Just Like a Boy by Elizabeth Rosser

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 25, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 33.

“Just Like a Boy”

By Elizabeth Rosser

By Elizabeth Rosser

“JUST like a boy!” exclaims the fond mother, As the babe on her bosom flies into a rage; She vainly endeavors her laughter to smother— ’Tis “funny” to see him so mad at his age. And so at his cradle we mothers begin it, And all through the years we might better employ, We teach him the fact, every hour, every minute, That the bad things he does are all “just like a boy!”

He tears up his books and smashes his playthings, He muddles the floor and the door loudly bangs, He strews all the rooms with his night-things and day-things, And breaks up our slumbers with noisy harangues. And yet we make ever a willing concession, Whate’er he may ruthlessly break or destroy; We say—and it covers up every transgression—(While we pick up the fragments) “It’s just like a boy!”

And, pity of pities!—we say it before him, The wide-open ears drink it gleefully in; And with the false notion we thoroly store him, What’s funny in him in his sister is sin. He comes home from school and his garments are muddy;—But never let that for a moment annoy;—His eye is swelled shut and his countenance bloody,—He’s only been fighting—that’s “just like a boy!”

Swift pass the years; and as he grows older, He bullies his sister, his mother he slights; Daily he grows more defiant and bolder, And ’tis “just like a boy” to stay out late o’ nights. He must sow his wild oats e’er in life he doth settle; Some few high carousals in youth must enjoy; If he gets into scrapes it will but show his mettle, All this we expect—that is “just like a boy!”

Day in and day out the laddie received it, Imbibed it along with his every-day food; He knows that his father and mother believed it,—That boys will be naughty, but girls must be good. Let’s give him a motto more true and more tender, And show him his place in humanity’s plan, His mother’s true comrade, his sister’s defender, And teach him and train him to be like a man.