Concerning Children

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Gilman Charlotte Perkins. Concerning Children

I. THE PRECIOUS TEN

II. THE EFFECT OF MINDING ON THE MIND

III. TWO AND TWO TOGETHER

IV. THE BURNT CHILD DREADS THE SLIPPER

V. TEACHABLE ETHICS

VI. A PLACE FOR CHILDREN

VII. UNCONSCIOUS SCHOOLING

VIII. PRESUMPTUOUS AGE

IX. THE RESPECT DUE TO YOUTH

X. TOO MUCH CONSIDERATION

XI. SIX MOTHERS

XII. MEDITATIONS ON THE NURSE-MAID

XIII. CHILDREN AND SERVANTS

XIV. MOTHERS, NATURAL AND UNNATURAL

XV. SOCIAL PARENTAGE

Отрывок из книги

Obedience, we are told, is a virtue. This seems simple and conclusive, but on examination further questions rise.

What is "a virtue"?

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As usual, we see that the reason why obedience is so necessary is because of imminent danger, which only obedience can escape. With this for a practical background, and with the added proviso that, unless obedience is demanded and secured when there is no danger, it will not be forthcoming when there is, the child is "trained to obey" from the first. No matter how capricious and unnecessary the command, he must "mind," or be punished for not "minding." We may fall short of success in our efforts; but this is our ideal, – that a child shall do what he is told on the instant, and thus fulfil his whole scale of virtue as well as meet all the advantages of safety.

Our intense reverence for the virtue of obedience is easily traceable. In the first place there is the deep-seated animal instinct, far outdating human history. For uncounted ages our brute mother ancestors had reared their brute young in automatic obedience, – an obedience bred in the bone by those who obeyed and lived, any deficiency in which was steadily expurgated by the cutting off of the hapless youngster who disobeyed. This had, of course, a reflex action on the mother. When one's nerve-impulse finds expression through another body, that expression gives the same sense of relief and pleasure as a personal expression. When one wills another to do something which the other promptly does, it gives one an even larger satisfaction than doing what one wills one's self. That is the pleasure we have in a good dog, – our will flows through his organism uninterrupted. It is a temporary extension of self in activity that does not weary.

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