Jegi[11] obtained letters addressed to real or imaginary friends from 3,000 German children in Milwaukee, asking what they desired to do when they grew up, and why, and tabulated returns from 200 boys and 200 girls for each age from eight to fourteen inclusive. He also found a steadily decreasing influence of relatives to thirteen; in early adolescence, the personal motive of choosing an occupation because it was liked increased, while from twelve in boys and thirteen in girls the consideration of finding easy vocations grew rapidly strong.
L. W. Cline[12] studied by the census method returns from 2,594 children, who were asked what they wished to be and do. He found that in naming both ideals and occupations girls were more conservative than boys, but more likely to give a reason for their choice. In this respect country children resembled boys more than city children. Country boys were prone to inattention, were more independent and able to care for themselves, suggesting that the home life of the country child is more effective in shaping ideals and character than that of the city child. Industrial occupations are preferred by the younger children, the professional and technical pursuits increasing with age. Judgments of rights and justice with the young are more prone to issue from emotional rather than from intellectual processes. Country children seem more altruistic than those in the city, and while girls are more sympathetic than boys, they are also more easily prejudiced. Many of these returns bear unmistakable marks that in some homes and schools moralization has been excessive and has produced a sentimental type of morality and often a feverish desire to express ethical views instead of trusting to suggestion. Children are very prone to have one code of ideals for themselves and another for others. Boys, too, are more original than girls, and country children more than city children.
Friedrich[13] asked German school children what person they chose as their pattern. The result showed differences of age, sex, and creed. First of all came characters in history, which seemed to show that this study for children of the sixth and seventh grades was essentially ethical or a training of mood and disposition (Gesinnungsunterricht), and this writer suggests reform in this respect. He seems to think that the chief purpose of history for this age should be ethical. Next came the influence of the Bible, although it was plain that this was rather in spite of the catechism and the method of memoriter work. Here, too, the immediate environment at this age furnished few ideals (four and one-fifth per cent), for children seem to have keener eyes for the faults than for the virtues of those near them. Religion, therefore, should chiefly be directed to the emotions and not to the understanding. This census also suggested more care that the reading of children should contain good examples in their environment, and also that the matter of instruction should be more fully adapted to the conditions of sex.
Friedrich found as his chief age result that children of the seventh or older class in the German schools laid distinctly greater stress upon characters distinguished by bravery and courage than did the children of the sixth grade, while the latter more frequently selected characters illustrating piety and holiness. The author divided his characters into thirty-five classes, illustrating qualities, and found that national activity led, with piety a close second; that then came in order those illustrating firmness of faith, bravery, modesty, and chastity; then pity and sympathy, industry, goodness, patience, etc.
Taylor, Young, Hamilton, Chambers, and others, have also collected interesting data on what children and young people hope to be, do, whom they would like to be, or resemble, etc. Only a few at adolescence feel themselves so good or happy that they are content to be themselves. Most show more or less discontent at their lot. From six to eleven or twelve, the number who find their ideals among their acquaintances falls off rapidly, and historical characters rise to a maximum at or before the earliest teens. From eleven or twelve on into the middle teens contemporary ideals increase steadily. London children are more backward in this expansion of ideals than Americans, while girls choose more acquaintance ideals at all ages than do boys. The expansion, these authors also trace largely to the study of history. The George Washington ideal, which leads all the rest by far and is greatly overworked, in contrast with the many heroes of equal rank found in England, pales soon, as imperfections are seen and those now making history loom up. This is the normal age to free from bondage to the immediate present, and this freedom is one measure of education. Bible heroes are chosen as ideals by only a very small percentage, mostly girls, far more characters being from fiction and mythology; where Jesus is chosen, His human is preferred to His divine side. Again, it would seem that teachers would be ideals, especially as many girls intend to teach, but they are generally unpopular as choices. In an ideal system they would be the first step in expansion from home ideals. Military heroes and inventors play leading rôles in the choices of pubescent boys.
Girls at all school ages and increasingly up the grades prefer foreign ideals, to be the wife of a man of title, as aristocracies offer special opportunities for woman to shine, and life near the source of fashion is very attractive, at least up to sixteen. The saddest fact in these studies is that nearly half our American pubescent girls, or nearly three times as many as in England, choose male ideals, or would be men. Girls, too, have from six to fifteen times as many ideals as boys. In this significant fact we realize how modern woman has cut loose from all old moorings and is drifting with no destination and no anchor aboard. While her sex has multiplied in all lower and high school grades, its ideals are still too masculine. Text-books teach little about women. When a woman's Bible, history, course of study, etc., is proposed, her sex fears it may reduce her to the old servitude. While boys rarely, and then only when very young, choose female ideals, girls' preference for the life of the other sex sometimes reaches sixty and seventy per cent. The divorce between the life preferred and that demanded by the interests of the race is often absolute. Saddest and most unnatural of all is the fact that this state of things increases most rapidly during just those years when ideals of womanhood should be developed and become most dominant, till it seems as if the female character was threatened with disintegration. While statistics are not yet sufficient to be reliable on the subject, there is some indication that woman later slowly reverts toward ideals not only from her own sex but also from the circle of her own acquaintances.
The reasons for the choice of ideals are various and not yet well determined. Civic virtues certainly rise; material and utilitarian considerations do not seem to much, if at all, at adolescence, and in some data decline. Position, fame, honor, and general greatness increase rapidly, but moral qualities rise highest and also fastest just before and near puberty and continue to increase later yet. By these choices both sexes, but girls far most, show increasing admiration of ethical and social qualities. Artistic and intellectual traits also rise quite steadily from ten or eleven onward, but with no such rapidity, and reach no such height as military ability and achievement for boys. Striking in these studies is the rapid increase, especially from eight to fourteen, of the sense of historic time for historic persons. These long since dead are no longer spoken of as now living. Most of these choices are direct expressions of real differences of taste and character.
Property, Kline and France[14] have defined as "anything that the individual may acquire which sustains and prolongs life, favors survival, and gives an advantage over opposing forces." Many animals and even insects store up food both for themselves and for their young. Very early in life children evince signs of ownership. Letourneau[15] says that the notion of private property, which seems to us so natural, dawned late and slowly, and that common ownership was the rule among primitive people. Value is sometimes measured by use and sometimes by the work required to produce it. Before puberty, there is great eagerness to possess things that are of immediate service; but after its dawn, the desire of possession takes another form, and money for its own sake, which is at first rather an abstraction, comes to be respected or regarded as an object of extreme desire, because it is seen to be the embodiment of all values.
The money sense, as it is now often called, is very complex and has not yet been satisfactorily analyzed by psychology. Ribot and others trace its origin to provision which they think animals that hoard food feel. Monroe[16] has tabulated returns from 977 boys and 1,090 girls from six to sixteen in answer to the question as to what they would do with a small monthly allowance. The following table shows the marked increase at the dawn of adolescence of the number who would save it:
Age. Boys. Girls. | Age. Boys. Girls.
7….43 per cent 36 per cent | 12….82 per cent 64 per cent
8….45 " 34 " | 13….88 " 78 "
9….48 " 35 " | 14….85 " 80 "
10….58 " 50 " | 15….83 " 78 "
11….71 " 58 " | 16….85 " 82 "