A Hint to Mothers

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 18, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 11.

A Hint to Mothers

[The following article from the pen of “Dorothy Dix,” we take from the San Francisco Examiner. We commend its straight-told truths to mothers, especially the last sentence.]

“AMERICAN mothers seem to be divided into two classes — one that never looks after its daughters at all or protects them, and the other that watches its daughters so closely that it makes them prisoners.

“And between the two types of mothers it is hard to judge which is worse.

“There are altogether too many mothers who seem to feel that they have as little responsibility toward their girls as the birds do toward the fledglings that they have pushed out of the nest. These mothers will let a little immature, ignorant girl go with people they do not know, attend parties and go to places with young men whom they do not know by sight, and come home at any hour she pleases. Such mothers permit their daughters to receive men visitors of whom they know nothing, to carry on correspondence with strange men, and to visit other girls in distant cities of whose families and habits and characters they are totally ignorant.

“Every day we see girls in queer places, doing queer things, that make us wonder if they have mothers, and, if so, what their mothers are doing that they are not keeping a better watch upon their daughters. For it is a mother’s duty to keep her eye on her girl, and to safeguard her with a knowledge and experience that it is impossible that youth should have.

“On the other hand, there are also too many mothers who overdo chaperoning, and in their zeal to protect their daughters they stand such perpetual guard over the girls that the poor things are in jail, with mama doing sentry duty at the door.

“And in this land of liberty, where the chaperon, at best, is an imported article that we have never taken kindly to, a mother can ruin her daughter’s prospects just as effectually by overchaperoning her as she can by not chaperoning her at all.

“It isn’t necessary to watch a girl as if she were a ticket-of-leave woman in order to keep up with her. In fact, the mother who makes herself a chum with her daughter is much more able to know what she is doing than is the mother who requires her

daughter to give a detailed account of everything she does and says. The mother who knows how to take care of her daughter infolds her with an atmosphere of protection that is as tangible to the girl, and to all who come about her, as would be a coat of mail.”