Concerning Children

Now let me think, and be fair. Would I want my sister Jessie to be a nurse-maid? She is taking a kindergarten course, and we all approve of that: it does help one so in all those problems that perplex a mother! But, if she went to Mrs. MacAdoo's as a nurse-maid – The MacAdoos are nice people, too; and the children are as nice as any I know. They have a Swedish nurse-maid now, – a big, hearty, wholesome-looking girl, but stupid. Why, she cannot answer the simplest questions Harold asks, hardly; and he's always asking them. Jessie has him in the kindergarten where she is. I don't mean that she's the principal, but she is training there; and she tells me what a bright child he is, and what stupid things Christine has told him. And you see he has Jessie only three hours a day, and Christine all the time he's awake. Jessie is taking a special course in infant psychology, and she says Christine is doing him a world of harm. But she is so good-natured and faithful that they keep her. They don't realise that her being stupid is any harm to the children, I suppose. But, if Jessie had him all the time, Harold certainly would develope more rationally and more easily. And yet I am sure Jessie would not take Christine's place. You see we visit the MacAdoos, and it would be so awkward. Now, I think, – logically, – I am approaching a – I forget the name of it, but it's a thing there's no way out of.

We would like our nurse-maids to be ladies, but ladies are not willing to be nurse-maids. Now will the training school make ladies – or, at least, partial ladies – of our nurse-maids? And, if it does, will that make them disinclined to be nurse-maids? Or can we arrange the position of the nurse-maid, so that ladies will be willing to take it? What is the real difference between Jessie's position and Christine's? Why, Jessie has a lot of children come to her part of the time; and Christine has a few children, and goes to them all the time. And Jessie has, – or will have when she's graduated and has a kindergarten of her own, as I daresay she will, – she has control of the children while they are with her, and can carry out her principles. The mothers even consult her sometimes.

But Christine has to carry out the mother's orders. She does what she is told – or ought to. No, Jessie never would be willing to take Mrs. MacAdoo's orders about the children. Mrs. MacAdoo is exceptionally stupid about children, I do think. She doesn't think Christine's telling them stories about things to frighten them is any harm, – says they'll outgrow it. And anybody who knows anything of infant psychology knows how dangerous it is to frighten children. And yet, of course, to be perfectly fair, I wouldn't want a nurse-maid to dictate to me about my child. It is out of the question – absolutely. Why, it would destroy the mother's influence and authority altogether! And – come to think of it – I suppose a trained nurse-maid would have views of her own, and they might conflict with the mother's —

Now, where I have got to so far, – it is beautiful, thinking things out clearly, – we want our children taken care of by ladies, honourable, intelligent, educated, refined, and specially trained for the business. I'm quite certain about that. Like Jessie, for instance. She is just born for it, – always did love children, and knew how to manage them from the time she was a little girl. And she's studying all the science of it and practising in the kindergarten, – on the same kind of children, too. Jessie is the ideal. It is really wonderful to see her with them. They love her, and they do what she says, too; but she never seems to be making them do anything: they just do it. Those MacAdoos behave very much better with her than they do with their mother. I believe most of the children do, for that matter. Except little Cassie Wells. She has the most devoted mother I ever saw. It is a lesson to us all. She never lets her out of her sight, I do believe. Often comes to the kindergarten, just to be with her. And, you see, Cassie just depends on her for everything; and nobody else can do anything with her. It is beautiful, – such absolute dependence and absorption. Yes, as I said, Jessie is the ideal. But, then, Jessie is not a nurse-maid, and never would be.

Of course, if there was any way that Jessie could have the children with her and have her way with them, as she does in the kindergarten – But you can't do that with little children, – you cannot separate the child from its mother! When they are older, they go to school, of course; and, when they are older yet, they go to college, and so on. But the little child needs its mother every hour. And, as its mother cannot possibly give it every hour, we have to have the nurse-maid. If mothers had no other claims, then, of course, you would have the highest ideal relation. Cassie Wells's mother has given up everything else. She doesn't go out with her husband at all. Says that society has no claim beside that of the child. Of course, he stays at home with her – mostly.

I'm sure a man ought to value his wife's society more than any other, especially when she is such a devoted mother. She takes all the periodicals about children, and reads all the books; and then she modifies it all to suit her particular child. I never knew any mother so conscientiously given up to the care of a child. She really talks of nothing else. And, when that child is sick, – and she is extremely delicate and always having dangerous illnesses, – her mother is simply glued to her bedside: they can't drag her away. It is a pity that the child is not better material; for she isn't particularly bright, nor very well behaved, I think. But, then, her mother is doing everything that can be done.

Jessie says that child is being mothered too much, – that she needs more freedom and an impartial outside management. But, then, Jessie is a good deal of a theorist; and, after all, she isn't a mother. Nothing can really equal the mother's care for her own child! Still, we simply can't do it, – all of us, – as families increase. We owe something to our husbands, I am sure; and we have our social duties; and our health is not always equal to such a strain. No, the mother must have help; and that means the nurse-maid. It's no use talking about Jessie. Even if she would do it, there's not enough of her to go around! We never can expect that "faculty with children" in everybody: they simply don't have it. Most girls don't care much for children, nor know anything about them. Of course, after they become mothers, it is different. Then it all comes to them.

Now, if nurse-maids could be mothers first – But I argued that out before. If they were, they wouldn't be mothers of our children; and motherhood only teaches how to do what is best for one's own children. Besides, we couldn't hire them then, because we would not separate mothers from their own children; and, if they had their children and ours, too, they would not treat them fairly. And we would not want them brought up with ours, either. No, they've got to be "maids," that's sure.

Now the average young girl does not know or care much about children. Therefore, she has to be trained. (What a comfort it is to be really logical!) And, as there is no place to train them now, we have got to make a place. It all comes round to the training school for nurse-maids. That's the logical outcome.

Again, since we must have private nurse-maids under our orders, – really a servant, – we cannot expect ladies to take such positions. And – this ought to be bracketted with that last – since we cannot, of course, pay more than so much, that is against ladies doing it, too. Some people can, I know. Jessie told me of a very nice girl she knew, – a classmate in college and a trained kindergartner, – who was unable to get such a position as she wanted, and took a place with some very rich people as a sort of lady nurse-teacher to the children. But she said it was perfectly horrid, especially in travelling, having to eat with servants and be treated as such. I can see that it would take a kind of heroism, and we cannot really count on heroic nurse-maids. No, it has to be from the lower classes that we take our nurse-maids. I think that is proved. The average employer simply couldn't pay them enough to attract a higher class of labour. These are really questions of political economy in part, you see.

The ordinary young girl of the lower classes, – that is the raw material of our nurse-maid. Naturally, she is ill-mannered or unmannered, and careless and ignorant and all those things. Therefore, we must train her. In order to do that, we must first provide the training school, and, second, make her go to it. Now I wonder how we could do that. The higher wages would be an object of course: that would have to be insisted on. And we might "create a sentiment." That's it! That's what we must do, – create a sentiment.

But it's no use doing anything till we've got the school. And I worked that out as having to be done by private endowment. That involves agitation, of course; and we must set about it. We can get teachers plenty, there is so much interest in child-study now; and it will be a splendid thing for the lower classes to take their young girls and train them thoroughly in the theory of child-culture. It will make them so much better mothers afterward, when they do marry, after spending some years in taking care of our children, – putting their theories in practice! But wait. That looks queer. Looks as if the rich people were furnishing elaborate instruction free, – to young women of the lower classes, – and then paying them good wages for practising on the children of the upper classes, so that the poor women might be better mothers afterward.

I must have made a mistake somewhere. I'm going to reverse that position, and see how it would work. Suppose young girls of the upper classes took elaborate instruction in child-culture, and then practised on the children of the lower classes, in order to be better mothers afterward. That seems more satisfactory, somehow; yet it means a lot of work. It would do our girls good – I can see that – and do the children of the lower classes good, and, no doubt, make the girls better mothers. Besides, I'm wasting time, – "arguing in a circle," John would say; for that upper-class-girl hypothesis wouldn't give us nurse-maids. Now where was I? Mothers have to have help; i. e., nurse-maids. These have to be private servants at low wages: therefore, ladies would not do it. Therefore, we must have our children taken care of by girls from the lower classes. They are not suitable persons to take care of children as they stand: therefore, we must train them.

Now I mean to really work for this thing, – to create a sentiment. I'll begin early in the autumn, as soon as we get back. And I'm so glad I'm going to have such a lovely summer to make me fit for it. You see I'm very much pulled down. Little John has been such a care, and the nurse-maids I've had have been so unreliable. Why, the child has been sick again and again just through their carelessness. I'm sure of it. And mother said I simply must go away and build up, for the child's own sake; and John agreed with her – for once. And there's such a lovely arrangement for the summer: nothing ever happened more conveniently. You see Jessie is such an enthusiast about children. And she has planned to be at home this summer. Our home is perfectly lovely, anyway, and very healthy, – quite in the country, and yet within easy reach of town. They're going to have the Summer School of Child-study there at Seabay this year, and Jessie has several of her class visiting her. And she said, in her solemn, funny way, that they must have specimens to work on, – first-class specimens! She insisted on little John, of course, and she's persuaded Clara and George to let her have their three for a while; and the little MacAdoos are to be there, too. It will be a regular picnic for the children. It took a long time to bring me round to it. But, then, it's my own lovely home. I know how healthy it is. And mother will be there. And one of Jessie's friends is a doctor, and in a children's hospital, too. She ought to see that everything is right for their health. So, if they are happy in that lovely old place, and healthy and well taught and safe, why, I suppose I can leave.

Of course, I wouldn't for anything on earth but health. Mrs. Wells was perfectly horrified when I told her. They asked Cassie, too; but she wouldn't hear of it. She said nothing but death should ever separate her from her child. And, dear me, Cassie looked so white that it really seemed as if it would. She made me feel guilty again; but John can't come to any harm with my mother's experience and Jessie's knowledge and natural talent. That's the main thing. Jessie always cared more for children than I did, – except little John, of course. They've fixed the place up on purpose for children. Such arrangements for bathing and digging and mud-pieing and gardening and so on you never saw. There is something for those chicks to do all the blessed time, and these nice girls – my own friends – to be with them every minute. You see they take turns and relieve each other, so they are always fresh for the children. And, then being so enthusiastic and scientific, it isn't drudgery to them. They are studying all the time. And how glad I shall be to get back in the fall! Then I can work up that training school for nurse-maids.

XIII

CHILDREN AND SERVANTS

In the growing discontent with our present methods of household service, while we waver between long-held prejudice, old and dear, and the irresistible pressure of new conditions, it is worth while to weigh well the relation between this present method of house-service and our present method of child-culture.

The home is the place in which we rear young children. It is also the place in which we perform certain kinds of labour, mainly cooking, cleaning, and sewing. In the vast majority of our homes, fully nine-tenths of them, as shown by the United States Census Report, giving the number of domestic servants in proportion to the number of families, these industries are carried on by the mother. She is the domestic servant. In the remaining one-tenth of our homes the labour is performed by hired servants, the maid-of-all-work still greatly predominating. The questions here suggested for consideration are: first, is a mother, who is also a house-servant, able to supply proper conditions and care to young children? And, second, is the company of domestic servants, other than their mothers, and constant association with their industries, a desirable condition for the education of young children?

It is, of course, difficult to consider with any clearness of perception facts which have been always familiar. The association of child and servant is so old that it makes no impression on our consciousness. It will, perhaps, bring out the relation more vividly to change the sex of the servant. Suppose a man is left with boys to educate. Suppose he engages a tutor for his boys. He is willing to pay well for a man with the proper ability, character, and training to come and benefit his children by instruction and association. Would such a man be willing to engage a tutor who was also a janitor? Would he be willing to spare the time required to fill the janitor's position from the time required to fill the tutor's position? Or would he be willing to engage a man who had so little fitness for the profession of tutor as to be content to act as janitor also?

Again, in sending his boys to school to be educated, would a man be willing to have that school also run as a restaurant, a laundry, and a tailor shop? Would he think these industries and the society of the persons engaged in them good educational influences? It is clear that a man would not be willing to do these things. Yet all men cheerfully intrust their children, during their most impressionable years, to the society and care of domestic servants and the constant association with domestic industries. In most cases the servant is also the mother. In other cases the servant is not the mother. In either case the child grows up in association with domestic servants and service.

Let us not too readily conclude that this is an evil, but examine it carefully, in its physical and psychical effects. Physically, the child is born into a certain kind of shop or factory. The conditions of any labour in the home are particularly open to criticism; our sweat-shop investigations show that in glaring instance. Intimate associations with a trade, and especially a dirty or dangerous one, does not seem advantageous to a child's health and progress. In nine homes out of ten the child is directly associated with the trades of his mother, who is a cook, a laundress, a cleaner in general; and the baby is early accustomed to the fumes and heat of the kitchen, to grease and ashes and dust, to all the kitchen-work, laundry-work, chamber-work, and endless miscellaneous industries of his mother. In the other tenth of our homes the child grows up a little removed, but not far, from these same industries. They go on under his eyes none the less, but with a certain ban upon them, as servant's work.

Any mother and housewife knows the complications continually arising between children and servants. Early associations are deep and lasting. Domestic servants are not, as a rule, either at all trained in the right treatment of children or in such personal development of character and manners as would make them desirable companions for the young. Yet companions they are, – incessant, intimate, unavoidable. The formative influence of a nurse-maid or of a maid-of-all-work is of varying weight in different cases, but always a factor in the child's development. The education of a child consists in every impression received by the growing brain, not merely those received when we are instructing it. We might give an hour a day to careful instruction in good manners: we might ourselves be models of propriety; but, if the child is also in the society of conspicuously ill-mannered persons every day, an effect will surely be produced by them.

It may be suggested that an end is to be attained through exhibiting the deficiencies of servants, and exhorting the child to despise them, as the Spartans used the Helots for an awful example; but, even if this were gained, there would follow with it a spirit of scorn and contempt for fellow-creatures most injurious to true social development.

A little child should be surrounded with the best influences of all sorts, and with behaviour not to avoid, but to imitate. The long period of immaturity, which is one of our human distinctions, has its value in the accumulated improvements which may be built into the race in that time. It is a period of enrichment, of clear growth. To expose the young to disadvantageous conditions, especially the very young, is a method of education finding no precedent in nature and no justification in reason. The adult, with developed powers, may find in some degree of difficulty a stimulus to further effort; and, if confronted with injurious conditions, may strive the harder to escape or change them. But the new person, the child, has no background. He can make no comparisons. He accepts his first environment unquestioningly as "the world"; it is all the world he knows. For the very reason that we were all born and reared in the domestic factory, we find it hard to imagine any other conceivable surroundings for a young human being to meet life in. We have accepted it without dream of criticism.

Yet in physical conditions alone the household industries furnish a large and constant element of danger to the child. A most casual retrospect of the accidents common to childhood, which so shock us in the daily press, show this with startling clearness. Children suffer from accidents by fire, by boiling water, by sharp instruments, by injurious substances taken into the stomach. The industry of cooking alone involves the free use of fire, a constant succession of hot products, many sharp instruments for cutting and stabbing, and various food elements healthful in combination, – but often injurious when taken separately by one ignorant of their nature. The kitchen and the laundry are responsible for many horrible and sudden deaths among young children, and many more painful accidents.

Given the essential ignorance and as essential experiments of childhood, and we may well wonder how it has so long seemed good to us to bring up our babies among such large chances of danger. If we reared them in stables, we should expect them to be kicked occasionally; if we placed them in saw-mills, we should look for some deficit in fingers; and a child in a cook-shop has his steady average risk of injury by fire, steel, or poison; in the laundry, the added chance of drowning. Apart from these main sources of danger, he finds in sweeping, dusting, and all the uncounted activities of household toil much that is detrimental to health and safety.

To avoid these dangers, our first effort has been to train the child to a prompt and instant obedience, such as conditions of imminent danger and military rule alone can justify, and also to check his natural and most valuable tendency to investigate and experiment. The labours of the household must go on: economic laws are peremptory; and the servant, who is educating the baby so unconsciously, cannot stop work to explain or illustrate.

On the contrary, the very presence of the child is inimical to the proper performance of these imperative industries; and the flushed and hurried servant cries: "Run away now. Mamma's busy!" Where is the child to run to? This is home. When is mamma not busy? To properly perform the household labour of an average family, which is of five persons in an average house, – say of six rooms, – takes ten hours a day of swift, intelligent, skilled labour. During what part of this time can the household labourer give due attention to the child? Or is it sufficient education to watch a servant at work, and to help a little when one is old enough?

If the industries involved were properly divided, specialized, and developed, much that is valuable might be gathered from their observation, and from guarded experiment, by children who are old enough. A child can receive valuable instruction in a woollen-mill or a blacksmith shop, but it does not follow that these places are suitable as nurseries. The lack of any true educational value in the position is sufficiently shown by the ceaseless centuries of ignorance in these very trades. All women, for all time, reared in this intimate association with domestic service and domestic servants, have failed to work out any better grade of performance than that which still furnishes the staple of conversation among them.

It is quite evident, from the results so painfully visible around us, that the education of our children by house-servants developes neither general intelligence nor special proficiency. The intellectual progress of humanity has shown close connection with the extension of industry in larger lines, with a growing specialisation, a wider distribution, and, of course, with the beautiful growth in special methods of education. But this kitchen education, though we have enjoyed its advantages for so long, does not seem to show good results.

The educational value of the mother seems not to be in proportion to her occupation as a house-servant, but the reverse. It would seem that our children grow in intelligence and good behaviour rather in spite of the domestic industries than because of them. Any mother who is awake to the limitless possibilities of child-culture, and who begins to work out some well-considered plan for its pursuance, knows the ceaseless interruptions of her efforts, and the peremptory monopolisation of her time, by the demands of household labour. So far, with true womanly patience, – a patience which ceased to be a virtue some years ago, – she has accepted the condition as inevitable, and plodded on, consoling herself with a "day unto day" philosophy, and with "doing the best she could"; and many moralists consoled her, saying, "Blessed be drudgery!" Drudgery has a certain value, no doubt. It developes certain characteristics; namely, those of a competent and contented drudge. The question raised here is merely whether this kind of work and the characteristics developed by it are suitable educational associations for young children.

What are the qualities developed by house-service? Let us suppose that we are all, fathers as well as mothers, occupied solely in household labour. The effect may be studied from one point of view in those countries where there are more men-servants than with us, and where the profession is sometimes followed for generations. The typical character of a butler or footman, a parlour-maid, cook, or general servant, may be traced through all personal variation. Given any sort of person, and put him or her through a lifetime of domestic service, and certain characteristics appear, modified to a large degree by personality, but typical none the less.