, cultivate the ground a little, and occasionally put on a little water. That is all we have to do, all we can do ; somehow out of every small dry horny scrap we put in the ground emerges a tall and complex organism, which produces fruit or flowers or edible roots, according to its nature, not in the least according to anything we have done. Somehow, if children are given plenty of sleep and enough nourishing food, a reasonable amount of al-most any sort of instruction, not an overwhelming amount of scoldings, and a great deal of love, even misguided love, they develop from the troublesome, boisterous, immature beings over whose faults and failings we wring our hands in anguish into useful and conscientious members of the community, who in turn worry themselves into a fever lest they may not be doing all they should for their children. All that we have done by worrying over them and by seeing dreadful possibilities in each of their foibles is to embitter in their lives a few hours which otherwise would have been sweet. We are not content to do the best we can ; we insist upon doing the best we can and then fretting about it into the bargain. We poison each small emergency with the anguish of apprehension until it swells up morbidly into a crisis, a deadly and irrevocable turning point. We face our undertaking with the fear of failure in our hearts and, brooding over the possibilities of unhappiness involved in every trait of the children, we succeed effectively in destroying a good deal of the happiness they might be having at the present moment.

We can see no desirable future possible for Peter because of his incorrigible carelessness. He is really impossible. No threats, prizes, or exhortations can make him keep his room neat or can prevent his bicycle being left out in the rain over night or can induce him to tie his necktie properly. He is hopelessly at loose ends always and, as we prod and poke at him with various reforming devices, we peer anxiously and faint-heartedly into the busy, hard-headed, bitterly competitive business-world, in which poor Pete's faults will forever condemn him to failure. But when Pete grows up there is something more to him than carelessness, as there has always been something more to him than carelessness. That, though still troublesome, is almost lost sight of in the brilliance of a charming and winning personality. Unsoured by our loyal attempts to make him over into something he can never be, Peter looks upon the world and, with an irresistible smile, sees that it is good, has an instinctive perception of the companionable lying latent in even the most misanthropic of his fellows, and a magical capacity for drawing it out of them. And then, although Peter is still care-less, his integrity is of the rock-ribbed variety (as it always has been, only we have been so busy moaning over his inability to remember to hang up his overcoat that we could never see it). And, further more, Peter's judgment is sound, as it was even in his childhood, though we forgot to take it into consideration as we exclaimed about the valuable book left face downward on the grass. In short, Peter is a great success. He is not the kind of success we thought he ought to be. He is not as much of a success as he would have been if he had been able, as no one is, to combine quite contradictory good qualities, to be scrupulously exact, neat, and ac-curate, and yet possess the great fund of charitable tolerance and kindly divination of character which makes his presence an inspiration. But the fact remains that Peter is a distinct credit to us. There is another fact which remains also. We might have begun long ago, not to relax our efforts to train Peter (for they may have done some good after all), but after having done our best to train him, we might have begun to take pleasure in Peter's personality and to enjoy the sunshine he cast about him always.

I suppose there never was anyone in the world who tried to do anything who did not live through moments of unnerving depression. Each profession has its own brand of undermining self-doubt, which is declared by those who have endured it to be the hardest of all to battle with, but I think that parents have the right to claim the universal sympathy of the world for those black periods when imaginary failure stares them in the face. Failure in their case is so deadly. The world needs their successes so much that it is fatally easy to lose a sense of proportion, and to fall into the mood when it seems that every painfully inculcated good habit of the children has given way to original sin. Harry's laziness will end by making a hobo of him, Molly simply will not tell the truth, Elizabeth's self-assertiveness and egotism are beyond anything, and Jack's " contrariness " makes it impossible to have any hold on him. If at such a time you have ever chanced to receive a visit from a gay, full-blooded young cousin in college, you may have been astonished to see how the mere presence of his infectious high spirits made the children over. The sight of his brilliant smile, though founded on nothing more creditable to him than youth and good health, the mere sound of his laughing voice, though it uttered nothing more worthy than the foolish refrain of the latest popular song, the mere poise of his alert body, though it performed not a useful or meritorious act, did more to change the moral atmosphere of the house from lowering cloudiness to breezy sunshine than all your dreary conscientious efforts to induce the children to " do what is right." Harry's laziness is electrified into energy, Molly forgets to prevaricate, Elizabeth runs willingly on errands and loses herself in service for others, and Jack's prickliness disappears entirely. Your under-graduate cousin has uttered no moral exhortation, has let fall no word of blame for the bad habits or of praise for the good; he has not even set a specially good example, dropping the ash from his cigarettes all over the house, lounging in the best chairs, and forgetting to jump up to open the door for Great aunt Amanda. But his vividly, though unconsciously, held conviction that it is the greatest fun in the world to be alive, and that the game is a thou-sand times worth the candle, has been like a burst of sunny, warm west wind on a sour, misty day. All the young growing things in our charge, which, under our cloudy sky of anxiety and apprehension and concentration on faults and defects, have been drooping and spindling and twisting with a weak perversity here and there, draw themselves upright, hold their heads high, and quivering with reflected vitality, thrust their roots deep into the life-giving earth, which sends up a flood of strength to every cell.

And yet our young cousin, though he has not a tithe of our responsibilities, has not a hundredth part of our reason for joy and exhilaration and trust in life. We parents with children still at home with us are passing through the richest part of our earthly pilgrimage. We touch life at more points, we are the medium through which pass more electrifying currents of hope and interest and effort, and forward-looking, we are privileged to love and protect and enjoy more intimately than ever before or after. We may become very wise and hard-working members of society after the children are grown up, we may, manage settlement houses and diet kitchens, and be leaders in club work or politics, and we will find solace and satisfaction and comfort in being useful to our fellow-men. But never again can we live so fully and so deeply as now. Never again will we be so near the limpid transparence of innocence or touch so closely a joyous acceptance of life as it is. And yet we cloud the brightness of all these swiftly passing delights because our utmost efforts will not make the children perfect, will not even make them into our own distorted idea of perfection, because we feel a gloomy Calvinistic responsibility for every episode of growth in the life of every child; because we will not trust the miraculous principle of growth to unfold the capacities from the human soul far better than we can unfold them; because we face the future with apprehension and not with confidence.

One of the old-time stories told in our family is concerned with a game of charades, played many years ago, when my aunt was a very small and very timid little girl. At some turn of the game a giant was a necessary part of the tableaux, and my grand father was to play the part. Knowing little Mattie's exceeding propensity to panic, he took her on one side and explained the matter to her. " See, dear, in the next scene I'm going to pretend to be a giant, with this broomstick held high over my head. Aunt Mary is going to wrap a sheet around it, so, and then I'm going to fasten that jack-o'-lantern you and Jimmie made on top for a head." Thus fortified, little Mattie took her place in the audience, quite pleased and important at being in the secret. At the given moment the curtain was drawn back and the huge white figure appeared, the jack-o'-lantern grinning from the top. There was appreciative applause from the spectators and little Mattie went into a hysterical fit of terror, screaming and sobbing, and spoiling all the fun of the evening. After she had been finally quieted, my grandfather, with an exasperation which he thought justifiable, said to her: "Mattie, how could you be so foolish? I told you all about it. You knew what it was." Little Mat-tie's answer has become historic in our family. She sat up on the sofa and thus earnestly explained the matter to the circle about her: " Oh, yes, I knew it was just Father. I knew that! But I thought it might be a giant ! "

I think of the story many times as I watch myself and other parents going into fits of nervous apprehension over habits in our children which we know well enough cannot survive their natural growth, if that is kept vigorous and sane. We know well enough that they will turn out all right, we know that we ourselves went through just such unpromising phases, we know that our brothers and our cousins and our husbands have settled down for the most part from being careless, lazy, irresponsible boys into hard-working, responsible, competent fathers of families, and we see innumerable instances of frivolous girls turning into useful and warm hearted and industrious mothers but we darken our sky and the life of the children by our fears that just in their particular cases the laws of growth will not apply, that they will go on sucking their thumbs till they are in college, and after they are married will not remember to wash their faces before sitting down to dinner.