The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1904-11-12
Spank the Baby and
Reform the World
CBy Elizabeth NJ. Gilmer.)


worst, and that maternal devotion can
work more harm to it's object in min
ute than maternal malevolence could
achieve in a week.
People who are believers in the luck
theory in life nowhere else find their
faith SO fully justified as in the way
children turn out. 1t is the watched
child of the mother, so careful that she
win not even trust a nurse. that always
falls and break its arms. while nothing
ever happens TO the children of the
careless mother who lets her offspring
make a playground of the trolley track
and toboggan slide Of the apartment
house fire escape. 1t is the children
who are given every advantage of
education and culture-whose club
woman mother reads and studies with
them and devotes herself to their en-
ightenment-Who grow uD into COM
monplace. unbookish men and women.
with Philistine taste in art and liter
allure: while the children of Marie
Corelli-and-Laura : Jean-Libbey-read-
ing mother develop a passion for let
ters and graduate into learned profess
sors and distinguished scientists. Every
prison in the land is filled with children
of good, pious, praying mothers who
spent their lives trying to do their duty
in the holy estate of parenthood to
which they had been called.
To the average observer it is clear
case of hsmet You raise your child
right or wrong, wisely or unwisely, and
it turns out as a fate ordains. 1t is a
cheering and consoling faith, but un-
fortunately it is a false doctrine. No
where else in the world does the law
OF cause and effect work out so inexor-
ably as in the rearing Of children, and
there is no drunlSard, no gambler, no
murderer no thief, no unsuccessful man
or woman who has not a right to turn
and accuse the mother who bore him
or her Of being accessory to the crime
for which punishment has been melted
out. Sentimentalists have embalmed a
mothers tears in song and story, but
the tears a mother sheds over way
ward son or daughter are drops of
shame because there would be no need
for them but for her own fault.
The responsibility of motherhood falls
heavily upon a woman in America as
it does nowhere else, for. except for
the purpose of legitimacy and support,
The American child is fatherless. The
average American man considers that
he has done his full duty by his chill
dren when he furnishes the money for
their food and clothes. Not one father
in a thousand takes the slightest control
over his offspring, or even gets &C
quainted with them. If they are bad.
he demands TO know Of their mother
why she doesn't make them behave, and
If she fails. he grumbles at her lack of
management; but he does not try to
find out the peculiarities of the little
mind and soul with which his wife has
lacked the wisdom and the intuition
and courage to cope.
Lack Of Perceptive Fathers.
The lack of fathers is the greatest
lack of this country today, for there are
few women who have the broad intel
ligence the knowledge Of the world,
the backbone and the grit to manage a
family properly. Sooner or later there
comes in the life of every child time
when il rebels at petticoat government,
when it has a contempt for mothers
homemade opinions and Judgment and
for the authority she is too weak TO
enforce. Then It is that a mans strong
grasp is needed on the reins of family
government. The children respect his
point of view because ii is that OF the
outside world; they defer to his author
ity because he has physical power to
enforce il. distractions in the nome,
like instructions in the nations, are
the unmistablable evidence of a feeble
and inefficient ruler.
1t is, however, condition and not
theory with which women are called
upon to deal in raising children, and
since they do not receive assistance TO
which they are entitled from their hus-
bands, ii behooves them to give all the
more study and thought to doing !
werthily the most important duty a
woman can be called up TO perform. |
That women fell so often at this-for !
f1sai
successful musician or painter or poet !
is one one of the most pitiful things in |
the world. made all the more piteous by |
the fact that women give the best years /
of their life to it; they give their health |
and strength, days of anxiety ana |
sIeepless nights; they give their hopes |
their prayers. their very souls to 1t, |
and in the end so often reap only a |
harvest Of tears for all their efforts.
Why is it that women, good women, |
intelligent women, fail so often as /
mothers in raising their children? Is !
it fate or the woman's fault? I answer
that it is the womans fault every time |
even. nay most in those dread cases |
Of hereditary tendencies toward evil /
against which the wisdom of the ser
pent and the goodness Of angels work !
in vain. The woman who marr;es wheh
her own blood ilows a vicious tide or
who gives her children drunken or an
immoral father, IS solely responsible 10"
the decadent beings, prcdestinec to SIN,
that she brings into the world.
Barring hereditary egeneracy-and
we Law bit of blame on our forefathers
which we ought to shoulder ourselves
the chief reason that women fan as
mothers is through love. Like the he
roine of the old poem, they love not !
wisely hut too well" With the aver
age woman maternal affection is a pas
sion that blinds her perceptions stulu-
fies her Judgment and renders her
morally and physically incapable of
taking a "a tional attitude toward her
own child. In other respects she may
he kind. lust, considerate, forbearlng,
but where her child is concerned she is
a monster of ruthless cruelty and sell
iehness to theirs.
All of us have seen a mother permit
her child to disturb a whole roomtui
OF people by howls of temper that she
did not even attempt to sQuelch. we
have seen her let selfish braI mare
q feeble old grandmother or granoIaLh-
er give up some particular chalr that
the little demon wanted to play horse
with We have seen mothers clamly
acouiesce while their little Vandals
scratched pictures with pin on our
hest mahogany, or smeared bread ana
carter over our collection of fiTst-proot
etcbings. and commit a thousand other I
.cri,,,es against the peace and happiness
If All about them. yet the mother never
interfered If another woman's chlld
bad done II she would have called Tor
tho notice. if necessary to suppress lne
infant terror. but she can't see Tor the
life of her why anybody should OBJECT Il