The Spoilt Child

Cromwell Argus, Volume LXX, Issue 3627, 3 July 1939, Page 7

The Spoilt Child

When He Has Children of His Own “The two characteristics of our time which most Impress themselves on my mind may be said to be related to each other, to be, indeed, the cause of each other,” says Mr, St. John Ervlne, writing in “Good Housekeeping.” “One is the sentimentalism of our age; the other is the cruelly. The history of mankind has proved over and over again that there is a great deal of sentimentalism; there is also a great deal of cruelty. The spoilt child does not Indulge his own children w'hen in due course he has any; he treats them very roughly. That, indeed, is natural. Why should he, who has had his own way throughout childhood and youth, give way to his children, since to do that must mean that he will not have his own way any longer? “The fact that the indulged child is an appallingly anti-social child is forcing itself on the attention of the community with startling effect today; for we have reached the period when the unthwarted infant is no longer an infant, but is a man or a woman and responsible in some degree for the lives of other people. And even the parents who spoilt these detestable brats are beginning to feel alarmed. I very well remember listening to a father railing against his daughter. T hate that kid,’ he said, with extraordinary venom. The child had been brought up on the don’t thwart the baby principle, and the result had turned out almost disastrous. ‘Well,’ I replied, ‘whose fault is it that she’s like that?’ “Some years later, a young father, with one daughter, remarked to me that his wife and he had begun the rearing of their child on the its-own-way-don’t-interfere-with-the-ex-presslon -of - its personality principle but now that she was seven or eight years of age, they were beginning to think that an old-fashioned spanking would do her no harm! The connection between sentimentalism and cruelty is not far to seek in this matter. The child which has been indulged by sloppy parents will not indulge its own children —of that we may be perfectly sure—and it will make an intolerable nuisance of itself to every person with whom It comes in contact. “Why should little Peter not pull Wendy’s hair If he wants to? Why should not little Wendy pull off the fly’s wings for, fun?”