THE IDLENESS OF GIRLS by Rev. Washington Gladen

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 9, 1880

THE IDLENESS OF GIRLS.

By Rev. Washington Gladen

ANOTHER great mistake that many of our girls are making, and that their mothers are either encouraging or allowing them to make, is that of spending their time out of school in idleness or in frivolous amusements, doing no work to speak of, and learning nothing about the practical duties and the serious cares of life. It is not only in the wealthier families that girls are growing up indolent and unpracticed in household work; indeed, I think that more attention is paid to the industrial training of girls in the wealthier families than in the families of mechanics and people in moderate circumstances, where the mothers are compelled to work hard all the while.

"Within the last week," says one of my correspondents, "I have heard two mothers, worthy women in most respects, say, the first, that her daughter never did any sweeping. Why, if she wants to say to her companions, 'I never swept a room in my life,' and takes any comfort in it, let her say it, and yet that mother is sorrowing much over the short-comings of that very daughter. The other said she would not let her daughter do anything in the kitchen. Poor, deluded woman! She did it all herself instead."

The habits of indolence and of helplessness that are thus formed are not the greatest evils resulting from this bad practice; the selfishness that it fosters is the worst thing about it. How devoid of conscience, how lacking in all true sense of tenderness, or even justice a girl must be who will thus consent to devote all her time out of school to pleasuring, while her mother is bearing all the heavy burdens of the household. And the foolish way in which mothers themselves sometimes talk about this, even in the presence of their children, is mischievous in the extreme: "Oh, Hattie is so absorbed with her books or crayons, or her embroidery, that she takes no interest in household matters, and I do not like to call upon her." As if the daughter belonged to a superior order of beings, and must not soil her hands or ruffle her temper with necessary housework! The mother is the drudge; the daughter is the fine lady for whom she toils. No mother who suffers such a state of things as this can preserve the respect of her daughter, and the respect of her daughter no mother can afford to lose.

The result of all this is to form in the minds of many gifted girls not only a distaste for labor, but a contempt for it, and a purpose to avoid it as long as they can live by some means or other.

There is scarcely one letter I have received which does not mention this as one of the chief errors in the training of our girls at the present day. It is not universal, but it is altogether too prevalent. And I want to say to you, girls, that if you are allowing yourselves to grow up with such habits of indolence and such notions about work, you are preparing yourselves a miserable future.—Rev. Washington Gladen, in St. Nicholas.