New Homes for Old

by Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge

THE REVOLT OF OLDER CHILDREN

The problem of the older boy and girl is by far the most difficult of the parents' problems. Reference has already been made to the fact that it is as the child grows older that the difficulties of maintaining the old system of parental authority become more apparent. It is at this time that the child sees that system is out of date, and then, if ever, he rebels against it. There is considerable evidence that the parents, on the other hand, feel the importance of maintaining their authority at that period of the child's life more than at any other. There are several reasons for this, among the more important being the fact that the child has reached an age when he can be economically helpful to the family group, and that the parents see dangers in his path. In other words, the maintenance of parental authority seems to be tied up with the control of the child's earnings and the maintenance of certain conventions regarding the association between young people of different sexes.[47]

The immigrant parent very generally asserts his legal right to the entire earnings of his minor child. In fact, the child often continues the practice of giving up his wages until his marriage. Out of forty-three families studied, in which there were children of working age, thirty-five parents took the entire earnings of the children. The amount that the parent should give back to the child is not fixed by law or by custom, and it is at this point that conflict between the child and the parents is likely to arise.

The parents frequently expect to continue to provide for the boy and the girl of working age as they did when they were younger, and to recognize their maturity only by giving them small sums weekly for spending money. In the case of girls even this slight concession is not made, and the girl has to ask her mother for everything she wants. In only four of the thirty-five families in which the children turned in all their earnings was an allowance of as much as $3 a week given. In the others the working child was given 25 cents, 50 cents, or 75 cents a week, usually on Sunday, or was given no fixed sum but "what he needs." In a Slovak family a girl of sixteen earning $13 a week, and one of fourteen earning $9 a week, were each given 50 cents each pay day; a boy of fifteen in a Slovenian family, earning $15 a week, received 50 cents on Sunday; two Slovak girls of eighteen and sixteen years, earning $45 and $80 a month, turned in all their earnings and got back "what they asked for."

It is not surprising that a boy or girl should chafe under the system even if the resentment stopped short of open rebellion. In the families studied in which there was no evidence of friction it seems to have been avoided either by such a firm establishment of the authority of the parents while the child was young, that the child had not yet questioned it, or by wise use of the child's earnings for the benefit of the child. In several instances it was reported that they gave the child "all she asks"; one girl was being given lessons on the violin, which she specially desired. In these cases the issue did not appear to have been raised, but we have no reason for thinking the children were satisfied with the arrangement.

In other families the beginnings of friction could already be seen. A Russian woman said that her two working girls, aged seventeen and fourteen, did not need money, and in the presence of the investigator refused the request of one for money for a picture show, telling her that men would pay her way. The eight parents who did not take all their children's earnings had not all changed their practices voluntarily. In some cases it was done because the children refused any longer to turn their earnings in.

When the parent takes the entire earnings of the child and continues to bear the burden of support, there is probably no question on which the ideas of the child and those of the parent are so likely to conflict as on the question of clothes, especially clothes for the girl. The chaotic and unstandardized condition of the whole clothing problem has been pointed out in an earlier chapter, and attention has been called to the fact that it is one of the causes of conflict between parent and child.

It is only natural that the young girl should want to look as well as possible, and it is to be expected that the girl of foreign-born parents should quickly learn at school or at work the prevailing opinion that to be well dressed is to be dressed in the latest fashion. She is also in a position to observe how quickly the fashions change, and thus early learns the unimportance of quality in modern clothing. She undoubtedly underestimates its importance because her models are not those on display at the highest-grade department stores, where the beauty of the quality occasionally redeems in slight measure the grotesqueness of form; she sees only the cheap imitations displayed in the stores in her own neighborhood.

In her main contention that if she is to keep up with the fashions she need not buy clothing that will last more than one season, she is probably right. It is natural also that this method of buying should be distressing to her mother, who has been accustomed to clothes of unchanging fashions which were judged entirely by their quality. When to her normal distress at buying goods of poor quality at any price there is added an outrage to her native thrift, because the price of these tawdry fashionable goods is actually greater than for goods of better quality, it is not surprising that she and her daughter should clash on the question of what to buy.

The question of shoes is said to be a special point of conflict. The girls insist on costly high-heeled, light-colored boots, while the mother sees that she could buy at less than half the price better shoes, more sensible, and of better quality. The conflict is more acute in proportion as the mother has lived an isolated life in this country and has not herself tried to keep up with American fashions. It is interesting to note that workers in the Vocational Guidance Bureau in Chicago state that this desire of the girls for expensive clothes is a leading motive in causing them to leave school to go to work.