Courtship and Marriage, and the Gentle Art of Home-Making

by Annie S. Swan

he son is peculiarly the mother's child, and the bond between them, seen at its best, is one of the loveliest, and, to the woman who has suffered for her firstborn, one of the most soul-satisfying on earth. I suppose most women given choice would wish their firstborn to be a son; and her pride in the boy as he grows in grace and strength and manliness is a very exquisite thing in the mother.

As a rule, a boy is more difficult to rear. He has more strength of limb and will, and shows earlier, perhaps, the desire to be master of the whole situation, as very often he is. It is amazing at how early an age a child can begin to discern between the firm will and the weak will of those who guide him, and to profit thereby; and she is a wise woman who begins as she means to end, and who teaches her child that her decision is absolute from the earliest stage. The moment he begins to understand that though you say no a yell will probably convert it into a yes, your occupation is gone, so to speak—you have lost your hold, and Baby is master of the situation and of you.

There is no doubt, I think, that the woman who has a nurse to relieve her of the child has a better chance than the one who has to fight the battle single-handed—for this reason, that extreme weariness of body, which nothing brings about more quickly than the perpetual care of a baby, is apt to weaken the will; the desire for peace at any price becomes too great to be resisted, and so the citadel is lost. It is impossible also for the ordinary woman, who has the care of a baby all day long, in addition to a multitude of other duties, not to become nervous, irritable, and excitable, and the probability is that the child becomes a reflex of herself. I know of no more self-denying and harassing life than that of the mother of many children, whose limited means prohibit much assistance in her labours. It would require the strength of a Hercules and the patience of a Job. Yet how many go on from day to day with an uncomplaining and heroic cheerfulness which does not strike the onlooker, simply because it is so common, like the toothache, that it attracts but little sympathy or attention.

In one day such a mother may win moral victories beside which the brilliant engagements of the battlefield would pale. It is not one that she has to consider and contend with, but many; the diversity of disposition in one family is truly amazing, and affords a most interesting psychological study. If she be a thoughtful and conscientious woman she knows that she is sowing the seeds of future good and ill, that early impressions are never erased, and that her own influence is the one which will leave the strongest, the most indelible mark on the future of the little ones she has under her wing. To this there is no exception whatever; it is a fact nobody attempts to dispute. Who shall say, then—who shall dare to say—that a woman's work is slight, her sphere narrow, her influence feeble? Have we not yet with us the proverb, "She who rocks the cradle rules the world"? as true to-day as it was a hundred years ago, as it will be in a hundred years to come.

But though the anxieties and responsibilities of the nursery are great, they increase, especially in the case of some, as the years go by; though as the boy grows older his mother may be somewhat relieved by the wise guidance of the father. There comes a time when the lad wants to emancipate himself from his mother's jurisdiction, and begins to look to his father, seeing in him the image of what he may yet become. He will not love his mother any less, but he will be impatient a little, perhaps, of her careful supervision; he wants to be a man, to imitate his father, to show that he is a being of another order. It is always amusing to look on at this subtle and inevitable change, but sometimes touching as well. It is the strong soul seeking his heritage, the first stirring of manhood in the boy, who will never be other than a bairn to his mother. Happy then the mother, blessed the boy, who has a good, wise, and tender father to take him by the hand, and show him at this critical stage the beauty of a noble, pure, and honest manhood, and how great is its power to bless the world.

There are some men who never grow old, who, while doing a man's part better than most in the world, keep the child-heart pure within them. Happy are the children who call them father! The ideal father (since we are writing of what we all know to be the highest in home relationship, we may call him so) will be a boy in the midst of his boys all his days; he will share the pastimes, the interests, the absorbing occupations of his boys, in the schoolroom and the recreation-ground, just as he did not disdain to join sometimes in the frolic of the nursery. He will understand cricket and football, and hounds and hares, and know all the little points of schoolboy honour, so that he may at once grasp the situation when his lad brings his grievance or his tale of victory to him. And through it all, without preaching, which the soul of the average boy abhors, he will seek to inculcate the highest moral lessons, thus accentuating and deepening the teaching of the nursery still fresh in the boy's mind.

This is the ideal which we would wish to see in every home, but the real is rather different, and sometimes perplexing to deal with. We have seen homes where the boys do not "get on" with their father, who seem to rub each other the wrong way, and to have no sort of kinship with each other—in a word, who are not chums, which is a boy's definition of the jolliest possible relationship, and which is very beautiful existing between father and son. But there are fathers who have no patience with the boy who, feeling in him the promptings of a larger life, begins to give himself little airs, and to adopt a manly and masterful manner; no sympathy with his desire for freedom; and who, instead of wisely guiding all these accompaniments of young manhood into fresh and legitimate channels, seeks to curb them, to restrain every impulse, and to enforce an authority the boy does not understand, and inwardly, if not outwardly, kicks against.

I know many mothers who have difficulty in pouring oil on such troubled waters, and who see that the father and the boy do not understand each other, and cannot get on—and she is powerless to help. Out of this strained relationship many evils may arise. The young heart, bounding with a thousand buoyant impulses, eager to see life and taste its every cup, deprived of sympathy and outlet, and thrown back upon itself, becomes reserved, self-contained, and morbid. Then, again, there is a temptation to concealment, and even to prevarication, over mere trifles. When censure is feared—and the young heart is fearfully sensitive—little fibs are told to escape it, and so a great moral wrong is inflicted, which can undoubtedly be laid at the unsympathetic parent's door.

The mother, by reason of her gentler nature (to which, of course, there are the usual exceptions), is not so feared, and is made the go-between.

"Mother, will you ask father for so-and-so?" is an everyday question in many homes; and why should it be? Why should sympathy and confidence be less full and sweet between father and son than between mother and son? Nay, rather, it might be fuller, since the father, being of the same sex, can the better understand the boy nature, making allowance for its failings, which were also his, if, indeed, they are not in an aggravated form still characteristic of him. Some men forget that they have ever been young; looking at them and witnessing their conduct in certain circumstances, one finds it difficult to believe that they ever were young. They have been fossils from their birth. That is the grand mistake—to fix such a great gulf betwixt youth and maturity that nothing can bridge it. It is more love, more sympathy we want; it is the dearth of it that is the curse of the world. Yet how dare we, being responsible for the advent of the child into the world, deny him his heritage, starve his heart of its right to our affection and regard? The Lord sent him? Well, He did undoubtedly, and His commands with the gift. There is no hesitation or ambiguity about the Lord's mandate regarding little children.