Mothers’ Library
By Elizabeth Cherrill Birney
(First chairman of literature in the National Congress of Mothers. From “Parents and their Problems.”)
It seems a rather hard condition that though the years when a mother feels most deeply her need for more knowledge of children she should usually have least time for reading and study. This would not be so disastrous if school and college curricula were not framed to embrace even the slightest preparation for home life. That profession which demands a knowledge of sanitation, dietetics, and chemistry of cooking, careful and economic purchasing, artistic and hygienic furnishing, to say nothing of the care of children, is surely of sufficient dignity to deserve some preparation.... We can learn no science or art entirely from books, but when good trails have been blazed by those who have gone before us, it is foolish to attempt our own untried paths. Every mother can hang a little book-shelf in her busiest corner, and put on it from time to time a few books, which will be to her what his Blackstone is to a lawyer, his Baedeker to a traveler.