The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1904-11-12

1t by word and deed that nobody has
! any rights which it is bound to respect
! There is nothing on earth so lovable
so adorable as a sweet, unspoiled child
and that the mothers of the country are
! united in trying to extinguish this ence
familiar type of being is a crime
against high heaven.
The second reason why women fai
! as mothers grows out of overlove, and
/ is overtenderness. The mother cannot
! bear TO think that her children must dc
any of the hard things of life, or beaI
| any of the heavy burdens, and in this
| you have the secret of the great ma
! jority OF failures. Perhaps there is moi
! a man or woman living today who
! cannot look back to some definite cpl
! sode of childhood and in the mothers
/ attitude on that occasion trace the sue
cess or disaster of a whole career. 1t
! may have been the most trifling thing
imaginable-a hard lesson that they
/ wanted to shirk a task begun that
proved distasteful that they wanted to
give up, a morning when they wanted
to turn over on their pillow and sleep
] again instead of starting out to work
with the whistle-but however trifling
it was, it was the turning point of fate.
If the mother shamed the child into
learning the hard lesson, if she forced
it TO keep on with the task until it was
done, if she held the boy or girl to the
work, the habit of overcoming difficult
! ties was formed, persistence was bred
in the very bones, reliability became a
part of being, and the girl or boy in
evitably gravitated toward success.
On the other hand, the child whose
mother is so tender that she tries to
shield it from every; hardship is fore
doomed 10 failures, because she has
rQUp6f in 81 IL To a. hofn
every difficulty. Strength of character
/ is just as much the result of exercising
ones mental and moral muscles as
strength of body is developing ones
physical sinews. You do not train a
prize fighter by having him loll about on
shken cushions, and ii is Just as i'm
possible to fit a child for the battle of
life by having it spend its youth on
flowery beds of mother-love and ten
derness that protects it from every
hard knock of life.
There is such a little while, at best,
that mother can take care of her
child. The time comes SO soon when
every one of US must go out into the
world and stand or fall by ourselves.
that it does seem as if-women might
use some sense in dealing with the sub
ject. For the ones who succeed are not
the ones on whom the winds have not
been permitted to blow roughly. 1t is
the ones that have learned to take their
punishment, to be knocked down and
get up and fight again, not the ones who
throw up, their hands at the first blow.
cowardly and Lazy.
A third reason who women fail as
mothers is because they are cowardly
and lazy. 1t is much easier to give UP
yourself than it is to make a child give
up, that the majority of women follow
the path of least resistance and meek
ly submit to the caprices of their Off
spring. The seat of government in the
American home is the nursery, and the
new commandment reads, Parents
obey your children. then your days may
be peaceful Now nobody will contend
that managing strongwilled, high
tempered child. full of animal spirits
and determined on its own pleasure, is
an easy task. On the contrary, 1T is
about the most strenuous job that any
human being can undertake, but upon
its being accomplished rests the well
fare here and hereafter of an immor-
tai soul.
Every woman knows that. She also
knows that obedience is the beginning
Of all law and order and religion and
morality, yet the spectacle of a child
who would obey, who would do what
it is told to do without argument or
comment or tears and bowls, would be
a spectacle so rare that people would
travel miles to see it, and pay out good
money for the pleasure of beholding
creature that has become as mythical
as the tabled dodo. All about us we
see children still in pinafores and
knickerbockers whose mothers lament
that they are already beyond their con-
troll, and yet with a spanking machine
on the market and rattan canes in the
corner store these women are making
no effort to establish a permanent form
of government over them. simply and
solely because they lack the backbone
to stand UP and fight it out once for
all with the little usurpers.
The final reason why women fail as
mothers is because they are so blinded
by their own partially that they see
their children through a glorified halo
instead of as they are, and this robs
them of the opportunity they would
have to correct their chill
dren's faults and supply their deficien-
cies. 1t is a beautiful phase of
that every crow believes
her nesting to be a swan, but it's
pretty rough on the crow. and it is one
of the most pathetic and cruel things
in the world that this besotted mother
prevents millions of affiict-
ed people from having the help that
modern science and modern education
can give.
Every woman believes that her own
children are infant prodigies of beauty
and intelligence and virtue. Unless they
are hideously deformed she does not
even perceive their physical blemishes,
and SO they are allowed to grow up
knock kneed or bandy-legged, with
squirting eyes or a jimber-jaw, when
little judicious treatment for a sur
geon in childhood would have remedied
the defect and made them pressntable
for life. Mentally the mother displays
the same obtuseness. The first article
in her code is that her child is as smart
as anybody else's child and so she has
the dullwitted boy or girl dragged
through the same course of study as
her neighbor's clever child, and the re-
suit is that many child that. had its
mother recognized its limitations and
had it educated according TO them,
would have done reasonably well, is
forced into absolute idiocy.
Morally the same thing may be said
Not one mother in million will face
the truth that her child has a tendency
TO lie or steal OF uIilih, anu 50 liie pun
helpless little creature, with no hand to
help it fight its battles against its own
drifts into the army of
criminals or failures, and we pity the
mother where we ought to blame her.
After all. the question of why women
fail as mothers may be answered in
one word-mother- weakness. They |
simply lack the grit and determination
10 make their children behave them J
selves. This is woman's greatest crime !
2 gainst society, for if the hand that |
rocks the cradle rules the world. the |
hand that spanks the baby could re- !
'orln it if it would.-Twentieth Century. /!