The American Child | Page 6

"I
was never allowed to accept an invitation unless my younger sister was
invited, too. I was fond of my sister; but I used to long to go
somewhere sometime by myself! My husband had the same
experience--his brother always had to be invited when he was, or he
couldn't go. Our children shall not be so circumscribed!"
There is not much danger for them, certainly, in that direction. Yet I
rather think they would enjoy doing more things together. One day, not
a great while ago, I chanced to meet all three of them near a tearoom. I
asked them--perforce all of them--to go in with me and partake of ice
cream. As we sat around the table, the oldest of the three glanced at the
other two with a friendly smile. "It is nice--all of us having ice cream
with you at the same time," she remarked, and her younger sisters
enthusiastically agreed.
To be sure, they are nearer the same age and they are more alike in
their tastes than their mother and her sister, or their father and his
brother. Perhaps their parents needed to take their pleasures singly; they
seem able quite happily to take theirs in company.
I have another friend, who was brought up in a household in which, as
she says, "individuality" was the keynote. In her own home the keynote
is "the family." She encourages her children to "do things together."
Furthermore, she and her husband habitually participate in their

children's occupations to a greater degree than any other parents I have
ever seen.
[Illustration: THREE SMALL GIRLS]
Their friends usually entertain these children "as a family"; but not long
ago, happening to have only two tickets to a concert, I asked one, and
just one, of the little girls of this household to attend it with me. She
accepted eagerly. During an intermission she looked up at me and said,
confidingly, "It is nice sometimes to do things not 'as a family,' but just
as one's self!"
Then, for the first time, it occurred to me that she was the "odd one" of
her family. All its pleasures, all its interests, were not equally hers. She
needed sometimes to do things as herself.
In matters of discipline, too, we find the same theory at work. Parents
who were severely punished as children do not punish their children at
all; and the most austere of parents are those who, when children, were
"spoiled." Almost regardless of the natures of their children, parents
deal with them, so far as discipline is concerned, as they themselves
were not dealt with.
This implies no lack of love, no lack of respect, for the older generation.
On the contrary, it is the sign and symbol of a love, a respect, so great
as to permit of divergences of opinion and procedure, in spite of
differences of age.
"I am not going to bring up the baby in the way I was brought up,
mamma, darling," I once heard a mother of a month-old baby (her first
child) say to the baby's grandmother.
"Aren't you, dear?" replied the older lady, with a smile. "Why not?"
"Oh," returned the daughter, "I want her to be better than I am. I think
if you'd brought me up conversely from the way you did, I'd have been
a much more worth-while person."

She spoke very solemnly, but her mother only laughed, and then fondly
kissed her daughter and her granddaughter. "That is what I said to my
mother when you were a month old!" she said whimsically.
Children in American homes, it might be supposed, would be affected
by such diversity in the theories of their parents and their grandparents
concerning their rearing. They might naturally be expected to "take
sides" with the one or the other; or, at any rate, to be puzzled or
disturbed by the principle of "contrariwiseness" governing their lives.
From their earliest years they are aware of it. The small girl very soon
learns that the real reason why she finds a gold bracelet in her
Christmas stocking is that mother "always wanted one, but grandma did
not approve of jewelry for children." The little boy quickly discovers
that his dog sleeps on the foot of his bed mainly because "father's dog
was never allowed even to come into the house. Grandpa was a doctor,
and thought dogs were not clean."
This knowledge, so soon acquired, would seem to be a menace to
family unity; but it is not--even in homes in which the three generations
are living together. The children know what their grandparents wished
for their parents; they know what their parents wish for them; but, most
of all and best of all, they know what they wish for themselves. It is not
what