Part 28 (2/2)
FIG. 38.--a girls' cla.s.s in sewing. No girl of this age needs to wear any better garment than she can make with her own needle if she be rightly trained. Such training is a part of real preparation for life.]
MAKE THE DAUGHTER ATTRACTIVE
It may therefore be urged upon all rural parents, as a cold business proposition, as well as a duty, that they take every reasonable precaution to develop in their growing daughters both an attractive personality and a beauty of the inner character, whether she be so fortunate as to attend a good college or not. All this must be done with a thought of rendering the daughter as attractive as possible in respect to any worthy young man who may in time seek her heart and hand in marriage. It is time for parents to cease pa.s.sing this thing by as a mere piece of sentimentalism and to begin to do the fair thing by their girls. Why should it longer come to pa.s.s in this enlightened age that some parents break down the physical health of their girls with the burden of over-work and thus consign them to a life of moping and bitter disappointment for the future; that other parents indulge their girls in the giddy, b.u.t.terfly type of life and thus blight their prospects of a substantial and satisfactory place in human society?
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
In summarizing and concluding this chapter we wish to remind the reader of what has been said in the preceding ones. There are a number of distinctive elements that must be carefully wrought into the character of the farmer's daughter with a view to laying a substantial foundation for her future career.
1. First of all, the girl's health must be kept in mind. She must not have an over-burden of work heaped upon her delicate shoulders, nor must she be allowed to expose herself unnecessarily to the inclemencies of the weather so common in the ordinary rural districts. There are many women moping about to-day, ill and despondent much of the time because of the negligence of parents who permitted them when growing girls to wade about through mud and slush and thus impair permanently their physical well-being. Many of the minor ailments of mature life recur habitually, and that because they were permitted to be acquired when the organism was young and sensitive.
2. The daughter must be taught how to carry on practically all the necessary details of the housework. The plain cooking and sewing and the general care of the home must be required as duties on the part of every promising girl. It is especially obligatory on the part of rural parents that they train the daughter in such a way as to make her a true mistress of the household over which she may sometime preside. She must learn through specific guidance how to subordinate the heavy home tasks to her spiritual well-being.
3. It is also essential that the girl learn how to manage the business affairs of the home; especially, how to purchase the supplies of the kitchen and the larder in the most economic fas.h.i.+on. She must also learn both how to secure her own personal belongings at a reasonable cost and how to make them serve her real needs without unnecessary expenditure of money. It will be a great achievement in her behalf if the girl approach her marriage day thoroughly imbued with the thought of cooperating with her husband in the general business of maintaining a home.
4. We would remind the reader again of the necessity of giving attention to the development of an attractive personality in the growing girl.
Pleasing manners, refined expressions, neat and attractive apparel, kindliness and sympathy, frankness and straightforwardness--all these should enter into her make-up and be thought of as parts of her permanent character. They will also go far toward winning to her side a suitable life companion.
5. The young girl on the farm should have much advice in respect to the nature and character of men. This will be achieved partly through her well-ordered social life and partly through specific talks from thoughtful parents. Country girls are probably less informed in respect to the natures of men than are city girls. Many beautiful and innocent young women are led astray either before or after marriage by evil and designing men; many of them consummate marriages with men who have an outer appearance of trustworthiness, but who harbor within some most serious and insurmountable evil and disease. Although she may not for a time be conscious of what her parents are doing, the latter should be for years purposely engaged in preparing their daughter to know at sight a good man.
Finally, it may be said that there is no greater charm or thing of more superior beauty in this good world of ours than the character of a woman who has been well-born and well-reared, and who has been safely guided into the home of her own wherein she reigns as mistress supreme. In this ideal home the love and sympathy and the kindly deeds of the true home-maker will reveal themselves permanently in the lives of her children and her husband and the many others who come into contact with her constructive personality.
REFERENCES
Women's Ways of Earning Money. Cynthia Westover Alden. A. S.
Barnes & Co.
The Home Builder. Dr. Lyman Abbott. Houghton, Mifflin Company. Sympathetic and cheering.
Almost a Woman. Mary Wood Allen, M.D. Crist, Scott & Parshall, Coopertown, N.Y. A plain talk to the young woman about her s.e.x nature.
The Problem of Vocational Education. David Snedden, Ph.D.
Chapter XII, ”The Problem of Women in Industry.” Houghton, Mifflin Company.
The Vocational Guidance of Youth. Meyer Bloomfield. Chapter I, ”The Choice of Life Work and its Difficulties.” Houghton, Mifflin Company.
Parenthood and Race Culture. Charles W. Saleeby M.D. Chapter X, ”Marriage and Maternalism.” Moffat, Yard & Co., New York.
Should Women work for their Living? M. Yates. _Westminster Review_, October, 1910.
Social Diseases and Marriage. Educational Pamphlet, No. 3.
American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, New York.
10 cents. Every parent should read this booklet.
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