An Only Child’s Mother!

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 5, Issue 1, 1 July 1926, Page 40

An Only Child’s Mother!

Doctors and schoolmasters are agreed in dreading the only child, but the reason for this lies, not so much in the difficulty of dealing with him as in the fact that every only child has an only mother, The child placed among companions soon learns to re-focus its ideas and realise it is no longer the centre of the universe, but the mother of one who can see him in true perspective is yet to be found. "Why haven't you got a name. Mummie?" asked a friend's little boy the other day, and the question told volumes. That boy was eight years old, and had never heard her spoken of save as "Mummie," so completely was her individuality merged in motherhood. She was utterly devoted to him, and gave her life to training and watching him. Her's is a case such as one sees on every side. The steps are so easy and seem inevitable at the time. Games take up too much time, so they are dropped. Baby might wake or cry at night, so invitations out arc refus-

cd. Music might wake him; it must stop. And so life gradually narrows down to nursery-land. Then the inevitable happens. Schooldays arrive. There is the wrench of partingsoon over for the child, who plunges joyfully into the new life to grow more and more independent of home; and the mother is thrown back on her own resources, to resume a personality she has forgotten, and her friends have forgotten, too. Where there are several children there is far less danger of the mother becoming so absorbed—partly because she is needed less as a companion, partly, perhaps, because it is impossible to worry over several to the same degree as one. There was sound common sense (and a certain amount of bravery) in the" Doctor's advice to the mother who was always worrying over her only child. "Is there nothing I can give him, Doctor?" she begged, with tears in her eyes. "Yes. madam, a little wholesome Neglect," he replied.