A Square Deal

by Theodore Roosevelt

¶¶The woman who is a good wife, a good mother, is entitled to our respect as is no one else, but she is entitled to it only because, and so long as, she is worthy of it. Effort and self-sacrifice are the law of worthy life for the man as for the woman, though neither the effort nor the self-sacrifice may be the same for the one as for the other.

¶I do not in the least believe in the patient Griselda type of woman, in the woman who submits to gross and long-continued ill-treatment, any more than I believe in a man who tamely submits to wrongful aggression. No wrong-doing is so abhorrent as wrong-doing by a man toward the wife and the children who should arouse every tender feeling in his nature.

¶Selfishness toward them, lack of tenderness toward them, lack of consideration for them, above all, brutality in any form toward them, should arouse the heartiest scorn and indignation in every upright soul.

¶I believe in the woman’s keeping her self-respect just as I believe in the man’s doing so. I believe in her rights just as much as I believe in the man’s and, indeed, a little more, and I regard marriage as a partnership in which each partner is in honor bound to think of the rights of the other as well as of his or her own.

¶But I think the duties are even more important than the rights, and in the long run, I think, that the reward is ampler and greater for duty well done than for the insistence upon individual rights necessary though this, too, must often be.

¶¶¶Into the woman’s keeping is committed the destiny of the generation to come after us. In bringing up children mothers must remember that while it is essential to be loving and tender, it is no less essential to be wise and firm. Foolishness and affection must not be treated as interchangeable terms, and besides training sons and daughters in the softer and milder virtues mothers must seek to give them those stern and hardy qualities which in after life they will surely need.

¶Some children will go wrong in spite of the best training, and some will go right even where their surroundings are most unfortunate; nevertheless, an immense amount depends upon the family training.

¶If mothers, through weakness, bring up sons to be selfish and to think only of themselves, they will be responsible for much sadness among the women who are to be their wives in the future. If they let their daughters grow up idle, perhaps under the mistaken impression that as they have had to work hard, their daughters shall know only enjoyment, they are preparing them to be useless to others and burdens to themselves.

¶¶¶Teach boys and girls alike that they are not to look forward to lives spent in avoiding difficulties, but to lives spent in overcoming difficulties. Teach them that work, for themselves and also for others, is not a curse, but a blessing. Seek to make them happy, to make them enjoy life, but seek also to make them face life with the steadfast resolution to wrest success from labor and adversity, and to do their whole duty before God and to man. Surely she who can thus train her sons and her daughters is thrice fortunate among women.

¶There are a good many people who are denied the supreme blessing of children, and for these we have the respect and sympathy always due to those who, from no fault of their own, are denied any of the other great blessings of life.