Evening star., 1935-06-01
IN Subjects Important to Washington

~
- than q year. My parents
have carefully brought me
up and l am not unappreciative Of
what they have done for me, but they
seem to think I am still years old
and persist in interfering In my quite
normal and conservative ideas Of life.
They insist on choosing my friends
for me and are rude and disagreeable
TO others who come to my home. They
make wholly unwarranted inquiries
into my private and personal affairs.
/ am forced to account for every
minute of my time away from home
during the day and threatened with
dire punishment If each explanation
does not meet with their biased ap-
proval. I contribute two-thirds of my
salary to the household and feel that
I am entitled to enjoy a few of the
privileges which every girl of my age
should have, without constant wran-
Cling and unreasonable criticism
DOWNTRODDEN.
A NSWER: And yet parents ask why
girls leave home! They leave
home for exactly the same reason that
prisoners break out Of Jail. To get
little liberty. To get breath of
freedom.
OF course, the parents who enslave
their children do it from the best Of
motives and for what they consider
their children's good. They are SO
sure that they are wiser than their
children can possibly be. and that
their opinions and standards are the
only proper ones, that they feel JUS
titled in forcing the youngsters to do
their way and taking all initiative
away from them. Theirs is the
tyranny of love, but chains are not the
less CALLING because they are plated
with affection. They cut just as deeply
into the flesh of those they bind, and
they are harder to break.
A PPARENTLY the one thing that
parents, especially mothers, seem
unable to comprehend is that their
children grow up and get to be men
and women with the intelligence of
adults and with the adults desire to
HfC llIClI OWH lives. ~ IiOtLICI Odlly
Is always a toddler who has to have
somebody hold her hand when she
walks, who has to be told what to
eat. what to wear. when TO go to bed,
and who never acquires enough in
telligence to decide anything for her
self without asking mother.
II doesn't make any difference If
Sally is 80 years old and fills highly
paid executive position in some big
business, mother still thinks that she
is a little girl who has to be boSsed
and who can't be trusted out of her
sight.
THERE are thousands Of mothers
who think they have perfect
right to open their daughters letters
and read them, to listen in over tele-
phone conversations and to rummage
through their. daughters bureau
drawers to see what they may find.
There are thousands of mothers who
put their daughters through the third
degree every day about where they
have been, what they did, whom they
the boss said to them, what they had
for lunch, etc. There are thousands
Of girls who can never go out any
where without having row with their
mothers, because mother believes that
the places she did not go to when she
was a girl must necessarily be dens
of infamy.
And it Is mothers tyranny that
makes thousands of girls marry the
first chances they get. whether they
love them or not, in an effort to break
away to freedom, and that causes
thousands of other girls who live at
home to regard their homes as nothing
but prisons.
TT SEEMS strange thing that or
dinarily intelligent women do not
realize that the strongest passion of
the human heart. the thing that
people will fight for and die for. is
personal liberty, and that any one.
even a mother. interferes with that at