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For the Suppression of Mothers
Harper’s Weekly (December 26, 1908) : 29: link
 

      The problem plays, the turgid novels, the tea-tables, and one’s confidential women acquaintances have exposed the last interesting thread which still clings to the marriage relation. The final word has been said on the once-absorbing subject, and just as the conversational world stood in danger of lacking a delicate, ticklish, intimate subject for their piercing harangues, by some suddenly given turn of the wheel, it was seen that mothers and daughters had sprung into a new-made domestic lime-light and were acting out a strained little drama of their own. When the complication began no one quite knows, but tangles have now grown to a surprising state of intricacy, the thing takes on a semi-seriousness, and if the situation is frightening any one unduly let him remember that present-day women are determined to break away from something; and if they do not happen to be supplied with husbands, or “confining circumstances,” or “intolerably unsympathetic surroundings,” then they, still determined to break, insist that their mothers offer themselves up as things to be independent of. The wrench must come somewhere, and who is more willing to do what is wanted of her than a mother? Yet in spite of their good intention they make things very hard, for one of the great complications lies in the fact that mothers so persistently go on their mothering way. With daughters becoming almost anything from personalities to advanced thinkers, it is awe-inspiring to see the calm, the blind, unswerving perseverance with which mothers continue to inspect bureau-drawers, advise rubbers, and open up the, to them, delightful subject of buying a new unnecessary evening frock. This when the minds of modern daughters are filled with solid geometry and the latest quirk in political economy.
      Mothers are, perhaps, the most old-fashioned things in our civilization; men sometimes seem to cling with an unreasoning fervor to the attributes of their forefathers, but mothers are prostrating in their continued and concerted resemblance to themselves. They may, in their other relations, have achieved a praise-worthy up-to-dateness, but as mothers they are simply archaic. How the belief ever became general that daughters were flighty, impractical, and extravagant, while mothers held them firmly in check, it is difficult to imagine. Daughters may have been those things a very long time ago, and mothers may, in a general clutching of all things old, have caught and kept these discarded characteristics for their own; but the present facts are that modern daughters, with some impatience and much superior wonder, restrain their mothers from buying hats (always for the daughters) which the family purse cannot afford, and with tears in their eyes the daughter says, “Mother, I do not need a silk petticoat. Get me some typewriting-paper if you will, but I will not have a party cloak when I need a hot-water bag.” This remonstrance does not a whit of good, it only causes strained relations; and when the mother, after deep contriving, slips out to the shops alone and has sent home the silk petticoat and the evening cloak, the daughter’s cold anger is increased by such words as “disrespectful, ungrateful girl.” Let no one laugh at such a happening. It is extremely serious. The impossibility of educating a mother out of her giddy, scatter-brained feminity is not a matter to be treated lightly .
      A duck of a daughter floats on strange waters, and when she has remonstrated and scolded and coaxed and slandered in vain her nervous, willing, unable parent, she leaves her unhappy on the bank and sails away with an air that says, “I'm sure I don’t know why you can’t come; it’s very simple, its being done , and you must see that it’s not very nice for me to have you so lacking in accomplishments.” At which the mother merely flutters on the shore and calls, “Don’t get your feathers wet; you know it’s not becoming to you,” and hurriedly the duck of a daughter swims back to land so burdened with rage that she is in momentary danger of drowning.
      There are, strangely enough, mothers who are in this generation, while their puzzled offspring find themselves in the last generation. This type of mother is one of the most trying to deal with; she is so advanced that her children are crowded out of their rightful place well to the fore, and in a panic that they won’t exist at all squeeze into the retired niche, where their mother should have remained, a contented, cowed conservative. It is trying to have to drag a mother from far up in the rear, but it is obliteration to have a mother who is more of a radical than you had ever hoped to be, and it is the children of such parents who are quietly but with a deadly earnestness forming a society for the suppression of mothers.
      Some parents go so far as courage individuality in their children, and what could any child do under such a kindly, expectant load. They are finished from the first. Noticeable parents depress if they do not entirely swamp their family. A competent, intellectual mother is enough to reduce a daughter to a limp blankness. When a mother will insist upon being kind, sympathetic, or, above all, understanding, how can a daughter lead any sort of life or be any degree of a person. This is an ambitious age and, given half a chance, our young women would do remarkable, appalling things; but they must, and without it they can do nothing, have either a dull mother, or an old-fashioned one, or a conservative one; the last is, perhaps, the more truly educational of the three. For with a mother of this kind one can first suffer in a noble silence, then firmly get ideas of one’s own, after which the first joyous prickings of a budding personality are undeniably felt, and in time, if the mother holds out, one is an advanced young woman with views on everything. Many a case is known where a mother has asked a ruminating, dreaming daughter if she is chewing her food well, and the effect has been such as to drive her into a career that supported her for the rest of her days. The control that is necessary when, in the midst of a remark that may interest nations, a mother says, “Learn repose, my dear.” Ah, what such moments do for one’s character!
      The dramatic value of being an orphan – not that one wishes to carry the thing too far — is astounding, and if parents were not so old and so thoroughly established a custom, they might merely, for the good of the children , be dispensed with altogether. It may be that an appeal to the parents themselves would be sufficient. Looking back over the heroines of the world’s favorite poems, novels, and plays, the parentless state of the ladies in question quite jumps out at one. Parents, if brought to realize this, at the same time wishing, as they do, all good to their children, would be thrown into a morass of indecision. Their duty would lie in immediate disintegration, yet with their habits strong upon them and their knowledge that as individuals they are very charming, they might find it hard to go .
      It will readily be seen that if they are cruel parents they are almost as good as no parents at all; they may, if handled properly, drive one from home; they are sure to completely misjudge one, or if they do neither of these things there are still a number of alternatives that are all more or less entertaining. If they are truly thoughtful for the romance of their children’s lives, they will disappear and leave a guardian in their place. A guardian with points in his favor. If a young woman is a ward, as well as an orphan, there are few opportunities for adventure closed to her. But it is best not to be grasping; be grateful for the possibilities of orphanship, and know when you are well off. If one must put up with something an uncle has the fewest comparative faults, and if the thing could be managed he ought to be a not quite honest uncle. Nothing is of more assistance to a young person, starting out in life armed with a dislike of the drab, than an aged relative who will consent to purloin the greater part of their patrimony, and threaten them with a dark family secret occasionally. It is a sad reflection that loving parents never do these little things, while indifferent outsiders manage such affairs with great tact.
      The outcome of the situation, mother-and-daughter problem, as sometimes called, and which has here been only lightly touched upon, promises to be interesting. Present-day daughters as future mothers will find their path embarrassingly thorny, and the present-day mothers are quite capable of lying low, and at the first intimation of atavism, on the part of their daughters, they will spring up, point a mocking finger, and, prancing with gratified laughter, shout, “What is Russian poetry to wet feet now?”
 

24 July 2026