Irish Jesuit Province

More Thoughts about MothersAuthor(s): M. R.Source: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 36, No. 417 (Mar., 1908), pp. 162-164Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20501315 .

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MORE THOUGHTS ABOUT MOTHERS

T is more for my own satisfaction than with the idea that anyone will refer back to earlier discussions of the subject; but it will do no harm to justify the title prefixed to these

paragraphs by mentioning that many loving words about mothers will be found in the eighth and the eighteenth of our yearly volumes, at page 277 of the former and at page 495 of the latter. May God bless and reward all the millions of good

women, in all countries and in all classes, who are at this moment exercising the immense patience and self-denial they must needs exercise in order to deserve the sacred name of Mother!

One whom I believe to be a good and wise mother wrote to me lately: " But now here is a problem for you. Why do unselfish, sympathetic, unexacting mothers nearly always have selfish, discontented, exacting, unsympathetic daughters, whereas selfish, hard, exacting mothers generally have sympathetic, contented, unselfish daughters.? There's a question for a

mother to study! " By all means. And therefore, I have just this moment

answered by bidding my correspondent discuss on paper the question she has proposed. However, lest she should fail to do so, I will copy some of my own remarks before posting the letter. I first ask if this is a fact-if selfish mothers generally

have unselfish children and vice versa. Is it a fact ? The modieum of truth in it is perhaps due to

this, that those whom you call loving, devoted, unselfish mothers, do not train their children severely enough, strictly enough. They do too much for their children, instead of making them do things for themselves. A wise mother will keep her affection in check and will restrain herself from doing many a thing for

her child which her affection prompts but which calm prudence forbids. A good mother must not let the children have their own way always. She must often thwart them, run counter to their wishes. Her rule is, according to Count Joseph de

Maistre, une amoureuse persecution-a despotism tempered, not by assassination (like the Russian autocracy) but by a mother's love. I heard a saying lately which was new to me, and I am not sure that it is quite relevant: " A heavy-heeled mother

makes a light-heeled daughter." More to the point is a phrase in the letter of another correspondent: " My profound belief that all moral and practical progress begins with the women and the home, the spirit that reigns there, and the mother's influence on her children, is daily confirmed by the experience

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MORE THOUGHTS ABOUT MOTHERS I63

of other countries. Many mothers are loving, few are wise; and love without wisdom is often evil in its tendencies."

" Ah she was brought up by our grandmother, and I was always at home with our mother, who wis very particular."

This was the excuse given by an excellent woman for the short comings of her elder sister, who, with the best intentions and the sweetest dispositions, was not quite satisfactory in the

management of her not very luxuriously equipped household. Even in such straitened circumstances neatness and a certain amount of comfort are possible, at the cost, I grant, of a good deal of trouble and self-denial. What a difference between cottage and cottage, parlour and parlour, where the husbands earn the same wages and keep back the same percentage from their wives! But if under our grandmother's easy discipline

we have not acquired expertness with the needle and habits of cleanliness and order, can the deficiency never be fully supplied in after life ? So it would seem. Some of us would do well to

make in our hearts at this point a very fervent act of thanks giving to God for having given us really good mothers-mothers who loved us, not too well or at least not too weakly, but wisely -mothers who showed their love by firmness, by restraint, by self-restraint, by denying what would be hurtful to us, by form ing us patiently to habits of conscientiousness, punctuality,

uprightness, obedience, and sundry other humdrum but solid virtues-by all the loving if sometimes mortifying devices of that amoureuse perstecution which, as Count Joseph de Maistre has already told us, good vigilant mothers exercise over their children. Such mothers keep their children more happy than weak, self-indulgent mothers, who indulge their children in order to spare themselves.

O'er wayward childhood wouldst thou hold firm rule, And sun thee in the light of happy faces ? Love, truth, qnd patience, these must be thy graces,

And in thine own heart let them first keep school.

I will join to these reflections a bit of verse and a bit of prose which I find pinned to my notes on the subject. The best thing about the little anonymous poem is its title-" Only

Mother Knows." I have tinkered the stanzas slightly:

Nobody knows of the toil it takes To keep the home together;

Nobody knows the worry it makes, Nobody-but mother.

Nobody listens to childish woes Which kisses help to smother;

The wants of childhood nobody knows, Nobody-only mother.

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I64 THE IRISH MONTHLY

Nobody knows of the sleepless care Bestowed on baby brother;

Nobody knows of the wear and tear Of childhood's ways but mother.

Nobody knows of the anxious fears Lest darlings may not weather

The storm of life in after years; Nobody knows-but mother.

Nobody kneels at the throne above To thank the Heavenly Father

For that sweet gift, a mother's love; Nobody can-but mother.

That last stanza especially fails both in rhyme and reason But the following scrap by some P. K. F., from a Family Herald of years ago has reason in it, but no rhyme.

" There cannot be a greater mistake than to consider young people as destitute of understanding; their understanding should rather be appealed to and consulted. Do we not all remember, how, when young, we were imposed upon ? How our elders sought sometimes to put us off; how they gave us evasive answers or explanations; how they told us some plaus ible story as an excuse or as a reason ? And do we not remem ber that even in our youth and simplicity, we were quite capable of seeing through their manceuvres ? Do we not all remember how, when anyone endeavoured to keep us in ignorance of some proceeding of which we were made accidentally cognisant,

we could divine very correctly the real motive for sending us out of the way with some false excuse ? Now, in a case of this kind, which comes within the pale of parental authority, the will of the parent alone ought to be sufficient to control the child. But there should be no stifling of truth, and no relaxa tion of duty. If, as often will happen, it is not expedient or proper for children to know a particular fact or incident, they should be told so with frankness and kindness, but at the same time with firmness. We are too apt to overlook the intelligence of these little people, and address ourselves to their stature.

We forget mind, which is invisible, in the presence of matter which is seen. The treatment of children must always for their own sakes differ much from that of full-grown men and women; our manner of addressing them must also be different; but there does not seem to be any reason why we should not give them full credit for the amount of intelligence they do possess; and

we may every day see children with more discrimination, greater good sense, and better regulated moral deportment, than many whose tall figure or riper age has invested them with the con sequence of men and women."

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