HOME LIFE

Evening Star, Issue 20317, 28 October 1929, Page 12

HOME LIFE

PARENTAL CONTROL RUNNING FAMILIES ON DEMOCRATIC LINES. “ One suspects after long observation that in spite of all our talk about faith in democracy most families are run on undemocratic lines” (writes Dr I osdick, in the ‘World To-day’). _ “Such households sometimes are distinctly autocratic, with a martinet at the top, some strong-willed paternal or maternal Mussolini dragooning the entire family on Fascist principles. Sometimes the undemocratic family represents the exact opposite of such regimentation. “It is. instead, a loose, lax, unregulated congeries of people, each going his own way, with the children, like Topsy, growing up helter-skelter and lacking any serious direction or control. In either case there is no democracy—in the first instance through lack of freedom, and in the second through lack of co-operative responsibility, “The prevalence of these two types of households is readily explicable. They are the easiest kinds of home life to drift into. Either to let the children grow as they will and do anything they' please, or else to establish a benevolent but firm autocracy, is a simple way to run a family. Both these types of household, however, for purposes of training children, are as cheap as they are easy. The youths who are best fitted to be good citizens in the new generation come out of democratic homes. “A child from the beginning ought to be called into the family’s counsels and consulted on the family’s affairs. A little child, if well handled, is the most loyal of creatures, and would far rather than not be devoted to his group and co-operative in its interests. “ Every normal person likes to feel that ho counts for at least one in any group to which he belongs. The child is no exception. One of the major secrets of a successful family is the practical use of this fact. “Some parents, out of an unhappy are sure to react unfavourably to this point of view. They would say that the children are consulted too much, that they dominate their elders, run our homes, imperiously' insist on their rights and privileges, and resent

being reminded of their duties, that parents, so far from being tyrants and martinets, are errand boys for their offspring; and that, in general, the younger generation is often a shocking combination of arrogance and selfishness. OLDER GENERATION TO BLAME The basis of fact for such a judgment is obvious. But the older generation without, doubt is primarily to blame. The younger generation comes into our homes as babies, and it is our business both to foresee the free move merit of life that they inevitably are headed for and to train them to meet it. "But training them to meet it requires time, care, patience, sympathy. It means taking pains from their early childhood to consult them like comrade-; rather than to boss them like inferiors. It means a thoughtful welcoming of them to the intimate a 'nirs of the family, so that from the beginning they are made responsible co-operators in running the household. It means beginning as soon as they know the difference between a penny and a sixpence to trust them with money, give them allowances of their own, counsel with them about their expenditures, and bringing them in their early „cens to the place where they can budget their incomes and handle their bank accounts, sagely and cannily, as good financiers should. ' The more I see of parents, the more I wonder that so many children come out as well as they do. My father was a schoolmaster for more than fifty years. It is not an untypical story that once, after trouble with a way ward boy and an investigation of the homo conditions, he called the boy's father in, and, shaking a clenched fist in his face, said: ' You miserable scoundrel of a father, if you had a prize pup you would know more about him than you know about your own son.' "