PROUD MOTHER
The mother of a ten-year-old said to me the other day with obvious pride: "My little daughter sets her hair at night." Does that strike you-as it struck me-as all wrong?
Surely a ten-year-old should be a jolly little creature, as unaware or.unheeding of our adult vanities as a young animal. Strength and agility, rather than deportment. Clear-thinking and _ directness rather than pretty phrases. Health and wholesomeness rather than charm and effectiveness. I feel fairly certain that the mother is only capable of the shallowest reactions toward her child-the reactions of a vain woman to a pretty plaything, the flattery of a reflected admiration. But the child? The child is warped and crippled in its struggle to achieve the adult attitude, assume the adult.values that should by rights be seven or eight carefree and exhilarating years removed. Basic, fundamental things are straightening out in this adolescent period. It is enough without the addition of the trivial and comparatively unimportant. It is horrible to think that whatever appreciative comment her mother’s friends may make now, at sixteen they will probably dub -the child an "artificial little minx." I can’t f help thinking that the small head, rumpled , _Matidily into the pillow, has by far the greater } chance of ultimate happiness.
KAY
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 17, 20 October 1939, Page 15
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212PROUD MOTHER New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 17, 20 October 1939, Page 15
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