Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1932-03-20

N ANY well 1nCenlOneQ AileIiS dH
~ ~ fathers and mothers are spoil
4" ing their children. In their
anxiety to keep them happy
and refuse them nothing
these good men and women care1uIIy
20 about destroying them ~,
The approaching Easter vacation Will
probably give us an example OF TINS, as
the Christmas vacation did. ano all
vacations do.
orr Youngsters come home from pre-
sl1mably hard days of study ana pam
living and the first generous impulse OF
Mother and Dad is to see that they
have roval holidays. Money is spent
like water. motor cars. clothes, tickets
for games and theater, frocks, are
theirs to command.
The children are up late into the
night. not once or twice, but every
night. They may sleep until noon
every day. and when they do get up the
family has its only glimpse of them,
fleeting glimpse of a weary, absuacteo
girl or boy absorbed in telephone Calls
making new engagements for the com
ing evening, counting the nome claims
not at all.
In one New York family, and fine
family. too. with a fine home. the one
child, a girl of 10, spent not one single
evening at home during the more than
two-week vacation at Christmas time.
She is slender, nervous, eXqulslte
creature. Her mother told me mildly
that she was glad when the girl had to
20 back to college, for the child was
Completely exhausted by vacation!
x
DANCING, drinking, smoking, speed
II ing about in big cars, she leaped
through the feverish hours; was gone
again, Her mother and father, whose
only other child, boy of 20, was killed
in an accident last year, had the sen
sation of not having really seen her at
all.
Even on Christmas morning the girl
slept until noon, although her father
loitered over his breakfast hoping she
would come down and see her presents
and her daddy, in the old way. With
her face white from fatigue, she slept
ali through the early hours of the day,
and when she whirled into the library
to give her father Christmas kiss,
she was hated and furTed, and COM
bined a breathless appeal for money
with her greetings and her thanks for
a new roadster.
You're going to have some break
fast I won't stand this!" her mother
protested lovingly.
Mother darling, / can'tl They're
waiting for me. The whole crowd is
going to the Peacock" she explained,
between embraces She folded two $40
bills into her purse, called final thanks,
and was gone.
She Joined boys a few years older
than herself, and other girls whose
parents were keeping Christmas alone.
They all had plenty of money for gas
and taxis and roadside meals and
movie tickets; loads Of money Dads
money, of course, but as casually spent
by them as If it had no value at all.
They emerged into sea of other
youngsters, all handling these los and
20's very comfortably. Most of them
had never earned cent in their lives.
but they simply had asked Dad for
it, and Dads generosity seemed mex
haustible.
ON the day before college opened, on
~ January 4, back to school she went,
older. harder wearier, a trif1e more
disillusioned even than when she came
home. She had read no book, taken
no country walk, called on no elderly
and affectionate relative; she had had
no quiet home hours with Mother and
Dad during the Christmas vacation,
she had done nothing for the less for
tunate, or to help with the dinner or
the dinner table, or the tree; she had
been sound asleep when Mother and
Dad walked to church on Christmas
morning.
They both felt very sad about it.
and they blame the times That's the
way things are nowadays, mother and
father decide sorrowfully.
That's the way today's parents are.
Is what they ought to say. For of
course it's the parents doing. Not only
today, when they hand out money, buy
clothes, pay bills, and let a young girl
spend all her time in places and with
persons they don't know, but yester-
day, when they prepared the way for
it by that gradual relaxing, that in
creaSing indulgence to daughter, when
she was IA and Is and 17-never say
ing mo-" never refusing her, putting
themselves to infinite inconvenience
and sacrifice to keep her satisfied.
COLLEGE is tremendously expensive.
to begin with, but the child did
so want to go. Her friends were GO
ing, and all Of them, under the thin
veil Of a pretense of wanting to be-
come really cultured and educated
women pleaded, after high school, for
those four more years of freedom, with
just q few hours weekly in a class
WHERE TO DINE.