A mother's ideals; a kindergarten mother's conception of family life

Front matter

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A Kindergarten Mother's Conception of Family Life

ANDREA HOFER PROUDFOOT

Introduction

The following letter came to me as editor of the Kindergarten Magazine :

*'You must help us to secure a book for mothers who are interested in ideal life. I have been at the Chautauqua Summer Assembly for several years, and while I answered a thousand questions a day, I felt the need of putting such printed matter into the hands of earnest women as shall help them know the true doctrine and do the work also. We need a book that is not too technical and yet gives practical insight to the uninitiated in the true motives of motherhood — in the bearing as well as in the raising of their children. Will you not help us?"

Hundreds of letters come every year from the mothers themselves, asking, What is this science of right living we hear so much about? What is this larger duty in which we seem to fail?

On all sides mothers are being advised and argued with by kindergartners and teachers as to their broader duties. Feeding and dressing the little ones are no longer considered the highest duty of the home. The world at large and the mothers themselves are beginning to realize that the first few years have in them the greatest of all opportunities to start the child right in character, heart, mind and body.

It is told that Darwin said to a mother who questioned him as to when she should begin the education of her child, then two and a half years old, "Madam, you have already lost two and a half years."

As we study the child we find that there is no rude beginning anywhere to any of its faculties, and there is a growing demand for a book which shall lead mothers to watch over these unseen beginnings, and at the same time help them in all their undertakings toward the family that they may work for true development. Such a book must primarily deal with "ideals." The bread-and-butter question is not the only one; the spiritual bread is half the question of sustenance. Mothers who try to live and rear their children by "bread alone" are numerous, and this is why so many women have such huge problems.

Mahomet has said, "Had I two loaves I would sell one and buy hyacinths to feed my soul."

I hope I may be able to give mothers some of this beautiful bread in these pages, for I believe that a mother's book not based on ideals had better be left unwritten. There are plenty of them, and they are constantly lowering the standards of womanhood and should be condemned.

Many books on motherhood dictate what to do and what not to do in rearing a family. In these pages I shall not attempt to lay down a law for mothers, but shall strive constantly so to speak as to make the doing of whatever your hands find to do easier and more definite in its purpose toward more ideal life.

This book is not a scholarly attempt, but is poured out of my everyday life with all its manifold duties and struggles, and I trust it m.ay pour itself into the everyday lives of my mother friends, who need books much less than they need living words, help and inspiration.

To begin with, let me say that anyone who takes the pains to read these pages is supposed to be deeply interested in finding help from the ideals given; and if few world-accepted doctrines and no guidance of a materialistic order are found, do not complain, dear reader. Every word is written to stimulate and encourage the mother in her aspirations and higher life. Those searching for remedies and quackery had better close the covers at once and vote the book a failure.

I believe there is a growing demand among mothers for such a book, based on the practical demonstrations of the writer as a mother. It must be radical and yet not radical. We need radical changes to carry into effect our ideals, and bring about new ways of living and thinking; yet these changes need be only a different view-point from which to reach out. The same old-fashioned sweet mother-love and father-love must always be the one foundation upon which we can build permanently for ideal family life.

These passages will naturally run into the questions which mothers are most anxiously putting; and because they seem to be the more fully concerned with the conservation and perfecting of the family, this may truly bear the stamp of a "mother's book." Mother literature is, in truth, rare, the past having imposed upon the mother class scarcely anything save physicians' diagnoses of disease and abnormal life conditions. The mother is usually addressed purely as a domestic, one whose all-important duties are the feeding, clothing and dosing of her children. It is taken for granted that their spiritual life and education are not particularly hers, but the duties of the church and school.

We must have a newer and higher literature for our family builder. We all honestly believe that the majority of this race, in spite of its abuses, has more faculties to develop than disease to cure.

The mother's opportunities are constant; growth in mind and body will go on in her children whether she cares or not. A normal child is learning during every waking hour, and the question is. Shall the mother put herself intelligently to work and make the years in which she has sole charge the beautiful beginning of all that is lasting and progressive in the child?

I would herein call mothers to consider this special period in their own and their children's lives — those sweet days when nothing comes between them, and when the ties that bind forever are being formed. Do we half realize, dear mothers, how sacred are those hours when not only their bones and sinews are yielding, but when the heart and mind are as fully responsive to the ''spirit touch"? When we have our children in our own hands we must be honest with ourselves and ask. Are they wise, unselfish hands? Are they perhaps serving only the body, or are they also waiting on the soul?

The mother who has her own children in her own care is the m^other who, with intelligence, can do the most for the race. And to these common mothers I would speak; to those who are not occupied in the constant work of reform, on the one hand (the ''convention women'' so called), nor yet those struggling toward the highest social functions; but to the stay-athome, ambitious mothers, with neither poverty nor ignorance to struggle against, but with hands full of family and child problems — to these we must look for the construction work. And to these I write, I trust with a pen sharpened by sufficient experience in the commonplace problem of the home, and enough inspired with the true light to be indeed practical in its ideality.

The great Froebel says from out the motherlydepths of his heart: ''Women are to recognize that childhood and womanliness (the care of childhood and the life of women) are inseparably connected; that they form a unity, and that God and nature have placed the protection of the human plant in their hands. Hitherto the female sex could take only a more or less passive part in human history, because great battles and the political organizations of nations were not suited to its powers. But at the present stage of culture nothing is more pressingly required than the cultivation of every human power for the arts of peace and the work of higher civilization. The culture of individuals, and therefore of the whole nation, depends in great part upon the earliest care of childhood. On that account women, as one-half of mankind, have to undertake the most important part of the problems of the times — problems that men are not able to solve. If but one-half of the work be accomplished, then our epoch, like all others, will fail to reach the appointed goal. As educators of mankind the women of the present time have the highest duties to perform, while hitherto they have been scarcely more than the beloved mothers of human beings."

Mothers, copy the above saHent paragraph and pin it up before your eyes to be read every day. See if you are doing your individual share, fighting your "batlies" every day and hour in the nursery, and speaking out the right word among your acquaintances.

Who shall take hold of our social quandary? Who shall put a foundation beneath the race structure? Walt Whitman answers, "The beloved mothers of large families."

To these I, too, would speak; not, however, to mothers who give their children culture through hirelings, but to those who, guided by their hearts' insight, would cooperate with the great work of kindergarten and school for the sake of the common childhood about them. Such mothers, perm.anently organized, would form a working army of salvation, producing their own recruits, before whom every enemy would fall.

The question of children's rights and mothers' rights is to me much more fundamental than is the question of woman's civil rights. The mother will always have higher conditions to meet than the ballot ever touches. She must first find for herself freedom from disease and suffering through right living, through right dressing, through right thinking. She above every other needs a sound mind and body. She must help to bring in, through her own children, ihe higher forms of the inner government through giving them self-control. She must help to institute the truer church of the heart, and it is hers to demand that the schools shall be schools of character, not of brains alone.

These are the mother's great opportunities, because she cradles the world in her hands of love, and leads it by the heart through her spiritual discernment. She must keep the youth garden blooming, that some day the social desert may blossom as a rose; and then she need not demand the civil rights. They will be hers as a free gift.

The problems of the social world will always be the mother's special duty. She should, as her grand right, shoulder them and make herself responsible for them. Natural conditions visit this on a woman, often seeming to wrong her; but she is only wronged in her inadequacy to master her own problems. And she must master spiritually; the world has tried every other method and failed.

How many of us are carrying out the ideals dreamed of and promised ourselves in youth?

How many of us have just what our hearts desire in happiness and possessions?

How many of us are doing our full share toward perfect neighborhood conditions?

How many of us can work just a little more to make life sweeter and better through the precious legacy of our children?

Then let us be at it and search without ceasing, that we may find the right way.

Chapter I. The "new Family."

"Only the quiet, secluded sanctuary of the family can give back to us the welfare of mankind.

"In the foundation of every new family, the heavenly Father, eternally working out the welfare of the human race, speaks to man through the heaven he has opened In the heart of its founders.

"With the beginning of every new family there is issued to mankind and to each individual human being, the call to represent humanity in pure development; to represent man in his ideal perfection." — Froebel.

CHAPTER I.

THE "NEW FAMILY."

As we read the inspired words of Froebel they come home to us as being most heartily meant, and directed to each one individually. When we study his words, and remember that he gave his whole life to the work of ideal education, we feel moved to do at least our little share toward our own children that the world may be the better; and we are stirred anew to realize for our own home circle the ideal family life. It is the heart's desire of every parent to be worthy, and to give his or her children the best.

Froebel helps us to raise our standards of family and home higher and ever higher, and also to know what is this "best" we so crave for our children.

He gives us such blessed fullness in the words at the head of this chapter. Let us take up these sentences of Froebel one by one. Read the first one very carefully. Do you believe it? Are you consciously working through your family life for the welfare of mankind? Do you realize that each one that escapes from your hands out into the world is adding either to its good or its burden, to its joy or its sorrow? Is your home a quiet, secluded sanctuary where you rehgiously watch over each budding energy, feehng and habit?

Is there a wise, watchful, loving cooperation at the head? Is every day being joined with every other day in constancy and patient devotion? Is each child asked to give out and help and respond, or are you doing it all and complaining because of lack of appreciation and recognition? Are you cramming your children with material good things because you have plenty, or are you wisely and truly giving them just the necessary, and spending the rest of your energy on the cultivation of the character? How many a rich man spoils his sons and then disinherits them as unworthy! Are you adding your children to the world as added problems, or are you helping them into that liberation which shall bring liberation to others? Are you, in a word, realizing that the home should be a sanctuary which shall give back to us the welfare of mankind — give back peace to humanity which to-day seems everywhere to be so sick at heart?

Take the second sentence: "In the foundation of every new family the heavenly Father, eternally working out the welfare of the human race, speaks to man through the heaven he has opened in the heart of its founders."

Think of a home founded on the conviction that it has its work to do for the whole race; where two hearts join that the heavens may open to the race. Think of the home already founded that receives the sweet inspiration all over again and its founders determine anew to open their hearts and refresh their efforts toward ideal life for the sake not only of their own children, but to make their large social circle a garden spot of blossom and fruit. Blessed are the father and mother who find it never too late to begin over. How many of us know just such families, where the father and mother always appear to be newly married, and whose children seem but their playfellows? To retain this spirit is certainly a great stride toward living the perfect life.

Froebel holds the family forever as the ideal fundamental fact of all human social existence. How he loved the sweet words — "family," ''father," "mother" and child!" He fairly makes them sing as he speaks them, so full are they of prophecy and joy. He saw in these three relationships the constant embodiment of the trinity of God and the expression of his oneness.

The word "family" means sanctuary to Froebel always; the place where we join together in unity to find God — heaven. Not a place in which to sing psalms and make long prayers, but a beautiful center of action from which each may consciously reach out; reach with helpfulness into each life, and with loving kindness practice the everyday small virtues.

The word ''father" means the provider, the preserver; the lover of the family and the race. The father was to symbolize to his children the higher relationship, and make God a reality to them easily understood, because the human father embodied divine qualities. And how universally children consider their fathers all-wise and all-powerful. How often we hear from children's lips, "My papa knows everything;" or, "There's nothing my papa can't do." If fathers would only aspire to be what their children believe them!

And the word "mother" — who can attempt to define what Froebel makes it include? Here are his words: "The mothers of humanity * * =5« as the first Mary brought up the Saviour of the world." He saw the mother in the constant attitude of bringing us the Christ, "the perpetual Messiah" whether in person or in principle.

He found motherhood a universal relationship, and understanding this relationship was to know the wonder of nature and the wonder of spirit. He declared the lowliest woman to contain its whole majesty and power if she but knew it. He showed it to be something which we can all feel but hardly tell, and which is, in a silent way, told only by the lips of the heart.

We find it expressed in the words of the poet when he says to women:

"You are the gates of the body And you are the gates of the soul."

And "child," that word which makes up the greatest third in the "New Family," was the burden of all Froebel's work and thought. Hear what he says: "A child ought to be considered a complete being during every period of life." "Originally the child is at unity with mankind and with God." What sweet promises he saw in each and every child! He always speaks of it as "the child of God," and the "son of man."

Though his benign head was ever above the clouds, how thoroughly crowned was it with practicality ! For he set to work to give this blessed "new family" the most potent help and the most organically arranged scheme by which it could proceed to fill its divine call. This scheme he called the kindergarten.

These great thoughts of Froebel blossom into our minds especially as we hang over his precious picture book, the "Mother Play"; from the first page to the last we are given the gems of his thought and word, the mother surrendering herself to her child in joyous care and play; the child surrendering itself in full communion and cooperation to the whole, in self-forgetfulness and returned affection; the father representing, as he does, the big world, surrendering himself to the whole good — the united work of the united families.

Miss Blow says: "What Froebel saw in the heart of the child he has told us in the 'Mother Play.' In this precious volume he 'deciphers all that the child feels in cipher,' and translates for mothers the hieroglyphic of their own instinctive play. As a child's book this little collection of songs and games is unique in Hterature. As a mother's book, likewise, it has no ancestry and no posterity. It is the greatest book for little children and the greatest book for mothers in the world. When all women shall have laid to heart its lessons, the ideal which hovers before us in the immortal pictures of the Madonna will be realized; for then, at last, each mother will revere and nurture in her child the divine humanity."

If only we would study Froebel more with our eyes shut and our hearts open, and comprehend his words not through our ears but through our lives! If we strive to touch him with half the reverent touch he gives to all things, how different would be the great work that has already emanated from his presence into this era — namely, the kindergarten. Oh, for love and activity enough to understand him in his thousands of wonderful words, a few of which we wish to show forth in these pages!

He shows us how futile is all building or culture unless it build with and for the family.

He warns us that any institution that does not take into consideration the meanest hovel that struggles to stand for home and childhood is useless.

He feels that rotten indeed is that law which sets up the rights of property, or anything, above the poorest waif and his claims to protection and home.

He proves how poverty stricken is that government that does not center all its motives round the selfgoverning family, and take every step to preserve and foster such in its highest ideal. The freedom of any nation depends upon how many such families it can entertain.

The family, that sweet relationship established by Life itself, how sacred is it to Froebel above all else! He declares that no institution that does not take upon itself the nature of a family can stand, and that the educational system which does not work for the perfecting of family life is worse than useless.

In considering ideal family life we must, first of all, have a clear idea of the relationships involved in motherhood, fatherhood and childhood. Motherhood or fatherhood is never a personal thing. When we find it personal it is all pain. It is as universal as the sunlight, expressing through all life its every idea. It belongs to every phase of the universe. Our great lesson to learn is to find our parenthood always in the universal, and to keep it there; keep it with God.

Motherhood is yours and mine only when we see it as this universal thing. In order to find it truly, we must first lose it personally. When we find ourselves in the universal motherhood, not only of human nature, but of common nature, then alone can we give our children their real inheritance and truly be mothers. We must see our children as belonging to the larger family and responsible to the divine parentage. Even the common laws of the land refuse parents' rights over the children when those rights claim an interference with the good of each and all.

I know one mother who thought she was keeping her children too close and loving them too hard and making home too perfect for them. She never wanted them to go from her, and always thought other young people were not good enough to associate with hers. Being urged by her husband to take a rest, she attended a convention many hundred miles from home and was astonished to have one of the children write what a good time they were having; papa let them do what they pleased. It distressed her very much to think they could do without her so easily when she had felt so heavily their dependence upon her. It set her to thinking, and she came home a much wiser woman and mother. From that time on she has studied to set her children free and has been one of the most progressive of mothers. She is to-day prominent in the larger work for the education and good of the universal child. How many mothers do not learn this lesson soon enough, and their birds fly from the nest as from a prison house!

Froebel teaches us that we must begin at home in making definite these universal relations. We must learn to take a broader view of life and be interested in and work for a larger interest than just our own blood. If we are not willing to reach out into our higher and broader self and source, and into an unselfish work for the good of humanity, we can never expect our children to expand to the full wealth of expression of which God made them capable.

Jesus as a man sought to be honest to himself; and believed in himself as a son of God, derived from God, and he ever remained firm to his divine conviction. He preached God as the father of all mankind and man as the child of God, and all men as his brethren, and he himself responsible for each. This is our aim if we are Christians in fact. He taught that we were to be true to our inheritance, our God-derived nature, and to realize it for everyone; thus he declared the heavenly brotherhood. This is the deepest fundamental principle of Christianity. It is the principle underlying ideal family life and is the foundation of all

Froebel teaches. And we are never able to reach ideal life for our children until we reach out beyond selfinterest.

Tolstoi gives us a version of the Bible and the sayings of Jesus which very simply brings out these spiritual relationships. It is called "The Gospel in Brief," and I should recommend it to every mother, for he makes practical application of each deep truth to our common experiences, and takes away the words which too often fall on the ear as tinkling cymbals, when they are really golden symbolisms.

Chapter five of the ''Education of Man," on Religion, gives a most complete picture of the spiritual relationship of parent and child. As mothers with this sacred opportunity to build for the real kingdom of God which is within, we should read all these things.

Each sentence of Froebel's is a volume in itself, as it gushes out of the heart of the warmest lover of humanity the nineteenth century has entertained.

What a bridal greeting there is to each one of us in the words of the third paragraph at the head of this chapter. In reality the opportunity is always with us to live the new life and aspire to the "new family," if we but hear this call "to represent humanity in pure development and ideal perfection."

Here is a letter from a mother of a "new family" who certainly has probed beneath the shell of things;

and surely she will be led on and on by her children to the heights that are beyond. It so fully expresses the inspiration she has received that I cannot refrain from giving it, and trust it may inspire others to take up the search.

"1 have been a student of Froebel for five years, and have surely been a most hungry spiritual searcher for more light, since I have so many little ones who are dependent upon me to be fed aright. Through this reading there has come to my inner eye a flash of light so clear and distinct that it illuminates every line to my dull sight, so that frequently when I fail to understand the meaning fully I am still inspired to work on. I wish now to know whether this power which I so distinctly feel is embodied in the peculiar psychology of Froebel; or it is because of the personal convictions of those who write about him?

"I find myself fed and strengthened in spite of the fact that I am no kindergartner. It is certainly more than a new method which occasions the light which I discern.

'T have thought much on this subject and cannot believe but that it is a universal privilege for every human heart to understand these things, and that it is something broader than a so-called kindergarten philosophy. I have heard this quality called the spiritual psychology of the kindergarten as distinguished from the material psychology, which I studied, but which did not inspire me.

"If only all motherhood could get down to a sincere study of that something which I am sure inspires the inner and outer life of this great movement! There seems to be the greatest promise of the millennium in it — greater than anything else I know of. Whenever I have met kindergartners and mothers who know anything about the work, I find them fairly aglow with interest. Some of them speak as if they had passed through a conversion or change of heart. I have watched several young women change from day to day while in the study which prepares them for kindergarten work, and have witnessed the mellowing of their characters."

Here is a mother who evidently is already building one of Froebel's "new families." She has caught from him a peculiar vivid light, a ray of joyous intelligence which she finds hard to describe, but it is to her the most real of realities. Words of advice were to her indeed idle. The ideal which has thus vaguely taken hold of her will grow more and more definite as she lives out the myriad everyday problems of life with her children and searches to ideally solve them. No matter what she reads or studies, she has her guiding star of promise that will lead her to the truth.

A certain conversion comes over one upon reading

Froebel which I wish each one of my mother friends might experience. If you have not read Froebel's own writings you have still before you one of the most delightful and broadening experiences. It is not light reading, however, and, like the Bible, may be read with profit every day of your lives.

Will you not read Froebel and be a "new woman" and help add one more of these beautiful ''new famihes" to this "new world" of ours? No matter where you are, in the middle or at the beginning of your family building, Froebel will lend to you the regenerating power with which you may make your work the perfect one.

Chapter II. The Immaculate Conception

"With reference to his eternal immortal soul, every human being should be viewed and treated as a manifestation of the Divine Spirit in human form; as a pledge of the love, the nearness, the grace of God; as a gift of God. Indeed, the early Christians viewed their children in this light, as is shown by the names they gave them.

''Even as a child every human being should be viewed and treated as a necessary, essential member of humanity; and therefore, as guardians, parents are responsible to God, to the child, and to humanity." — Froebel.