What a Young Husband Ought to Know

by Sylvanus Stall

There are many excellent books upon the nurture and training of children, and young parents would do well to avail themselves of the advantages and excellent suggestions afforded by such publications. There are also many excellent periodicals for young parents, such as "The New Crusade," "Trained Motherhood," "The Mothers' Journal," and others, which are very valuable and almost indispensable. From such books and periodicals young parents can obtain the best of suggestions with regard to the early care, proper nurture and careful training of their little ones. We cannot now dwell upon any of the many important phases of child-training. Space only affords opportunity to emphasize some things which seem to us of special importance and likely to be overlooked.

Many young parents think that the training of their children will be a matter for consideration when they are three or four years old. No more serious mistake can possibly be made. The first three months will determine the babyhood, and the first two years the childhood, and the childhood will determine the manhood or womanhood. The first two years may almost be said to determine both the character and the destiny of the child for all time to come. The child that is not properly taught during the first two years is likely to remain untaught, undisciplined, uncontrolled, and oftentimes uncontrollable, for the remainder of its childhood and throughout its entire life.

The questions of the hours of feeding, the hours for sleep; whether the child is to be rocked, or carried when it whimpers—all these are questions of the utmost importance from the very beginning. Many a mother has been enslaved for life because of the mistakes which she made during the first few weeks after her child was born.

Parents should protect their children against the silly and dangerous habit of being promiscuously kissed. The prevalent custom of kissing babies and children is not only silly upon the part of those who do it, but a nuisance to the child, and in many instances detrimental to the health of the child. Where promiscuous kissing is allowed, persons with offensive breath, consumptive tendencies, contagious and even loathsome diseases, may unintentionally inflict irreparable wrong upon both the child and its parents. Only the other day we read in a medical journal where a young child of poor parents who kept a boarding-house was kissed by one of the boarders, who communicated to the child one of the most loathsome of diseases. Such dangers exist not only among the poor, but are perhaps even more prevalent among the affluent, in the circle of whose acquaintances there is likely to be some well-dressed but vicious and corrupt individual.

Let no care or proper expense be spared in making the influences which are exerted in the nursery both attractive and potent. Young parents should be their children's best playfellows. There should be a proper amount of games, carefully-selected amusements, books, papers, pictures chosen with scrupulous care, and mother and mother's influence in the midst of them all. What the child needs pre-eminently above playthings, books, clothes, and every other earthly thing, is the presence and influence of mother. No other woman in the world can take her place. Many mothers farm their children out to nurses, and then give themselves to household duties, social pleasures, or possibly to duties which may be important in themselves, but which, after all, can only be secondary to the discharge of the all-important duties of motherhood.

Many otherwise excellent women find the nursery a prison, and the care of their own children irksome, simply because they have a perverted mother-sense. The mother should have proper relief from the care of her children, but if she has the true mother-heart the companionship of her children will be the society which she will prefer above that of all others.

Where servants are necessary, and such cases do exist, parents should exercise the utmost caution in guarding the purity of their children. Hundreds, and we can properly say thousands, of children are annually wronged and ruined by the vices practiced upon them by servants. This is an especial danger where nurses and servants are permitted to undress the child and put it to bed at night. Many a nurse who is anxious to quiet her little charge, that it may fall asleep promptly, is guilty of exciting sensations which quiet the child and prevent its crying, but which inflict upon the nervous system of an infant results of the most far-reaching character. Mothers are very apt to be unsuspecting in these matters, and therefore it is highly important that the attention of fathers should be called to this grave danger.

The child should also be protected against being frightened, being made afraid in the dark, told of spooks, bugaboos, "the old beggar-man" and the police coming for them. Remember, also, that in this most impressible period of character-formation servants and others can do the child great injury by teaching it to be deceitful and untruthful. It is at this age, also, that they learn incorrect and ungrammatical forms of expression; and if the nurse-girl is ignorant and silly, and is permitted to assemble upon the streets or in the park, with others of her age, while tending the child, a bright child of two or three years will pick up more coarseness and more undesirable information concerning human depravity than can be expunged from its mind by subsequent months and years of careful training.

It is important to enjoin upon parents the duty of guarding their children against secret vice. Parents are very apt to think that while other children might be guilty of such sins, their own children are "too innocent and too pure" to fall into such vices. We have known mothers to hold up their hands in holy horror at such a suggestion, but when the more cautious fathers have watched their children, they have discovered that even at the age of five and six their little boys have learned from older playmates, impure companions, degraded servants, or by sliding down the balustrade, or in some other incidental way, the terrible habit of self-pollution. Young children cannot be too carefully guarded in this important matter. Where infants exhibit a tendency to handle their private parts, great care should be given to the cleanliness of those parts, and, if continued, the family physician should be consulted, to see whether circumcision is not necessary to remove local irritation and inflammation. This is found to be necessary in many instances. Circumcision was an important sanitary regulation among the Israelites, is a simple surgical operation which is most beneficial in its results, and very important in many instances.

When your children are old enough to ask honest questions, see that, in reply, they receive an honest answer. If a child is intelligent and thoughtful, one of the earliest inquiries will be concerning the origin of life. When a little one is born into your own or another household, it is only natural and proper that intelligent children should inquire where it came from. There should be no fables about babies being brought by doctors, or being found under cabbage-leaves, or taken from hollow stumps in the woods, for an intelligent and altogether satisfactory answer can be given to an intelligent child of six or seven years, and even younger. Another has aptly and truthfully said: "Ignorance is a deadly sin. The truth properly told has never yet harmed a child; silence, false modesty and mystery have corrupted the souls and bodies of untold millions." Where parents are intelligent upon this subject, and know how to present these matters properly to the thought of their children, we have never heard of a child who asked an embarrassing question, nor have we known of anything but the most satisfactory and blessed results. Parents will find beautiful and helpful suggestions in "Teaching Truth" and "Child Confidence Rewarded," two booklets by Mary Wood-Allen, M.D.; and it was also to aid parents in these matters that "What a Young Boy Ought to Know" and "What a Young Girl Ought to Know" were written. Parents should read these books and learn how to communicate the information, either in conversation or by reading to the child such portions as are suited to its needs. Remember that the disposition which prompts your child to keep an unclean thing a secret from you will also incline the child to refrain from conversation upon a pure matter which is to be a secret between parent and child. If you allow others to teach your child sacred truths in an unhallowed way, if you decline to give your children an honest answer to their honest and reasonable inquiries, they will secure in its degrading form, from vicious companions or ignorant servants, the information they seek. It is infinitely easier to keep the mind of the child pure than to purify it after it has been polluted. When corrupting thoughts and degrading pictures have been painted upon the canvas of the mind, they can never be totally obliterated.