The Secret Life: Being the Book of a Heretic

by Elizabeth Bisland

"It is admitted by every unprejudiced person—excepting, of course, the ignorant and benighted foreigner—that the Americans are the people, and that wisdom and virtue will necessarily die with them; that all their customs and institutions, whether social or political, are the wonder, the envy, and despair of other nations, which makes an assertion like yours seem almost frivolous."

"Selfish!" I struck in, "selfish—indeed! on the contrary, the American is blamed as the most indulgent of parents. Surely selfishness is the last charge that can justly be made."

P—— tried to defend himself. He admitted that "if indulgence invariably implied unselfishness the American would certainly have nothing with which to reproach himself in his relations with his children."

We fought the question over until late, and this is about what our discussion came to. There can be no doubt that a fond gentleness of rule is in this country, the law of the average household. So far as is compatible with common sense, the children have entire liberty of action, and, so far as the means of the parents permit, the children are provided with every advantage and pleasure. Indeed, to such lengths at one time did fondness go that it too often degenerated into a laxness that made the American child a lesson and a warning to other nations. Daisy Miller and her little, odious toothless brother were supposed to typify the results of this fatuous feebleness of rule in our family life, but neither Daisy nor her brother can now be held to be typical pictures, though their prototypes still exist here and there. The American parent of to-day rules more firmly and with greater wisdom. Such figures as those of the unhappy girl and the odious boy brought home to us the truth—forgotten in our passion for universal liberty—that a relaxation of wise, strong government by the parent was cruelty of the most far-reaching and irreparable sort.

No doubt Henry James' mordant satire helped to inaugurate a salutary reform, and it is just possible that a new work of a similar nature is now needed to suggest further serious reflections to American parents; to rouse them to consider whether their whole duty is performed in seeing their children well fed, well educated, and raised to man's estate. With most parents the sense of responsibility ceases when the boy begins to earn his own living, when the girl dons orange blossoms. Like the birds, the American parent works hard to feed the nestlings, carefully teaches them to fly, and then tumbles them out into the world to fend for themselves. So far in our history this elemental method has worked well, no doubt. The result of it has been to breed the most precocious, self-reliant, vigorous, irreverent race the earth has yet seen. One may see the whole situation epitomized in the orchard any pleasant June day—an astonished fledgling ruffling his feathers upon some retired bough, ruminating upon the sudden shocks and changes of existence, and afraid almost to turn his head in the large, new, lonesome world surrounding him. As the hours pass his melancholy reflections are pierced by hunger's pangs. Heretofore, a busy parent has always appeared to assuage such poignant sensations, but now that hard-worked person may be seen—genially oblivious of obligations—refreshing himself with cherries, and the fledgling, with a squawk of wounded amazement, discovers for the first time that even parents are not to be depended upon. His hunger meantime grows. An opportune insect flits by and is snapped at involuntarily. It proves to be of refreshing and sustaining quality, and digestion brings courage. A hop and a flutter show the usefulness of wing and limb. More luck with insects demonstrates that the world belongs to the bold, and before the day is done the cocky young nestling of yesterday is shouldering his papa away from the ripest cherries.

All this is very well in a world where flies and cherries are free to all, but America is fast ceasing to be a happy uncrowded orchard in which the young find more than enough room and food for the taking.

In the past, the boy—inured to plain living and a certain amount of labour from childhood—had only to take the girl of his choice by the hand and go make a home out of virgin soil, wheresoever chance or fancy led, himself and his parents both confident he could not suffer in a land where only industry was needed to ensure conquest. These boundless possibilities relieved the parent of half the cares incident to the relation, and that sense of freedom from responsibility has remained, while conditions have altered. The bird-like fashion of refusing further liability once the child has made his first flight is still the rule.

To the European parent this seems a most flagrant abandonment of duty. There the anxious care for the offspring reaches out to the third and fourth generation, and every safeguard which law or custom can devise is thrown around the child. From the moment of its birth the parent of Continental Europe begins to save, not only for the education and upbringing, but for the whole future existence of the child. It is not alone the daughter who is dowered, but the son also has provision made for his married life, when, as his parents keenly realize, the greatest strain will be made upon his resources and capabilities.