MODERN MOTHERS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9034, 14 September 1907, Page 3

MODERN MOTHERS.

(By LILIAN BELL, in "Smith's Magazine ") Every once in so often the cry will be raised, " What is to become of our daughters?'' and an agitated wave sweeps over the country intended to reform the pertness, boldness, waywardness and general bad manners of the modern young girl, who is so forward that -she wili not permit the publio to forget her. But while I dislike the pretty young creature with bold eyeS'and peek-a-boo waist as much as anyone, I pity her from the bottom of my heart, because ehe does not realise what a fool she is making of herself, and because she has no mother. Not that she is an orphan — far from it. Her father's wife bore her, clothed her and sent her to school, but — the question I would agitate is, " What has become of the mothers?" Where is the old-fashioned mother who used to prevent violent intimacies with other young, inexperienced, if not perverted, girls, by becoming intimate with her own daughter? Where has the mother disappeared to, who used to set apart a certain time in the day to find out not what her daughter said, but what her daughter realy thought? Where iethe foolish, behind-the-times mother who used to think that what her daughter learned at school was not half as important ac what she learned at home? Time was when a girl learned to be a lady from watching her own mother. Where can she learn courtesy, gentle speech, consideration for married people and the aged, and the general hallmarks of good breeding? Not from her own mother, because her mother spends her afternoons at women's teas, card parties or clubs for the Advancement of Women. Good heavens, ladies ! Aren't you advanced far enough by this time to stop and catch your breath, and take mental inventories of your own families? Most of you — ay, most of you — have no adequate idea of the standards your children admire, of the sort of religion they believe in, of the kind of morality they adhere to, or, to sum up in brief, of the tun of their thoughts in any direction which counts. You know what colours suit your daughter's complexion best. You know whether large or small hats become her : but what books does she read in the privacy of her own room? What is the influence of her intimate friends over her? What? Do I expect you to tako your valuable time away from pink teas to ascertain what sort of minds and morals mix with your pure-eyed girl's every day of her life? Well, admit that I am a monster, but let us go on to the next. Many a so-called good, faithful mother will deliberately send her daughter away to boarding-chool for from one to four years without having seen one of the teachers or one of the girls with whom the young, unformed nature is ro be intimately associated, day and night, during the most impressionable period of her life. These mothers think letters, written recommendations and high prices are ample MKJiirity against evil associates and possible wreckage of a precious life. What can. mothers be thinking of to permit their daughters to sleep in the saniß room for eight months in the year with a total stranger, whose family comes from a city perhaps a thousand miles away? What do you know of the morals of that quiet, demure little miss whose photograph your daughter sends home with glowing description of her charms? You may find out too late. But you will have nobody to thank but yourself, and you are her mother. It is a pernicious act to send girls away to school under any circumstances, unless they can board with an intimate friend or relation for whose wise surveillance and good judgment you can vouch, but the practice which obtains in most boarding schools of letting two or more girls sleep in the same room cannot be too openly denounced. Raise your prices, dear proprietors of expensive schools, but room every girl separately, if for no other reason than to discourage a girl from telling indiscreet secrets after the gas is out, that she will bitterly regret when the sun 6hines. Oh, the ignorant conceit of those mothers who boast to me that they flatter themselves they know what their daughters think and do ! That their lives are open books ! "I can trust my daughter!" A toss of the head generally goes with that remark, and a look which means, " You attend to your business and I'll attend to mine ! I've raised children before you were born I" Have you? , How? I have heard mothers say, " Well, thank Heaven, I know from the evidence of my own eyes and ears that I can trust my daughter," when that same pretty little rascal of a daughter smoked cigarettes, drank champagne and cocktails in restaurants, played bridge and poker for money, let the boys kiss her, and corresponded clandestinely with married men. What could I do under such circumstances? Tell the mother? I couldn't prove a single fact against the girl unless I engaged a detective. She said if I told 6he would simply lie out of it. But she showed me the letters, and I saw her several times with my own eyes Her mother never would have believed me. I can only go on encouraging her to tell me things she wouldn't fcefi her own pother, and letting her see what a precious fool she is making of herself. I remember she did blush nnd look troubl c d when I told her that doubtless the very boys who kissed her in the conservatory bragged about it afterward. " How do you know," I said, "that they had not made a bet with some other fellows that you were But that won't stop her ! She thinks ehe knows more of the world than her mother and half-a-dozen like me could foil h<Mv TfMi-t now what she needs is a mother six years ago.* She is a pretty tlvng. but her mother lets her wear "peek-a-boo waists and stay away from the hotel all the afternoon with men she only knows to speak to. If she keeps on looking for trouble, I venture to say she will find it. Why will mothers let innocent youns; girls wear dreeees whioh pointedly oall attention to their underclothes P These mothers are modest, refined women, who would be desperately shocked if, when they see their pretty daughters running yards of 6atin ribbon in their underclothes, they dreamed that tho girls proposed going down to dinner in their chemises. Yet the immodesty of certain style** of dreaa at pummer ie-

sorts or on street cars, wihere- vile mencan make their obscene jokes about your girl, madam, and yours, and yours, could be in no worse taste than to go shopping on Twenty-third Street in a kimono and bedroom slippers. Do you ask me if it 3s any -norstj than some of the evening drosses nice young girls wear? I answer no, but an evening gown is generally worn in response to a private invitation, where a hostess is supposed to vouch for her guests — Heaven forgive me for even writing such a silly thing <!own in theso days of loose hospitality ! — but on a street car any man may look 'at your daughter's pearly flesh wlio can pay five cents. You dont like such plain talk, do you? It isn't nioe of me to put such blind truths before you, is it? T'm sure I don't enjoy it any more than you do. I only write it in the ho]>e that some mother who has never given it a thought before will stop to think now, and 6ave one more cleareyed girl from a humiliation which her drPRs has innocently invited. Don't accuse me of making things up. I only tell what I know, and 1 dare not tell half of that. If only mothers knew their own daughters! I knew one of the swees+est women in the world, who has spoiled her whole family by a mistaken induVence. She «ent her daughter to a boprdirg school, and was horrified into a fit of sickness by a note from the principal, saying tlirt the mother <?f Vr daughter's roommate had refused to let the girls room to^etW because the daughter of my friend ewore so. I wouldn't believe it of her, 6O I ask°d the girl myself. '•'Ella," I said, "tell me the real truth of it. Do you swear?" "Why. of course I do! All the girls s<vear. If you eeo a girl stub her ta°. on a loose stone, do you tfy'nk that nowadays she sivs, 'Oh, dear me?' Yon jn*t bet ,*ho dc-isn't." And her little teeth showed in a mischievnus smile. I didn't swoon. But I felt a little sick when I thought of my baby's month — no more innocent-looking than th'fl vouncr girl's. How many mothers know anything alxuit the persons who keep up a ckss correspondence with their d.a lighters ? I once met quite a number of .srirls from one of th» smart boarding schoola near New York. and. just to maVe pure on tin's po'nt, I ask^d them if their mothers insisted on reading their letters. A silence of such astonishment greeted my question that I >ad to bito my 1 : t>s to kp«T> from Inuwhivs. " What ! ' Infiio 1 : ?' Well, T'd like to hear her even ask me who a letter was from ! I'll bet you a thousard dollars to a doughnut she'd never ssk acain !" " What would you do to her?" I inquired, with a pardonable show of eagerness. "Punish her?" T have never seen a mother punished by one of theso competent, modern dan sr 1 " 1 tors, but I live in hope. " Well, you'd call it pu me 1 - merit if you could hear the way I'd talk to her !" "My mother doesn't even care to know !" said another, superbly. "Nor mine!" " Nor mine !" " I couldn't get her to listen, if I asked her to. My mother is a society woman." "It would bore my mother stiff if I'd cuddle, down and do the googoo act with her." " You aren't a b't up to snuff, are you?" asked one, eyeing me pityingly. " Perhaps I don't know all you do," I said, politely ; " but I am not so hopelessly old-fashioned tnat I wear a, ehawl." " No. but I mean you think girls ought to confide everything they do to their mothers, don't you?" " Not unless your mothers' morals are strong enough to stand it. I'd hate to have them contaminated. Has your mother ever been tempted?" " Now there you are! No. she hasn't! My mother was married when she was seventeen, and she had six children and did nothing but take care of them until the three oW«6t were old enough _ to send away bo boarding schol, and just as soon as she sot rid of us she blossomed out, and she's having the time of her life with her clubs and receptions and charities. Poor mother!" " And yet," I ventured timidly, "she is probably as innocent as a new-born babe compared to you girls 1" "Innocent? Well, I should snort! Why, co you know, if I should tell her the things we do every day, she'd blush and accuse me of reading French novels?" " It must make you feel very old," I hazarded to a girl not quite sixteen. "There's not much left for a girl to learn after she's left Miss Blank's school, I can tell you I" she said, with a wink at the others, which set them off into fits of laughter. Ladies and mothers of girls like these whom do you blame for such a showing as that? Is it the fault of the boarding school? I 6ay no. It is the Lack of mother-education— the sort you had from your mother, and what nas kept you better ana sweeter and more innocent of the world's wickedness than your own daughter. No girl who has been properly trained at home can ever go far wrong. If I am met by a chorus of instances to prove the contrary, I only repeat that statement with a little added emphasis on the word " properly." By properly I do not of necessity mean rigorously or religiously. I know many a girl brought up on advice, precept and example who. kicked over the traces at her first opportunity, and no thinking person could be surprised at it.. That was not the way to bring her up. She needed some rope. She got none. Therefore she untied the knot and walked off to discover what freedom was like. If you were a bird fancier, would you 'put a nightingale, a canary, an eagle, a, turkey buzzard and a humming bird in the same cage, and feed them all on. dog biscuit ? Why, then, does a mother treat all her children alike : send them all to the same kind of a school ; stuff them with the same mental and moral precepts and allow them all the same amount Oi freedom? Will the eagle be content to hop from perch to perch like the canary ? The main trouble with modern education is that we herd children too much. We do not consider that they have individualities until they are grown. Then we ask the boys what trade or profession they would like to follow, and the girls what coloured husbands they prefer, light or dark? Anybody would think, from the way girls are put into an educational hopper and ground out, that the Latin root of Tl educate " was "to stuff in." I don't care how badly a girl is spoiled by a mother love, just soothe mother spoils herself at the same time. Many a foolish, vain, shallow woman has proved a better mother than a religious disciplinarian, because she first kept her daughter's respect and never lost her girl's intimacy, while the righteous mother and daughter were mental strangers to each other. If I were the mother of a dozen daughters, I should hope that they would all be good, but if they were not — well, I should know what they thought and admired and believed and loved. If they joined the Church and worked in social settlements and married Czars, I should be proud and happy. Bat if they find that their tastes run to forgery and safe-cracking, they shan't get away from me. I shall simply prepare to co to gaol with them, and somebody will have a chance to write touching articles about the unusual sight of a mother and twelve daughters all in gaol at the 6ame time for the same offence.