There is something essentially British in this point of view. The English mother, whatever her rank, tried to give her children in their home what she had in her childhood’s home; as well as she is able, she copies what her mother did. The conditions in her life may be entirely different from those of her mother, her children may be unlike herself in disposition; yet she holds to tradition in regard to their upbringing; she tries to make their home a reproduction of her mother’s home.
The American mother, whatever her station, does the exact opposite—she attempts to bestow upon her children what she did not possess; and she makes an effort to imitate as little as possible what her mother did.... Her ambition is to train her children, not after the mother’s way, but in accordance with “the most approved method”. This is apt, on analysis, to turn out to be merely the reverse of her mother’s procedure.
Cannot Replace the Home
By Lillian D. Wald
(Of Henry Street Settlement, New York.)
We acknowledge the inability and the inefficiency of the parents and the home to control the fortunes of the child when we substitute for them the parental function of government; nevertheless, the strongest of education remains in the home, and the school and the settlement and other agencies that hover over it cannot replace that home.
Man, Woman, and the Home
By Edna Kenton
(American contemporary writer. The following quotation is from “The Militant Women—and Women,” in “The Century Magazine.”)