Your Child: Today and Tomorrow / Some Problems for Parents Concerning Punishment, Reasoning, Lies, Ideals and Ambitions, Fear, Work and Play, Imagination, Social Activities, Obedience, Adolescence, Will, Heredity

by Sidonie Matsner Gruenberg

THE FIRST GREAT LAW

When you have had a scene with your disobedient Robert, you are apt to wonder how Mrs. Jones ever manages to make her children obey so nicely. If all secrets were made public, you would know that Mrs. Jones has often wished that she could make her children mind as nicely as do yours. For we always imagine that making children mind is the one thing that other mothers succeed in better than we do.

Why is it that we consider obedience of such great importance in the bringing up of our children? Is it because obedience itself is a supreme virtue which we desire to cultivate in our children? Or is it because we find it convenient to receive obedience from those with whom we have to deal?

That obedience is a virtue cannot be denied. But it is a virtue only under special kinds of human relationship. The obedience required of a fireman or a sailor is of the same kind as that which we demand of a child exposed to a danger that he does not see. The work of the fireman and of the sailor is such that these people must be constantly prepared to obey instantly the orders given by those in authority over them. The life of the child, however, is such as to make his work or his safety depend upon his obedience only under exceptional circumstances. To justify our demand for habitual obedience, we must find better reasons than the stock argument so often given, namely, that in certain emergencies the instant response to a command may result in saving the child from injury or even from death.

The need for obedience lies closer to hand than an occasional emergency which may never arise. In all human relationships there come occasions for the exercise of authority. There is no doubt that in the relations between parents and child the parent—or elder person—should be the one in authority, on account of his greater experience and maturer judgment, quite apart from any question of sentiment or tradition. But if you wish to exercise authority, you must make sure to deserve it. Laws and customs give parents certain authority over their children, but well we know that too few of them are able to make wise use of this authority.

Not only from the side of our own convenience, but also from the side of the child's real needs, we must give the young spirit training in obedience. The child that does not get the constant support of a reliable and firm guide misses this support; the child is happier when he is aware of having near-by an unfailing counsellor, one who will decide aright what he is to do and what he is not to do. But when I say that the obedient child is happier than the disobedient one, I do not mean merely that the latter gets into mischief more frequently, or that the former receives more marks of affection from the parents. There is involved something more important than rewards and punishments. The young child would really rather obey than be left to his own decisions. When he has no one to tell him what to do, or to warn him against what he must not do, the child feels his helplessness. And there is valuable tonic for the child's body as well as for his will in the comfortable consciousness of a superior authority upon which he can safely lean.

As the child becomes older he begins to assert his own desires in a more positive fashion, and at about two and a half to three years the problem of obedience takes on a new aspect. For now the child has had experience enough to enable him to have his own purposes, and these often come in conflict with the wishes of the mother. Should obedience be now demanded? And should it be insisted upon? There is more involved in this problem than the convenience of administering the household, or the immediate safety and well-being of the child. There is involved the whole question of the child's future attitude toward life. Shall the child become one who habitually obeys the commands of others, without questioning, without resisting, and so perhaps become a pliant tool in the hands of powerful but unscrupulous men? Or shall he be allowed to go his own way and over-ride the wishes of others, to become, perhaps, a wilful victim of his own whims and moods, presenting a stubborn resistance to overwhelming forces that will in the end crush him?

In the case of the very young child absolute obedience must be required, for the reason that the child is not in a position to assume the responsibility for his conduct. The will of the mother must be followed for the child's own safety and health, for the child has no intelligence or experience,—that is, judgment,—or purpose to guide him. He has only blind impulses that may often be harmless but are never reliable. So the first need is for training in regularity, and this is possible only under the guidance of the mother or nurse, who knows what is to be done, or not done, and whose authority must be absolute. So the child must first of all learn to obey. Later he must learn what and whom to obey.

Recognizing, then, in full the value of obedience, we must be careful not to exaggerate it and consider it a cardinal virtue. Obedience is far from being a fundamental virtue. On the contrary, once established as a ruling principle in the household or anywhere else, it is easily carried far enough to become a source of positive harm. To obey means to act in accordance with another's wishes. To act in this manner does not call upon the exercise of judgment or responsibility, and too many grow up without acquiring the habit of using judgment and without acquiring a sense of responsibility. They are only too willing to leave choice and decision to others. Decision of character and habitual obedience do not go well together. Moreover, it is now coming to be more fully recognized that the progress of society depends not upon closer obedience to the few natural leaders, but upon the exercise of discretion and judgment on the part of an ever larger number of those who are not leaders.

There may be a still greater danger in requiring so-called implicit obedience of every child. We have learned from modern studies of the human mind that doing is the outcome of thinking and feeling. When we constantly force children to do things that have no direct connection with their thoughts and feelings, or when we prevent actions which follow naturally from their thoughts and feelings, we are interfering with the orderly working of the child's mind. We force children to act in ways unrelated to their thoughts and feelings, and as a result we have many men and women of fine sentiment and lofty thought who never let their ideas and sentiments find expression in effective action. In other words, the effect upon the mind of "thoughtless minding" is not a healthy one.