Mothers and Daughters

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 28, 1877

Mothers and Daughters.

The mother who indulges her daughter in recreation, or idleness, while she performs the service which the daughter should have done, is doing a most serious injury to the child she loves. Many mothers, from a mistaken kindness perhaps, are committing this error. In many families, even in very humble circumstances, where daughters will sooner or later, be compelled to rely upon their own efforts for support, or else live in the greatest necessity, they are allowed to grow up without any fixed habits of industry, and with very little knowledge of those duties, which they may be required to discharge in life.

The mother rises early in the morning, prepares breakfast for her household, while her grown up daughter sleeps away the fresh hours, and only performs her toilet in time to take her seat late at the table which her mother has spread, with a pale cheek, a languid air, and, perhaps, no appetite for the food which her mother has prepared. Both are committing a mistake which they will have occasion to regret in later years. The mother performs her daily routine of domestic duties, does her washing, ironing, cooking, house-cleaning, while the daughter, after some light and unimportant service, dresses herself to entertain company, make calls, take walks, or, still worse, waste her hours in reading novels, and poring over light and trashy literature. A grave and lasting wrong is done to the child, a wrong which may entail sorrow for a lifetime. It is no wonder mothers sometimes say, “girls are not worth as much as they used to be when we were young.” How can they be, when mothers do not train them to those stern, but needful social virtues, those habits of domestic industry, and that knowledge of home duties, without which, no daughter can make a home happy, and fill with honor, the honored station of a wife and a mother?

Much of the blame is chargeable on mothers themselves. It is natural for children to desire leisure and indulgence. But all children, from their earliest years, should be made to feel that they have some responsibilities to bear, some duties to perform. These should be graduated according to the age, strength and circumstances of the child. If this be too long omitted, the daughter obeys her own caprices more than her mother’s authority, and either being or supposing herself a young lady, she fancies that housework is unfashionable for, or unsuited to young ladies, and should be left to domestics, that is, to her mother, and such other help as she may be able to command,—The Home.