The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-05-21
DOROTHY DIX TALKS
The Step-MOthcr.-2,
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer.

And she will never be actively I'M
Kind to them, but even the best wo--
man in the world can't help being
jealous of their step-children, or feel
ing that they are interlopers who take
something from her that should be-
long to her and hers, or from breath
ing sigh of relief when they marry
or go into business, and are no long
er ever present to remind her of that
part of her husbands life in which she
had no part.
And If she is a bad woman. or even
a weak. vain. selfish, high tempered
one whose law of life is her own
pleasure. the step-children perpetual
ly inflame all that is worst in her.
They take attentions from her that are
her due, she feels. Money must be
spent on them that would buy her fin
cry. She lives in perpetual fear that
their father might prefer them to her
own children, and SO she runs to him
eternally with little stories of their
misdoings, with complaints, with crit
icism. with demands that their father
discipline them until she makes him,
too, turn upon them with undeserved
harshness SO that the poor little chill
dren come to be orphaned indeed, for
they have lost their father as we'll as
a mother.
We are all Mortified at the thought
of the little starved children with their
bruised bodies, and scared hands and
faces that the Society for the Pre-
vention of Cruelty to Children of New
York has rescued from their inhuman
step-mother and father, but not all
wrongs that are done to children are
physical wrongs.
1t is just as cruel a thing to starye
a child for love as it is to starve it
for food. Eternal nagging and fault
finding can bruise a child's sensibili-
ties just as blackly as can a blow on
its flesh. The memory of an unloved,
neglected childhood will leave more
enduring scars on a child's character
than can the brand of a red hot iron
on its face. So I urge every father
not to take it for granted that his
children's step-mother is a real moth
er to them, but to see to it himself
that his motherless little ones are
cherished and have their place in the
sun as they would have done had their
own mother lived.
Never forget that when God took
your children's mother, He laid a
| double burden of parenthood upon
you, and required of You to be mother
and father both. and this obligat ion
you cannot shift to the shoulders of
any woman, no matter who she is
1t is granted that the role of the
step mother is not an easy one. and
tnat rearing anOtner WOman'S children
is a hard and generally thankless
task. 1t takes that mysterious fore
ordained mother love, that is the
| wisest Providence of Heaven, to give
a woman the long suffering patience
F! to deal with children who are brim-
ming over with mischief, who are
| restless. inquisitive. unreasona BILE:
who tear their clothes and get dirty.
and who fall from one scrape into an
| other.
| 1t is only mother love that hears the
music of the>spheres in childish howIs
| and cries. that sees beauty in smeary
| little faces: that perceives the dawn
| ing of intellect in ceaseless childish
questions. 1t is only mother love that
| finds JOY in amending ministratioL5 to
helpless little bodies and souls. To
all others it is the hardest Job that
any huma n-Aeing ever undertakes, and
the least rewarded.
But the woman who marries a man
with children should remember that
i she voluntarily assumes this life work.
| She knew what she was doing when
| she took into her hands the fate If
! helpless little children. and woe to her
| if she fails in one jot or title of her
duty, for Christ Himself has pro-
| nounced her doom.
| 1t is better for such an one that he
should tie a milestone about his neck
| and be cast into the sea than to Of
| fend one of these little ones.
~