Mothers and Sons

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 643, 20 April 1929, Page 22

Mothers and Sons

Dangers that Beset the Relationship

Few realise the peculiarities o£ the work of a mother. No other occupation calls for the variety which hers does, not only variety in detail, but variety in the type of work required of her. It is, too, a variety that reacts unfavourably upon the mother, and unless she anticipates the future and faces the facts before they occur, much unhappiness may result. For the first year she is little other than a servant to her child, ministering to its daily wants through the day. During this period she is in danger of developing an attitude of mind which is dangerous. She comes to regard herself as an essential to the child’s development. She must anticipate its wants throughout its childhood, guide its footsteps and do for it to-day what it will be able to do for itself to-mor-row. This is the supreme fallacy of child-rearing. Selfishness l The loving and careful mother who carries on the nursing habit during the next fews years is, because of her excessive unselfishness, excessively selfish. She is retarding the child’s growth, physically as well as mentally. Mme. Montessori tells in one of her books how a crowd of children were watching an experiment, when a two-year-old, crowded out by the others, tried to see what was going on. Finding it impossible, he looked round the room, saw a chair, and began, to drag it near the crowd with the evident intention of climbing thereon and overcoming his natural limitations. A kindly nurse, seeing the effort, ran to the child and, lifting him in her arms, unconsciously performed an act of cruelty. How much more pleasure

would the child have had in solving his own problem. How much more confidence would he have had in himself had he been allowed to continue his experiment and prove himself equal to the occasion. This incident is typical of the evil done by over-zealous mothers and nurses. They are constantly lifting the child up physically to let him down mentally. They cannot refrain from solving the problems for him, helping to button a coat, perhaps, because his inexperienced fingers find the act difficult. Soon he abandons the effort and leaves the matter of buttoning coats to those whose prerogative it seems to be. And this goes on through life. The child is so well looked after by an affectionate mother than once he is left on his own he finds himself incompetent, cannot perform the tasks others do with ease, and so develops the wrong mental outlook. He loses confidence in himself. He is like the hothouse plant, carefully reared and held erect by some stout support, and then suddenly robbed of this protection. Cruel Fate Fate is particularly cruel to mothers. Once the mothering stage has ended, generally when the boy is about six or seven, his interest is transferred to his father. He sees in the male his own future, and this interest, very often worship, prevails until he is sixteen. Then there is a return to the mother, significant of the boy’s developing interest in the other sex. The interest soon shifts, others gain the affection that had once been the mother’s and, finally, the big break comes when he marries.