Some Causes of Failure in the Training of Children by Carrie F. Butler Thwing

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 19, 1885

Some Causes of Failure in the Training of Children.

By Carrie F. Butler Thwing

THE startling number of crimes committed by young men and boys is attracting general attention and exciting general alarm. Two boys under eighteen have been sentenced for murder in Maine within two months. Massachusetts and New Hampshire courts have tried two boy burglars within the year; and two youths are now awaiting trial in Connecticut for murder, the offspring of a crime yet more terrible. More startling still is the number of boys and girls in every community who, without ever appearing before the courts, are adopting dissolute, vicious, or questionable courses. We have grown to expect a certain number of outbreaking crimes each year, the natural outburst of the fiery passions of youth destitute of home training, or boys of vicious parents. But we do not expect to find boys of respectable parentage, and, so far as we can judge, good training, to love the bottle at fifteen, to be taken home intoxicated at sixteen, and to be hopeless inebriates before their majority. We do not expect to find daughters of Christian parents associating with men of dissolute character; making acquaintances on the street and forming alliances the most questionable. Yet such cases cannot have escaped the notice of most of the readers of this paper. Within a month the ruin of four girls came to our knowledge. One was the victim of the New Haven tragedy; one in Philadelphia was the victim of a similar tragedy; one was a Virginia girl who became the eighth or ninth wife of the many times married Marvin; one was a Maine girl who married a stranger after a few weeks' acquaintance, left her father's house as a bride, and has never since been heard from. The husband proved to have one or more wives living. These girls were, we believe, children of respectable parents. So far as outward appearance goes, we might as soon expect any of our daughters to fall a victim to sin or misfortune as they. In most of our cities and large villages it is so common that it hardly excites remark to see groups of young girls in public places calling attention to themselves by their laughter and loud talking; to see them joined by young men and strolling away together,

walking the street after dark with no apparent purpose, or making chance acquaintances in the street or steam cars. Most of the mothers of these young girls would be shocked and heartsick did they know of the conduct of their daughters when away from their sight.

In discussing the causes of the crimes and indiscretions of young people, it is usual to attribute them almost wholly to the neglect of the parents. Doubtless nearly all the fault does belong to them. But when most conscientious parents, trying to do their duty, have failed, and we see their children turning toward evil courses, their failure ought to become the subject for study and analysis. In the training of boys, parents fail, it seems to me, through ignorance of how early in life boys meet temptations to the grosser forms of vice. It is not now as it was forty years ago. The telegraph now brings to us in one minute information that it would then have taken days to reach us. So boys of twelve and fourteen to-day meet temptations which, in the simpler and slower life of a generation ago, they would hardly have felt before their majority. This, parents do not realize. Tendencies to deceit, to disobedience, to rudeness, to carelessness, they are constantly checking. They do not look for tendencies to gross vice in a boy. If a boy of fourteen has been detected in licentious practices, or has been intoxicated, such a boy is regarded as a monster, an abnormal specimen of humanity. In reality that boy has only succumbed to temptations which every boy feels with greater or less force before he has reached that age. Recently, within my knowledge, a boy of fifteen was accused of a serious crime against chastity. When his mother was informed of the charge, she said, with the utmost wonder: "Why, he is my baby! It isn't so; it can't be so. Every night he comes and puts his arms around my neck and kisses me. Why, he is a little boy!" Her surprise could hardly have been greater had he actually have been in the cradle. Parents are slow to see that their children are growing up. That mother's cry, "Why, he is my baby!" is only the echo of that of many a mother's heart when the knowledge of her boy's sin has first come to her. The hardest struggle against appetite and passion in a man's life comes before he is twenty. If he conquers up to this age, the victory is comparatively easy.

Parents fail wofully in allowing their children to learn from servants, older companions, or chance reading, the facts regarding the mysteries of their own being, which they should learn from their mother's lips. It is no difficult thing to impress upon a child these truths as the most holy, the most sacred in nature. It is also easy for them to learn them in darkness and secrecy from foul lips, as subjects for jest and impure thought. A father can, by a few words, strip from the wine cup all the glamour and delight which the imagination of the boy decks it with. The vice which street companions hold out to allure, he can make repel with tenfold force.

Parents give too little heed to their children's outside associates. This is especially true in the case of girls. As a rule, children are better off to have few associates. The mother can then oversee them all, and know them thoroughly. It is also important that associates should be chosen for a child from among his social equals. This may seem undemocratic. Reflection shows its wisdom. Let a girl form an intimate acquaintance with one far her superior in wealth and position in society. Her mother is forbidden by the laws of etiquette to visit the home of her child's friend. It may be a frivolous home. Her daughter may be every day taking in ideas that are wholly unfitting her for the position she must occupy. Her "head is turned" by the young men she meets. Many a daughter of plain and common people grows dissatisfied with her home, discontented with her homely tasks, fired with ambition to

"be somebody," and "have things," at any cost, because of intimate association with girls whom fortune has more highly favored. Equal harm may come in a different way to a girl who finds her intimate friends in a lower social class than her own. A judicious mother should make the mothers of her children's friends, her friends; and this can hardly be when the families are separated by social distinctions.

Idleness, in both boys and girls, is a fruitful source of waywardness. Parents in comfortable circumstances are too much afraid to let their children soil their hands. In every community there are boys of hard-working and honest parents, growing up in idleness, because they are a little above "a trade," and have not the ability to enter a profession. So with many girls just out of school. Unless they have decided literary taste they settle down to a life of idleness which tempts to the excitement of street flirtations and clandestine acquaintance. It is a significant fact that few of the convicts in our prisons have ever been taught a trade; and among women of professionally bad character it is rare to find one who has ever been taught any regular business.

Most of the indiscretions of girls come from a lack of genuine self-respect. Parents cannot impress on girls too strongly a true respect for their womanhood and their dignity. I saw not long ago the daughter of a well-known professional man attempt on a railroad car to attract the brakeman of the train to her side. I was first and most strongly struck by the girl's lack of self-respect. Her inordinate vanity doubtless led her to sue for the attentions of the brakeman in default of better prey. But knowing the respect in which her father was held, and what was expected of her and for her, I felt she must have been wofully deficient in self-respect to have thus lowered herself before a car full of both strangers and acquaintances. When a girl is willing to engage herself to a man of whose antecedents are known nothing; when she is willing to marry a man with a less knowledge of his character than the father would demand on taking him into partnership, it argues a very small amount of true womanly dignity and self-respect. It is deemed a term of reproach to say, "Such a one feels herself too good to associate with her neighbor." Every girl ought to be taught to feel herself too good to associate with the low-minded, the impure, and the frivolous; not taught it in any spirit of vanity or pharisaical pride because of wealth or position; but taught it in the true spirit of a noble self-respect which regards womanhood too grand a possession to be "trailed in the dust."

As I have studied the cases which have come to my notice in which children of good and conscientious parents have been led astray, I believe the parents have failed in one or more of these particulars: They do not realize how early temptations assail their children; they do not fortify them against temptations by discussing with them the causes and results of yielding to them; they do not exercise proper care in selecting companions for their sons and daughters; they fail to ground them in a true self-respect; and they allow them to grow up without suitable occupations.—Carrie F. Butler Thwing.