The Home Influence
By Ida Tarbell
(From “The Business of Being a Woman.”[5])
Every home is perforce a good or bad educational center. It does its work in spite of every effort to shirk or supplement it. No teacher can entirely undo what it does, be that good or bad. The natural, joyous opening of a child’s mind depends on its first intimate relations. These are, as a rule, with the mother. It is the mother who “takes an interest,” who oftenest decides whether the new mind shall open frankly and fearlessly. How she does her work depends less upon her ability to answer questions, than her effort not to discourage them; less upon her ability to lead authoritatively into great fields than her efforts to push the child into those which attract him. To be responsive to his interests is the woman’s greatest contribution to the child’s development.
[5] McMillan Publishers.
Then—Back to the Home!
By Caro Lloyd
(American contemporary writer. Sister of Henry Demarest Lloyd, and author of his Biography. The following was taken from an article in “The Progressive Woman.”)
Search any woman’s heart, no matter how “emancipated”, how “modern”, she may be, and you will find there the love of home, of a lover, of a child, either realized or hoped for. How far this love is being denied to women today needs no showing. Women are being forced from the home into industry at a faster rate than the birth rate. Those still in the home are beginning to realize the interdependence of the modern social order and to see that only by extending their home-making out into the larger life of the community are their own circles safe.