CHILD EMANCIPATION

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 March 1933, Page 9

CHILD EMANCIPATION

cuAHTisi: or-' liberties

"Few people would dispute that there has been a change in the attitude of the grown-up to the child during the last thirty or forty years, but not everyone stops to examine what the change really is or why it has come. Tiie matter is worth sifting. Perhaps it is not so great as we imagine, or perhaps it. is greater,” states a. writer in the “Manchester Guardia II."

“The question of what it is would have various answers, but if one were to ask the modern child’s grandparents about it they would probably say that (hildren are made more of nowadays, are freer and bolder, stand less in awe of their elders, and are, many of them, more spoilt. “Let us deal with this question of spoiling first. To hear some old ladies talk (not all. for there arc youngminded grannies nowadays) you would think that this was the only age in which children had been spoilt. But is it? Is not it probable that in every age there was some parental affection that got out of band, some fathers or mothers too weak to stand up to their children? For all we know. Benjamin may have been an odiously spoilt little boy, though, on the other hand, he may have thrived on. tlie extra love Jacob cxpt'iided on him. About Absalom we arc more sure. He is a. great warning to overloving parents, and our King Joiin seems to be another.

“Certain it is that there- have always been children ruined by the excessive. indulgence of their parents, and spoiling, though more general now, is not new. Still less is pride in children new. We know what a source of gratification it was in old days to have your quiver full of them. This is understandable. To an agricultural people l hey were more of an asset than an expense, for at five or six years old boys could be minding goats and girls spinning, and when They grew up their labour could be counted, on to increase the family sustenance. whereas nowadays they are a long drain on parental resources, and later on, us often as not, can only support themselves. This point about large families is, by the-way, exceedingly apropos to our inquiry, tor the increase in spoiling is largely due to the decrease in the size of the family. It. was as difficult to spoil children when there, were twelve or fourteen of them (and our great-grandpareniS mostly belonged to families this size) as it is hard to avoid it when, there are only one or two, and one is inclined to envy children of those other days for the coming into a world of their own kind and getting so much iniccm.cioits training from people tilmost their own size and outlook.

SPOILING. ‘Spoiling is only a small part oi the matte! : indeed, it is probably a passing phase. There are some grounds for thinking that the presentday spoilt children will be firm with their own young, and though there are no statistics of such things 1 believe that children are, less pampered now than they were ten or twenty years ago—one salutary effect of the crisis. The essential change is that there is more respect for a. child in our. age than there ever was before. This is something fund a m en t al, fa r-r ea ch i n g, and. I think, wholly good. It is difficult to believe that wo shall ever go back on it. They are considered now as children having (heir own world, which is ■ different, from ours, with needs and rights of their own —they charm us because they are different from us. How short a while ago they were noihing. to their elders. but miii'ai lire grown-ups! In "The AV ay of All Eli ch’ (lie t Ince-year-old 'Ernest, is ; avagely b'.’T.mi by his father, a pious clergyman, be'sumo ho persists in sayjiv.. "iiin I l,l ' come. His lather is ji j,: mere obstinacy on the child’s pari. The Victorian household which Sanimd' Butler here desciibcs. with iis heavy atmosphere of tin Judgment Day, is not al all unIvpical of Hie age though methods used might be less harsh in other families. The tiiiilude was the same evorvwhcfe. . ‘■Eneluml was well known m pas days for its Im-sh ttess to children and j; s pick of parental affection. The v, , t .-1 j;; Ambassador in Hie time of ip,. -]-|| ! p ir ..- ..mummied on it. and osj,. I i ■: ..ii the f-t diien cvui with, rich i ~ -i ~;mdcic .iv a'- their children ,i .|... .•< .'i .. ui-p hard ervi'.e in,, ii.’ii of other people, in ori ii. i they may learn better man- ... , W<-. hmm. ii'iw children knelt <-.-iv.- their parents’ blcsmim on raying good nigltl, never sat in their presence, and addressed Hmm in their letters us ‘Honoured sir" and ‘Honoured imidanw.' Poor Lady Jane Grey. comp!.lining that, unless she did

everything us perfectly as God made the world she was tormented by her parents with ‘pinches, nips, and bobs,’ throws a lurid light on the sufferings of little girls of former days. Tremendous stress was laid on manners and a ‘fashionable carriage.’. The dress of children of these old times is illustrative of the attitude towards them; they are small editions of their parents. The girls look like dolls, fit only for glass cases, in their long full dresses down to the ground, their stiff ruffs, and what not. Did they ever run about or play - ? No doubt they managed it, but we know of few people who thought of it. as their right, except Sir Thomas Moore. He took grave statesmen to see his children’s rabbits and pet monkey, and boasted that he had given them ‘kisses often, but stripes never.’

"No doubt it. was not all as bad as it, sounds. Children came into the world then, as now, equipped with powerful weapons—their vitality, their knowledge- of what they want, and their seductive wiles—but if they were given in to then it was against the better judgment, of the time, while nowadays nearly everyone realises that, within certain limits, children have rights. “I think with joy of the nearly naked little savages I saw running about Hyde Park last August. When was their Charter of Liberties signed? What a, silent revolution it has been, this emancipation of children. Where have they vanished, those awful ‘shall net’s’ of the past? No doubt the emancipation of women has had much to do with it, and above all, I suppose. the- new psychology: the realisation of the danger of repression, shame, and sense of sin which is, though all too slowly, gaining -ground amongst us. However it. has come and however incomplete it still is, who can doubt that the emancipation of the children is amongst the greatest achievements of our age?”