THAT DUTIFUL DAUGHTER

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 226, 24 September 1938, Page 5 (Supplement)

THAT DUTIFUL DAUGHTER

ByIrene Stiles

For Wo men

—Copyright A SK any modern parents which 1 they would rather have a son or a daughter. Their answers D-tr BU , rp . nse y° u - History, from Biblical times down to Victorian i y®' confirms the unfailing popularity of the man-child. Whether he was to become heir to a kingdom or just another hand on his father s farm, prayers were for a a George rather than a Vaeorgina. The old order changeth. . . . Parent* aeein more anxious to have gii Is, and the adoption societies, unable to meet the demands lor little girls, are busy trying to bring little boys back into favour! At period four girls were adopted to etfeTy boy, but now that more boys are being born, many people end by adopting a boy ; 'and those who want little girls must have their names l"'t on a waiting list. This marked preference for 1 girls is explained by the fact that they are conHhlered more companionable. Small boys, though by no means less engaging, are not so inclined to stay at home and have tea with mother, and once they are grown up they may go off to some distant land and never come home to tea at all. There are doubtless other more practical reasons behind this preference, flood parent*, foster or otherwise, tiat- I urally wish to do their best for their children, particularly in the matter of education. Where funds are limited, many people fondly imagine that the bent costs less in the case of a girl, nowadays they often find that a girl's education may easily prove as

expensive as a boy's. There is very little difference between the fees for girls and boys' public schools, and in cases where a boy's fees are heavier, a girl usually makes up the little difference on "extras." The majority of girls do not go to universities, however, and it is during the post-school years that a girl often proves herself a better bargain than a boy. So long as she lives at home she spends more time there than her brother. Even if she has a career she practises something of the household arts, looks after her own clothes, and is able to cook. When at length she leaves her old home to be married, the Aiaxim: "A son is a son till he gets him a wife, but a daughter's a daughter all her life," still seems to hold good. Sometimes, of course, she never does leave the old home. She has been so occupied in being a good companion to her parents that she has hot left herself time to explore the more adventurous possibilities outside the front door. The loving kindnesses of maiden aunts to young nieces and nephews may or may not have betrayed a frustrated mother but it is certain that some suitors were found unsuitable, mainly because a daughter was more useful single than married. Certain old-fashioned novelists who 1 stressed the duties of children without , ever mentioning' those of parents. specialised in a particularly dutiful line i of heroines; elder sisters who devoted

their lives to their motherless brothers, or younger sisters who turned their backs on love, all for the sake of a widowed mother. Nowadays we hear little of the maiden aunt. The bachelor girl has taken her place, and for all her independence she is generally somebody's dutiful daughter. But by reason of the excellent post she holds or the talents which flower from her finger-tips, the sum of her duty can, if necessary, be reckoned up in terms of hard, cold cash. If she does not spend her days keeping the linen cupboard in order, making preserves and imparting the much over-rated woman's touch about the home, she does contribute practical as well as moral support, and sometimes carries the lion's share of the burden. Furthermore, if there is an evening when someone has to stay behind with mother, or am occasion when grandmother needs nursing, or a period of j years during which an elder (and not necessarily better) requires care, the responsibility is more often shouldered by a daughter than a son. On the whole it is the stay-home-bv-the-fire parents who prefer frirls. Since they want someone who will sit with them by the fire or out in the garden, a daughter seems the sounder proposition. And if her eyes sometimes are bright with dreams they probably content themselves with the thought that dreamers are seldom doers. They are blissfully convinced that girls never want to go off to the ends of the earth adventuring or pioneering. With those parents who prefer a girl because they think she has a jrentle disi position T have no quarrel. But to those . who consider their daughter as a kind . of gilt-edfred security of insurance ■ ajrainst loneliness. I would say: "Pause, 1 consider, and beware!"

Pause and decide, before it is too late, whether you have tied your daughter's hands in any way. Consider whether you have taken advantage of her sense of duty, and in future prefer that she shall serve you happily because of her love for you, and not because of an uncomfortable sense of "should" or "should not." Beware because the most dutiful of daughters is capable of rebellion.

The very possessive or overbearing parent is mercifully becoming a phenomenon of the past, which is as well. For if dutiful daughters of earlier generations could be transformed into rebels, it seems feasible that, being sufficiently provoked, they would prove far more rebellious to-day.

Modern parents who knowingly exact too much from their children are, I imagine, in the minority, but it is possible that many thoroughly well-mean-ing parents 6et too much store by a daughter's companionship, by the colour and life which she brings into the home.

To those parents I would say: "However much you love her and however much she loves you, don't seem to set too much store by her or appear to expect- too much of her. It is better that you should be a little disappointed in your personal expectations of her than that she should live to regret arid years of being dutiful."

Too many ties, too much responsibility must ever be weights 011 the heels of ambition and on the wings of inspiration and romance. That dutiful daughter of your., probably cherishes (as you, her mother, did once) all the usual dreams of some attractive and not too nebulous admirer. Or she may be a doer as well as a dreamer, and while she sits so quietly in th'e sun she may, for all you know, be planning «n Atlantic flight or a second "Jane Eyre."