THE UNHAPPINESS OF CHILDHOOD.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5237, 5 January 1878, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE UNHAPPINESS OF CHILDHOOD.

There is a common way of talking of the period of childhood as if it were one of perpetual happiness. Grown up people are so far removed from their early days that in many cases they seem to forget what they endured as children. They think of themselves as having been happy, strong, free from care, lighthearted—at least, in contrast with the various conditions of light and thought in which they now find themselves, it seems as if they had been so ; and they speak of happy childhood as if entire happiness were the normal condition of human beings in the early stages of their existence. It is probable that there are some persons who can look back upon an uninterruptedly happy childhood ; and when that is the case, they have memories to be stored up which are, indeed, priceless in value. But it is true, iu far more cases than the popular reckoning allows, that childhood is a period in which there is very little positive happiness, and very much of actual suffering and unhappiness. Not only are there the small griefs incident to the discipline necessary for childhood—the petty disappointments which seem so keen, the small self-denials which appear so great, the restraints as to the exercise of will which the necessary rule of home or school imposes—but there are far keener sufferings than these. There are the cases of children whose whole life is one of suffering, of actual or-, impending illness ; who may, perhaps, by constant care grow up to be men and women in delicate health, but who never can look back on a time when in their childhood they were strong and well. People are apt to think that such children as these have their compensations in the extra care and love given to them ; but let anyone who has had experience of such a childhood look back to it, and say if the unhappiness of illness did not render life very sad. There is, above all, the unhappiness of mismanaged and misunderstood children. There are children of peculiar temperaments, whose whole lives are rendered a burden to them by the fact that the person set over them, either parents, guardians, or teachers, have been destitute of sympathy for them, and have not thought it worth while to try what a change in the plan of managing them would do. Harriet Martineau and the young Brontes seem to have been children misunderstood ; and though their strong natures struggled tlu'ough into brighter lives, yet there are hundreds—nay, thousands—set down as sullen, dogged, obstinate, and treated with harshness, who live lives of dull wretchedness because they do not know what is wrong with them, and no one takes pains enough to try to set things straight for them and make them happier. Again, there are clever children weighed down by utterly unintellectual surroundings, forbidden to read because reading is “ a waste of time,” kept to mere mechanical work, and never allowed to indulge fully their love of study. At one period of her childhood Mrs Somerville seems to have suffered a good deal from this. Of course, nothing could be more unwise than to allow all the whims and fancies of children to have their way unrepressed. Such a course of action would merely add the misery of undisciplined will to the others which children suffer. But that childhood is often a time of great, even of morbid unhappiness, is a statement that no reflecting persons, especially those who have had much to do with children, can deny. Children are as different in their natures and temperaments as grown-up people are, and they are infinitely more sensitive, making them easier both to manage and to mismanage. Children cannot be governed by any stern, unvarying rule ; they must ho treated according to the differences in their characters. Above all, children who appear morose, obstinate, unhappy, should not be made more so by punishment—they are wretched enough already. To alleviate, not to increase, the unhappiness of childhood, should be the aim of all who have the welfare of children at heart., — Queen.