From Kitchen to Garret: Hints for young householders

by J. E. Panton

Naturally, they often enough discover they have exchanged King Log for King Stork, and wish themselves at home once more over and over again; but that such cases are not only possible, but are continually occurring around us, seems to me so sad, that I should like to say a few words on the subject of ‘The Proper Relations between Parents and Children,’ hoping in some measure to propose a solution to the problem.

In the first place, we are in some measure suffering from the rebound that has taken place when the severe bonds that bound our parents were removed. They suffered themselves so greatly from the petty tyrannies that were considered the right thing in their youth, that, in desiring to save their children from similar misery, they have gone to the other extreme, and allowed such laxity of manner that children rule the house, as in America, and barely condescend in their grown-up stage to consult their parents at all about their engagements, their occupations, or even their friendships or their marriages.

Surely there is a medium between the discipline that enforced silence on the child until all originality was crushed out of him, that thought severe strictures on the dress and personal appearance of one’s daughters the sole way of checking vanity, and that refused confidence because it was lowering oneself from the awful height occupied by a parent, and that which is conspicuous by its absence, and that results in an independent race of young people, who respect nothing, and are certainly not going to make an exception in the case of their father and mother, who are either ready to go as great lengths as their children, or else suddenly assert an authority that only exists in their own imaginations, and that causes a turmoil because opposition is as unexpected as it is arbitrary.

If we would have authority we must have it from the very beginning, and I am old-fashioned enough myself to be a great believer in the nursery and nursery frocks for very little children. I am always angry, I confess, when I see a small lady of four or five dressed up to the eyes in a fantastic frock designed to attract attention to the tiny wearer, of which she is all too conscious, and carried about from this luncheon to that tea, to the weariness of herself and all who are not connected with her; and indeed do well to be angry, for did not she, as one of those specimens, refuse to go into the country because she found it so extremely dull; and also because I know it is from such a bringing-up as this that we obtain the emancipated female or the fast girl, who thinks of nothing but ‘dress’ and ‘the service,’ and which results, all too often, in making home miserable for the elder folk, who only see in the pretty child a plaything flattering to their vanity, and do not recognise the fact that, much sooner than we expect it, she in her turn will be quite grown-up.

The nursery stage should emphatically be a time for shabby clothes and dolls and noise, and for healthy natural play. The midday meal should be the only one taken with the mother, who, however, should make a point of knowing all about the others, and should also contrive to be often in the nursery, and have the children with her for not less than an hour or two a day.

To insure happiness with a grown-up family these tiny beginnings should be well studied. The mother’s influence should be so much felt, and so indispensable to the house, that when withdrawn for a while it should indeed be something more than missed. But familiarity in early childhood breeds contempt in youth; and it is well known that a child who is always with grown-up people never knows what childishness is, and never becomes as healthy-minded as one who has had a little wholesome neglect from society and from perpetual supervision of its elders.

When we as parents begin to see the children growing up, we should, I maintain, then carefully see that our own immediate friends are those whose society and conversation can do our girls no harm. When I have occasionally heard talk that has brought blushes to my checks at my mature age, and seen the young girls not only listening but joining in it, I have almost been tempted to declare my girls shall never go into society at all; but as I know this is impossible, I have made up my mind whose houses they shall go to, reserving to myself the right to tell them boldly why such and such a one is not a desirable acquaintance.

Then, too, their own friends, made at school or at the homes of mutual acquaintances, should be welcomed emphatically whenever they like to come. I remember too well feeling much aggrieved at not being able to ask an occasional friend to tea to refuse this privilege. But if the friends become too numerous, it is easy to point out that either you cannot afford such indiscriminate visiting, or to restrict the number of visitors to a certain number; only let it be understood that their friends are always welcome in moderation, and that, though you are delighted to see them, you do not expect them thrown on your hands for entertainment, and that you assume the right to point out to your children the desirability or the reverse of any of their acquaintances, and that you expect them to give due weight to your opinion.

It is more than necessary, in my mind, to keep perpetually before one’s children that the home into which they were born is their inheritance that nothing can take from them. And by this I do not mean that I consider a parent bound to provide fortunes for either sons or daughters. I have too often seen the great harm of this to advocate it for one moment; but that they should always not only be welcome there, but claim as a right the shelter and counsel and affection that are their due, no matter what they have done or how grievously they have sinned. For no cause should a father or mother refuse to see their own child, and they should a thousand times more never allow the unmarried daughter to feel herself a burden, whose food and shelter are grudged her, any more than they should continually hint that marriage is a woman’s only destiny, refusing to the girls the ample education lavished on the sons, and so depriving them of every means of making their own living.

But grown-up daughters, in my eyes, are a most precious possession, if properly brought up. They at last take some of the heavy burdens a mother has always to bear alone off her shoulders; and if she be moderately intelligent, and has intelligently brought up the girls, there is no reason why they should not be a thousand times more valuable in her eyes than they were as pretty babies and engaging little girls.