Part 12
When you observe the dealings of parents with their children the thing at which you wonder most is that fathers and mothers never seem to realize the power of suggestion. Yet it is one of the most potent forces in the world, and one that can be directed with almost uncanny results to the molding and shaping of the characters of the young. It is hardly too much to say that as the parents think, so are the children. It is the fixed idea the parents stamp indelibly on the plastic childish mind which determines the fate in life of the man or woman.
You can, for instance, take a delicate child and literally “think” it into health or sickness. If the mother keeps the child forever reminded it can’t do what other children do because of its poor heart, it can’t eat this or that because of its bad digestion, and that it mustn’t be crossed because it is so nervous,—that child will grow up into a neurotic invalid. But if the mother impresses on it the thought that it is getting well, and is going to be strong and healthy, unless there is something radically organically wrong, it will overcome the weakness with which it was seemingly threatened.
All of us have seen people actually bring upon themselves diseases they believed they had inherited. They had had it impressed on them from their infancy that they were bound to die of consumption because all the Smiths had tuberculosis. Or, that they were doomed to perish with cancer, because cancer was in the Jones family. Or, to have rheumatism because the Simkins were all rheumatic, and they died of what they believed to be inherited diseases that science has proved not to be inheritable.
It is tragic to think how many parents have killed the children they loved by putting the death thought upon them, and by making them believe that they were doomed, and that there was no use in their trying to be strong and well. It is still more tragic to think of the millions of people who are failures in the world because their fathers and mothers have sapped their courage, and slain their initiative by implanting in their minds the conviction that they were dolts and had not the ability to succeed.
Once establish the inferiority complex in a child’s mind, and it is done for. It accepts the belief that it has no ability to do things, and it attempts nothing. It makes no struggle to rise. It slumps into the humble position its parents have assigned it. This is why perpetual fault-finding with a child intensifies its faults. To nag Johnny continually about his awkwardness, makes him still more awkward. To be forever calling attention to Tom’s shyness, makes him shrink more and more out of sight. To fret at Bob’s dulness, makes him feel that there is no hope for a boy who isn’t quick and alert. Many men never have the courage to demand their just deserts and take the place to which they are entitled in business and society because they were made self-conscious in their childhood. They had it so impressed on their minds that they were blundering louts, and stupid fools, that they shrank within themselves, and never had the nerve to push their fortunes.
And just as you can make a child a failure by holding the thought of its inferiority before it, you can do much to make it a success by holding the thought of achievement before it. We unconsciously strive to be what the people about us expect of us. If Jimmie knows that he has a reputation for beautiful manners, he will act as a gentleman. If Tom knows you expect him to make a mark at school or in business, he will try to make good. If Mary knows you do not think it possible for her to be anything but sweet and innocent, she is not likely to tarnish your ideal.
The power of suggestion is so far reaching in its influence that fathers and mothers should be careful how they use it, and avoid implanting a weak thought, an evil thought, a thought of failure in their children’s minds as they would avoid giving them poison.
XXXVII
WOMAN’S MISSIONARY OPPORTUNITY
As a sex women are highly altruistic. There is scarcely a movement in the world for the uplift of humanity or for ameliorating the sorrows of the poor and helpless that does not owe its existence to women. It is women who support the orphan asylums, the homes for old men and women, the reformatories, the houses for the blind, the places of refuge where the man just out of prison can go and gather himself together before starting out on a better life. It is women who nurse in hospitals, and who carry on mainly the work of the Red Cross and the fight against the great White Plague. Joan of Arc is the great feminine heroine. The women that other women envy most are not the great beauties and sirens of history, or the famous actors and writers, but the Florence Nightingales and Frances Willards who have been able to do some great service to their fellow creatures. And deep down in her secret heart, if every woman was granted her one great wish, it would be to be able to help her day and generation to make others happier, and to perform some miracle that would make life easier for all who come after her.
Well, little as she realizes it, that power is possessed by every woman who has children. In her hands lies the remedy for the greatest sorrow that tears at the hearts of men and women. She can wipe away half of the tears of the world. She has the magic that can change innumerable lives from misery to joy. For the greatest trouble in the world is domestic trouble. The bitterest disappointment is a marriage that is a failure. There is no place of torment so hard to endure as a home of bickering and strife. No enemy can stab you to the heart as does a cold, selfish, unkind husband or wife.
It lies within the power of mothers to put an end to all this misery, to stop divorce and the breaking up of homes, and the orphaning of helpless little children. It is in their power to provide every man and woman with a good husband and wife, to make every home a prosperous and peaceful one, and to save other mothers from the agony of seeing their children mistreated by the men and women to whom they are married. There is no more appalling thought than that every woman could raise her children up to be good husbands and wives, and that she does not do it. On the contrary, nine times out of ten she brings up her sons and daughters to be exactly the kind of husbands and wives from whom she prays God on her knees to deliver her own precious darlings.
Most likely the woman is herself the victim of another woman’s cruelty. Her own marriage has been wretched because her husband’s mother never taught him to treat women with any courtesy, or consideration, or chivalry. He was never brought up to consider a woman’s feelings, or even to extend to her common justice. As a result, his wife has had to walk on eggs to keep from rousing a demoniacal temper. She has had to wait on him hand and foot. She has had to wheedle every penny out of him, and never since her wedding day has her husband made one move to entertain or amuse her, or done anything to make her happy.
It would seem that a woman who had been through the arid desert of such a marriage would save some other poor girl from such a fate by raising up her son to be a good husband. You would think that she would teach him what a terrible crime it is to take a woman’s life into his hands and break it; that she would teach him to be gentle and tender to his wife; that she would impress upon him that a woman earns her share of the family income, and that it should be given to her outright instead of being doled out as alms.
You would think that she would ground him, from his infancy up, in the knowledge of all the little things that make a marriage a failure or a success to a woman—the little attentions, the little treats, the word of praise, the compliment on a new dress or hat, the little things that make a woman’s heart sing with joy, and that makes marriage worth while to her. The great majority of women, however, never even so much as think of training their sons to be good husbands. Nor do they train their daughters to be good wives. Very few mothers would be willing to see their sons marry the kind of girls their daughters are.
Mother has raised her daughters up to be selfish and spoiled and lazy and extravagant, and she is ready to foist them without mercy on any poor young fellows who are taken with their pretty faces. But Heaven defend her own boys from marrying girls who have never considered any other human being in the world but themselves, and whose only law is their own pleasure! You even hear mothers boast that they have never taught their daughters how to cook, or sew, or keep house, yet the very foundation of domestic happiness and the prosperity of the family depend upon the wife being a thrifty manager and making a comfortable home.
Nor do women instil into their daughters’ minds the truth about marriage—that it is an obligation that they take upon themselves, and that they have no right to throw it up and quit because it is full of hardships and self-sacrifice instead of being the joy-ride they thought it would be. Neither do mothers pass on to their daughters their own hardly won knowledge of how to get along with a husband, how to bear with him and forbear, how to jolly him and handle him with tact and diplomacy, yet that precious bit of information would save many a marriage. Believe me that the most important question that any mother can ask herself is this: “Am I raising up my son and daughter to bless or curse the woman and man who marry them?”
XXXVIII
HOW TO BE A GOOD HUSBAND
A young man said to me the other day: “I am going to be married, and I earnestly and honestly desire to make my wife happy, but beyond a vague and rudimentary impression that I must not beat or starve her, I haven’t an idea of how to go about the good-husband job. What should a man do to keep a woman blessing her lucky stars that she married him, instead of wondering what on earth the fool-killer was doing that she survived her wedding day?”
“Well, son,” I replied, “your theoretical ground work for being a good husband is a sound foundation on which to build, tho refraining from beating your wife is not the matter of course thing that you seem to think it is. There will be plenty of times when you will want to do so, and bitterly regret that no perfect gentleman can lay his hands upon a woman save in the way of kindness, no matter how much she needs a thrashing or he yearns to give her one.
“While as for giving a wife sustenance and raiment, believe me, that to be a good provider is one of the brightest jewels in the crown of a good husband. No matter what other charms and virtues a man may have, he is a poor makeshift of a husband if he cannot give his wife a comfortable living. And, on the other hand, no man is a total failure as a husband if he laps his wife in luxuries. Jewels, and motorcars, and fine houses, and fine clothes are a consolation prize that takes the curse off many a woman’s disappointment in marriage.
“Having, then, accorded your wife considerate treatment and given her a good home, the next step in being a good husband is to play fair with her on the money question. Get off on the right foot there and you will save yourself endless bickerings and prevent her from feeling a bitterness toward you that will grow and grow until it will kill out all of her affection for you. The first disillusion that many a bride gets is when she finds out that the prince of her dreams is a tightwad, who haggles with her over the market money and who is so stingy that he never gives her a penny of her own. There isn’t a woman in the world who is enough of a worm of the dust not to resent having to ask her husband for the money she knows she earns as a housewife. So go fifty-fifty with your wife on the money proposition. Give her as big an allowance as you can afford and be decent enough not to ask her what she does with it.
“The next item in being a good husband is to be affectionate to your wife. Don’t expect her to take it for granted that you still love her because you haven’t applied for a divorce from her. You handed her a fine and convincing line of love talk while you were courting her, and there is no excuse for your cutting it off and becoming as dumb as an oyster just as soon as you’ve got her. No normal woman can live without love and be happy. It is just as necessary to her well-being as food and drink, and if she is deprived of it she suffers all of the agonies of soul starvation, which are worse than those of the body. When you marry a woman you isolate her from the love-making of other men, and so you are in honor bound to provide her with an ample supply of soft talk yourself.
“Therefore, make it a rule of your life to give your wife at least one kiss every day that has in it some thrill of love and passion, and that isn’t flavored with ham and eggs like the perfunctory peck on the cheek or the back of the ear which is all most men hand their wives in the osculation line. And, for heaven’s sake, don’t neglect to pay your wife compliments. When she has on a new dress tell her how pretty she looks and how becoming it is, instead of grunting or demanding to know how much it costs. If you have eyes enough to see other women’s pretty clothes and intelligence enough to say the right things about them, why not about your wife’s, when it will please her to death and make her think what a wonderful man she has married?
“The next point in being a good husband consists in doing something actively to make your wife happy and showing a human interest in her. Many men think they have done their whole duty as husbands when they furnish their wives with food and shelter and plenty of money. I have heard men excuse themselves for never remembering an anniversary or giving their wives a little present by saying that they didn’t know what Mary or Sally wanted, and that they had charge accounts at the best jewelers and department stores and could buy themselves whatever they wanted.
“That kind of thing doesn’t make a woman happy. There isn’t a wife in the world who wouldn’t get more thrill out of a dollar string of blue beads that her husband bought because they matched her eyes than she would out of a pearl necklace that she bought herself on her wedding anniversary because her husband had forgotten they were ever married. It is the personal touch that counts with women. The sentiment. The knowledge that her husband is concerned about her, that he notices when she is tired, that he appreciates all that she does, that he tries to make her happy and wants to give her every pleasure that he can.
“If you want to be a good husband, son, remember to do the little things, and the big things will do themselves. Be affectionate, be kind, be appreciative, jolly her instead of finding fault with her. Be liberal in the use of flattery and take her to some place of amusement at least once a week, and she will thank God on her knees for having given you to her for a husband.”
XXXIX
GIVING CHILDREN ADVANTAGES
Among my acquaintances is a woman who is always bemoaning the fact that she cannot give her children “advantages.” She sheds barrels of tears over their not having the “advantages” that the children of the rich have. She beats upon her breast and laments that she cannot send her boys to college, and give them high-powered motorcars, and when she thinks of not being able to dress her daughters like fashion plates and send them off to summer and winter resorts, she melts down into a perfect pulp of self-pity. After listening to this wail for a number of years, I grew exasperated, and said to her:
“What are the advantages that you cannot give your children? Let us sit down and consider them dispassionately, and see if your children really are so unfortunate, and so handicapped in life as you think they are. Let us begin with your not being able to send your boys off to college. I grant you that we would all like to give our children every possible opportunity to acquire a good education. But not all knowledge comes put up in school-book packages. Furthermore, the degree a man takes who graduates from the University of Hard Knocks has a lot of practical, available information, and a working knowledge of life that is worth a bushel of M.A.’s and Ph.D.’s, and that it will take the college graduate ten or fifteen years to acquire. Many of the best-informed, best-read men that I know never saw the inside of a college. In these days of cheap books, and magazines, and newspapers, if a man wants an education he will get it.
“Nor is the lack of a college education any bar to success. The men who are running things in America to-day spent their formative years, from 18 to 24, in learning about mines, and railroads, and stores, and banking, instead of being grounded in Greek and Latin. And they are hiring college graduates to work for them. Moreover, while you can lead a boy to the Pierian spring, you cannot make him drink from it, and you know well enough that the great majority of boys who are sent off to college idle away their time, and come back with nothing but a college yell, the latest thing in Klassy Kut Kollege Klothes, and a maddening air of superiority. So comfort yourself with the knowledge that if your son has it in him to take an education he will get it. If he yearns for culture he will acquire it, but if he is just a boy who has good hard horse sense, and is not intellectual, the sooner he gets to work after his high-school days the better for him. Of course, mother-like, you want your children to have everything that multimillionaires have, but in your heart you must know that money is a curse to a boy instead of a blessing. To begin with, wealth paralyzes ambition. We are all poor, weak creatures who take the line of least resistance, and when we don’t have to do things we become slackers. We have to have necessity to spur us on to achievement.
“Call over the roll of the rich men of to-day, of the men who sit in high places, from the President down, of the men who are famous inventors, and writers, and artists. They were almost all poor boys. There is scarcely the name of a millionaire’s son in the whole list. And riches lead a boy into temptation from which the poor boy is safe. The boy who has to work for his daily bread has his mind and his hands occupied. He has something interesting and exciting always to do. The idle rich boy must make his own diversions, and find some way of killing time, and he does it only too often by the booze and the gambling route, and in the company of wild women. For adventuresses and grafters fasten themselves like leeches on the man with a fat pocketbook. There is nothing like lacking the price as a first aid to virtue.
“As for not being able to give your girls advantages, do you really think it is any advantage to a girl to be brought up to be nothing but a fashion plate, to have no duties and responsibilities, to have no object in life except amusing herself and to be taught merely to be a waster and a spender? Do you think that the woman who has a dozen homes in this country and Europe, between which she vibrates with no more local attachments than a transient guest has in a hotel, gets the pleasure out of them that the woman does out of her little bungalow, whose every plank has been paid for by some sacrifice and where every chair and plate is the result of weeks of saving and planning? Do you think the girl who buys herself a European title is as happy with the _roué_ husband she has purchased as the girl who marries some clean, honest young chap she loves and works up with him to prosperity? Do you think that the woman who bears children and then turns them over to nurses and governesses gets the benediction out of motherhood that the woman does who cradles her children on her breast and rears them up at her knee?
“You lament that you cannot give your daughters the chance to make fine marriages. Why, the working girl has ten times as good chance to make a good marriage as the society girl has, because she is thrown with more men. She works side by side with the go-getters and the coming men, and she has the pick of them all. So,” I said to my lachrymose friend, “stop whining because you aren’t rich and can’t give your children ‘advantages.’ You are giving them the necessity of standing on their own feet and fighting their own battles, of developing all that is best in them, and that is the greatest advantage that you could possibly give them.”
XL
SELL YOURSELF TO YOUR CHILDREN
Did you ever contemplate trying to “sell” your children, as the advertising experts say, the things you wish them to be and do? Did you ever try selling them yourself? Of course, the old idea is that the proper way to rear children is by forcing on them a system of do’s and don’ts. We tell our children that they must do this, and they mustn’t do that. We try to coerce them along the straight and narrow road because that is the proper path for them to travel, but we never take the trouble to artfully entice them into it and make them think that they have chosen it of their own free wills.