Your Baby and Mine

1929

By MYRTLE MEYER ELDRED

Undoubtedly one of the most noticeable changes which parents exhibit toward their children is in their new attitudes. We hear much of these today and they exemplify what the modern parent feels to be the child of a past generation.

We all know the attitudes of the past. If a parent has this attitude he can't shake it off. It inspires such letters as begin: "What the younger generation needs is a good whaling. That would teach them to have some respect for their elders. This namby-pamby attitude of the modern parent makes me sick." (That was a real letter, too). These attitudes grow out of the idea that a child owes a lifelong debt of gratitude and loving service for having been born. No matter what he does he can never repay this and so any attempt to be an individual and rebel against his parents' dictums earns for him the reputation of being an "ungrateful child."

The modern parent feels that, "Honor thy father and mother" puts upon them a real burden to make themselves worthy of being honored. Love and honor are something to be won. They do not accrue from any biological debt. We are trying sincerely and truly to recognize the child as an individual to be respected, and to have his own personality fostered. Making children the outlet for our own starved emotions has become the cardinal sin of motherhood. The "feathered nest" and "silver cord" type of mother is being exploited in literature and drama as the unconscious menace that she is. Our attitude is primarily to be unselfish. To think first for the good of the child and second about ourselves and what we think is due us.

The whole modern attitude summed up might be that the parent thinks of himself as merely an insignificant link in a racial chain. Life does not begin and end with him and his family. His children have duties to the future and the modern parent hopes to free him for these.

It would be worse than foolish to say that all problems are answered by these new attitudes. The modern parent may have swung too far in the direction of self-immolation on the altar of child supremacy, for it is typical of any revulsion to go too far in the opposite direction.

The severity of the past generation drove the child from home early and inspired him to stand on his own feet economically in order to be free from parental fetters. Today we make home so pleasant that the child remains there past the years when he should be becoming independent. As our ideal is an independent child, let us be tolerant of the past generation and its attitude. They achieved this ideal by means which we deplore, but they achieved it.

Let the past be tolerant of the present attitudes. They are at least unselfish ones. A combination of the two may be the right answer.

—The Daily Times Herald, Dallas, TX, Jan. 1, 1929, p. 6, second section.