Concerning Children

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"Yes, dear," says the too tender mamma, and goes back again.

That child should have been met, not with anger or punishment, but with very simple sarcasm and protest.

"Yes, that is baker's bread,—and that is a plate,—and that is a spoon. I knew all these things when I arranged your supper. Do you think it is fair to call me downstairs just to say that?"

The bubbling fluency of a child's mind, the tendency to repetition and sometimes foolishness, is natural enough, and not to be blamed; but we should help the child to outgrow it instead of submitting to his wearisome reiterance.

"But, my dear, you said that before. I understand. Now do not say it again."

To say, "Yes, dear," a dozen times to the same question or statement is not strengthening to the child's mental habits. Similarly, when a child asks palpably foolish questions,—foolish by his own standard,—he needs not consideration, but mild ridicule. And, if he can answer his own question, let him: it is no kindness to do all his work. Children are not benefited by a too soft and yielding environment, nor do they always love best those who treat them with too much consideration. Fairness, not severity nor constant concession, is what a child appreciates. If we behave fairly to the child (as we would to a grown person), giving to him the healthy reaction of common justice, we help him to live easily and rightly in the world before him.

Even love is open to measurement by results. The love we have for our children is not developed in us as a pleasurable exercise, but is distinctly for the child's benefit. "The maternal sacrifice" is what our scientific friends call it. In studying early forms of life, we find the mother sacrificing everything for the good of the young, from which we draw the general inference that it is for the good of the young to have the mother sacrifice everything. More discriminating study will show us a great difference in maternal methods. Where the mother's loss is the gain of the young, she cheerfully submits to it; but, where the young is not benefited by her loss, we do not find it.

The eggs of the hen are carefully brooded by the mother; the eggs of the frog are left floating on the water in suitable places. There is no special virtue in the hen's brooding or vice in the frog's neglect; the mother does what is necessary for the young. The mother-cat licks her little ones elaborately, and teaches them to make their toilettes similarly. The cow licks the calf for a while, but gives it no instructions in washing its ears with its paws.

The mother-love is essential to the best care of the young, and therefore it is given us. It is the main current of race preservation, and the basis of all other love-development on the higher grades. But it is not, therefore, an object of superstitious veneration, and in itself invariably right. The surrender of the mother to the child is often flatly injurious, if carried to excess. To put it in the last extreme, suppose the mother so utterly sacrifices herself to the child as to break down and die. She then robs the child of its mother, which is an injury. Suppose she so sacrifices herself to the child as to cut off her own proper rest, recreation, and development. She thus gives the child an exhausted and inferior mother, which is an injury to him. There are cases, perhaps, where it might be a mother's duty to die for her child; but, in general, it is more advantageous to live for him. The "unselfish devotion" of the mother we laud to the skies, without stopping to consider its effect on the child. This error is connected with our primitive religious belief in the doctrine of sacrifice,—one of those early misconceptions of a great truth.

It is necessary for the good of humanity that the interests of the one be subordinate to the interests of the many, but it does not follow that an indiscriminate surrender of one's own interests always benefits society. On the contrary, a steady insistence on the rights of the individual is essential to the integrity of the social structure and its right workings. So it is necessary for the good of the child that the interests of the mother be subordinated to his interests, but it does not follow that her indiscriminate surrender of personal interests always benefits him. On the contrary, a too self-sacrificing mother tends to develope a selfish, short-sighted, low-grade personality in the growing life she seeks to benefit, where her honest maintenance of her own individual rights would have had a very healthy effect. Not what the child wishes, nor what the mother wishes, is the standard of measurement, but what is really beneficial to the child. If the mother is frankly and clearly unselfish in their daily intercourse, and then as frankly and clearly demands her own share of freedom and consideration, the child gets a fairer view of human rights than if he simply absorbs his mother as a natural victim.