The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-05-30
DOROTHY DIX TALKS
By DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid woman Wntf'
Our superior Children.-2.

This is not what fathers and moth
ers intended, or what they expected
to happen when they made every Ell
fort to give their boys and girls the
advantag es that they never had In
their own youth. Very often it makes
parents bitter, and they say hard
things about the ingratitude> OF chill
dren. But they should be just enough
to remember that the situation Is OF
their own making. The uncultured
woman who has had her daughter
educated up to the high C pitch in
art and music has no right to COM
plain il the girl has outgrown the
| chromos that adorn the walls OF her
home. and the melodeon music OF her
childhood.
| The man who sends his son to Yale
| or Harvard and furnishes him the
money to live and dress as did the
| sons of the rich men with whom he
associated, has no right to deride the
boy for having formed tastes and
| habits that seem extravagant and ef-
| fete to his father.
| No man would spend thousands OF
dollars on training a horse for the
| race track and then expect it to strike
the sober gait OF dray horse, yet
| people educate children out of their
class and then feel affronted because
|
| their education has made them.
If you send boys and girls away
from home at the most impressionable
age Of their lives. and give them over
! to the influence Of strangers for four
| or FIVE years you must expect them to
be what the strangers make them. IL
| parents desire their children to think
their thoughts and hold to their opin-
ions and beliefs. they must keep the
young ones with them and curtail
their advantages.
But. after all. isn't it a piece OF
| superhuman vanity for anyone-even
for parent-to desire to mould an
other in their image. or to arrogate
to themselves the right to decide an
others fate.
1t may seem lunacy for the woman
who thinks society and matrimony the
only haven for girl to have her
daughter insist upon taking up a pro.
fession. 1t may almost break the
Puritanical mothers heart for her
daughter to go upon the stage, but be-
prophet, and no human being can tell
what makes for the ultimate good or
| happiness of another.
Not every hen that matches out
, swan is fitted to decide its destiny.
1t may be a blighting disappoint-
!. ment to the father who has built ur
big grocery trade and looked for
ward to handing it down to his son to
, find out that the boy has no head for
figures. and is made sick by the smell
of salt Goldfish.
|. But a wiser one than the father set
, tied the boys vocation before he wa.
!. born. and father Intermediates at his
: peril. The world is filled with fail
> ures because Of parents who try to
force their children into occupations
, and marriages for which nature neve
. intended them.
I The hardest thing on earth for pa.
rents to realize is that the world does
move. even as exemplified in theil
. | own children that there are new way.
OF thought. new standards of pro
. priety. new ideals that are better thar
/. the old. and that parents do not in
l variably know more than their chill.
dren.
All of which makes our superior
: children hard to live with and harder
: still to deal with. and they'll nevel
: know just how many heartaches the,
l cause us. or how many happy IittI,
: plans we bury in our hearts. unit
= they too are middle aged and their su
perior children come home to patron
ize them.