Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1915-08-05
By Dorothy Dix

No assertion is made more frequent
ly than the great need of to-day is for
a recrudescence of the old-fashioned
mother, and that the country is going
to the dogs because we haven't got
her.
M-m-m. Perhaps. OF course, the
old-faShioned mother was all to the
good. Mothers have a way of being
that in any age, thank Heaven, but
those who talk so glibly about how
superior the old-fashioned mother
was to the mother of to-day are in
the same category with those who go
through life Dragging about mothers
pies and lamenting that they cannot
find any bread like that mother used
to bake.
They can't and they wouldn't eat it
if they could, for mothers bread and
pies were made on the hit-or- miss
principle, and were heavy or light, ac-
cording as she had luck" with her
baking, not invariably good and sweet
as is the product of a scientific bakery.
Moreover mothers ideas of cleanli-
ness were elemental and the flies
wandered over her handiwork in a
way that brings shudders to the
sterilized souls of people who demand
sanitary packages.
A pious fiction obtains that every
thing in the past was better than it
is to-day. We talk about the good old
times, the palmy days of the theater,
the beautiful home life of yesterday,
the high ideals that obtained in the
past when everybody has honest, and
simple, and altruistic, and there was
no greed, nor striving, nor heart
burning nor envy.
And in this beatific age-gone, now,
alasl-was the ld-fashioned mother,
whose noneXistence is so often and so
loudly lamented.
None of these people who pine so
for the good old times could exist for
a moment in them. They would think
themselves objects of charity on what
our forefathers considered a luxur-
tious living. They would be bored to
death over the stilted acting and i'm
possible plays of yesterday, and they
would find that the old-fa fashioned
mother was another dear delusion and
not in the same class with the eff
cient, practical mother of to-day.
Things Have Changed
The old-fashioned mother did the
best she could by her children. So
does the modern mother. We are al
ways hearing about how the modern
mother neglects her children and how
devoted the old-fashioned mother was
to hers.
Let the statistics of infant mortal
! ity decide which of these two women
10 lliG u6SlIdDlS IlOIn6T. line
most pathetic thing on earth is to
go to any country graveyard, and see
the rows of little graves in it, show
| ing how the babies died on the
breasts of these old-fashioned moth
ers. The modern mothers children
do not die like flies. She calls to her
help all that science and sanitation
can do, and she keeps them alive
The old-fashioned mother accepted
her motherhood with as little sense
of personal responsibility as she did
the color of her hair, or the shape
of her nose. If her children were
strong and healthy and turned out
well, she thanked God for it. And
If they were sickly, and went to the
bad, she laid the blame of 1t on an
inscrutable Providence, whose ways
she didn't pretend to understand.
Th modern mother feels that
bringing children into the world is
the greatest responsibility that any
human being can take upon herself
She knows that her children's health
is in her hands. She knows that the
mother largely determines her chill.
dren's future, and that whether they
lsucceed or fail in life depends upor