The Washington herald., 1918-01-14
FATHERS INFLUENCE.
BY DOROTHY DIX.
The Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer.

We hear a great deal about mothers
sacred influence. Poetry. song and
story are mainly devoted to describing
! how mothers hand forms the char
acter Of her children and how they are
! guided through life by the precepts
they learned at her knee.
Nobody says anything about fathers
sacred influence. Forming her child
ren's characters and teaching them q
I good working moral code appears to
| be a job that father has unloaded
on mother He washed his hands of
the affair. He just as much expects
| her to see to it that they are started
out in life with clean principles as
with clean faces.
1t is a sad and disgraceful fact that
in the majority of families. the moth
er's influence is all potent and the
fathers influence negligible. yet when
father chooses to use his influence
over his children 1t is a hundred
times more effective than their moth
er's.
The average American man has
weird. lopsided ideal of fatherhood.
| He thinks that he does his full duty by
his children when he works himself
to death in order to provide them with
luxuries and indulgences. To do this
he has to hustle so hard that he has
no time to get acquainted with them
or to establish any basis of commu-
! Mon with them. He is far more init
mate with his office boys than he is
! with his own sons. He is far more
! confidential with his stenographers
than he is with is own daughters.
! He never takes a vacation with his
boys or goes of and rouGhs it with
them, or has long talks with them
about the real things of life. He never
! tells his girls in heart-to-heart con-
versations what his ideals are and the
kind of women he hopes they are going
to be. No. The American child's men,
tai picture of its father is of a cash
register that mother works for its be-
hoof and benefit. Simply that and
nothing more. Father has no more in
fiuence over his children than the
neighbor across the way.
He leaves the raising of the child
rem entirely in their mothers hands.
Mother decides every important ques-
ton in their lives from the kind Of
patent baby food they shall imbibe
in the cradle to the careers they shall
follow in life. Mother dresses them as
| plcdStSs 4hOIhCT CSNiutE VIVA
school they shall go to. what friends
they shall have; mother instills in
them her own ideals and theories of
life without even a suggestion from
| father, with no protest from him ex-
cept over the size of the bills.
The result is only too often that
when a man looks at his weak, worth
less and dissipated sons, and his vain,
selfish, frivolous daughters, he thinks
that children are about the poorest
| investment in which a rnaE can sink
! the labor of a lifetime.
But the fault is his. The children
have far more right to rcproach him
than he has right to reproach them.
1t was his duty to make of them
strong, fine men and women and he
failed to do it. He turned the work
| over to a hand that he knew to be
| incompetent.
He knew his wife had no judgment
| He wouldn't trust her to make a $1OO
| investment on her own initiative. He
knew she had no firmness. He had
/ seen her change a hat a dozen times
before starting to the theater. He
knew she had no fixed convictions. She
had always been blown about by every
new fad and fancy that came along
| He knew that she had no vision and
had never been able to see where any
act would inevitably lead her. He
knew that her gods were society.
fashion and show.
And yet he turned over the rearing
of the children to this incompetent
| He~let her set her seal upon them
and then wondered that they turned
out as they did. 1t would have been a
marvel If they had turned out any
other way.
| OF course not all mothers are weak
and silly. The majority of mothers,
thank God, are fine and noble. and
they do the very best they can for
their children, and their influence is
always for good, but even the best Of
mothers is not capable of rearing a
family single handed.
For one thing, her motherly tender
ness makes her too weak in dealing
will strong-willed youngsters. For an
other. her lack Of worldly wisdom and
experience Of life outside of the home
discredits her judgment to her child
rem. And above all, she lacks the final
authority that the hand that holds
the purse wields.
1t is one of the most tragic things
on earth that mothers, through their
overwhelming love for their children,
foster the faults and weaknesses that
are their children's undoing. But it