Concerning Children

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

What are the qualities developed by house-service? Let us suppose that we are all, fathers as well as mothers, occupied solely in household labour. The effect may be studied from one point of view in those countries where there are more men-servants than with us, and where the profession is sometimes followed for generations. The typical character of a butler or footman, a parlour-maid, cook, or general servant, may be traced through all personal variation. Given any sort of person, and put him or her through a lifetime of domestic service, and certain characteristics appear, modified to a large degree by personality, but typical none the less.

This palpable result of house-service is familiar to us all, and not desired in ourselves or our children. Admitting all personal good qualities in the individual servant, that in his bearing which distinguishes it from the bearing we call "soldierly" or "gentlemanly" or even "business-like" is the natural result of his form of labour,—of personal domestic service. Where the purpose of action is to serve one individual or a very few individuals,—and this not so much in ministering to general needs as in catering to personal tastes,—those who thus labour are checked in development by the measure of the tastes they serve. That is the restrictive tendency, resisted according to personal power and ability, but always producing some result. A race of men who were one and all contented to be butlers and footmen would not give as noble a fatherhood as the world needs; and a race of women who are contented to be cooks and housemaids do not give as noble a motherhood as the world needs.

Sharp exception will, no doubt, be taken to the use of the word "servant" to designate the nine out of ten women who "do their own work." There is a difference, we freely admit. They do the same work in the same way, but they have different motives. They do it from a sense of duty, oft-times, instead of a desire for wages; for they get no wages. They do it simply because they have to, sometimes, feeling it to be merely a disagreeable necessity. They do it from a more direct self-interest than the servant, as well as from a greater self-sacrifice. Few, very few women love it, and continue to do it a day beyond the time when their husbands can afford to hire another woman.

Whatever the "moral quality" of intention and the value of one's "frame of mind," the reactive effect of one's daily labour is inexorable. No matter how high and holy the purpose of the toiling housewife, no matter whether she glories in her task or hates it, her brain is daily modified by its kind of exercise as surely as her fingers are greased by the dish-water, cracked by the soap-suds, and calloused by the broom. The amount of labour and care required to run a household comfortably is not small. It takes no mean intelligence to administer a home. So does it require intelligence, labour, and care to run a retail dry-goods shop or a railroad train. The point to study is whether this particular species of labour and care is conducive to the best child-culture. Can the average woman successfully manage the mingled industries of her household and the education of her children? It may be replied at once, with some triumph, "Yes, she does!" To which we merely rejoin, "Does she?" We know that the household industries are carried on in some fashion; and that children grow up amid them (such of them as do not die), and are—when grown—the kind of people we see about us.

People did live and rear children in caves, in tents, in huts, in feudal castles. It is a question not of the bare possibility of maintaining the race, but of the relative advantages of methods of culture. Our rate of infant mortality is shamefully large, and due mainly to what physicians term "preventable diseases." It is quite open to discussion whether those diseases are not often traceable to the insanitary conditions of household labour, and their continued prevalence to the limitations of the kitchen-bred intellects of nine-tenths of our mothers.

No human being, be she never so much a mother, can be in two places at once or do full justice to several varied functions with one distracted brain. That the mother comes so near it in many cases is a splendid tribute to the power of love; that she fails in such degree is no reproach to her, so long as she is unable to alter the industrial conditions under which her motherhood is restricted.

Now that economic progress makes it possible to introduce new and wide improvements, the mother does become responsible, if she fails to see and take advantage of the change. Our complex and ill-developed household labours tend to produce certain special mental capacities in those who perform them. The housewife must hold in mind the entire contents of the home,—all its furnishing, decorations, utensils, and supplies. She must keep a running account of stock, and make good the incessant and irregular deficiencies of linen-closet, wardrobe, cupboard, and pantry, as well as the wear and tear on the machinery and furnishings. This developes one order of brain,—the administrative. The house-servant must exhibit skill in several distinct trades, and a swift facility for disconnecting the mind and readjusting it as promptly. This developes another order of brain,—the executive,—the development seriously hindered in special perfection by the attendant facility for disconnection. Neither of these mental powers is that of the educator, especially the educator of babies.

The capacity for subtle, long-continued, nicely balanced observation in lines of psychic development; the ever-present, delicate sympathy which knows the moment to suggest and the hour to refrain,—these mental attributes belong neither to the administrative nor to the executive ability. We find in the maternal dealings with children, when conspicuously efficient, precisely what should be expected of the expert manager and skilful servant. The children are well managed and well served, but they are not well educated.

When the mother—the housewife-mother, the servant-mother—begins to look into educational processes, she is appalled. It is easy to show her, if she has a clear and at all educated mind, what conditions would be best for babies, what kind of observation and treatment; but she knows full well that she cannot furnish these conditions. She has neither place, time, strength, skill, nor training for this delicate and careful method. Her work—her daily, hourly inexorable work—fills the place, consumes the time, exhausts the strength, does not develope the skill, and prevents the training of the educator. Many mothers do not even recognise the possibility of better methods, and strenuously resent the suggestion that they are not doing all that could be done.

They resent even the kindergarten, many of them. The relatively slow progress of the kindergarten method is as good a proof as could be offered of the lack of educational perception among mothers. They are willing to "serve" their children endlessly,—wait on them, wash, sweep, and cook for them. They are willing to "manage" their children carefully and conscientiously, and do not recognise the need of better educational treatment for babies. This attitude is a perfectly natural result of the reaction of the absorbing household industries on the mind of the mother. Her interest is eager and alert in all that concerns the material management of the family, from wall-paper and carpets to some new variety of hose-supporter,—down to the least detail of decoration on an embroidered muslin cap for the baby.