Part 24

XXXVI

THE POWER OF SUGGESTION

Among my acquaintances is a woman who has a pretty little flapper daughter. The girl is a good little girl, as playful and innocent as a kitten. But she bobs her hair, and paints her face, and rouges her lips, and likes to jazz, and joy-ride, and have a good time just as thousands of other girls of her age and class are doing. All this greatly outrages the mother, who tells her daughter that, in her day, decent girls didn’t paint their faces, or shimmy, and that they stayed at home evenings and read good books, instead of running around with japanned-haired boys. And then she winds up her preachment by accusing her daughter of doing things which she does not do, and prophesying that she will come to a bad end. Of course, it is mother love and mother anxiety that makes this woman keep continually before the girl’s eyes the fate of those who follow the road of pleasure. It never enters her head that she may be precipitating on her child the catastrophe she dreads, but that is precisely what she is doing.

She is making the girl feel that she is sophisticated and worldly-wise—one of the wild, wild women. She is giving the flavor of forbidden fruit to what would otherwise be harmless little amusements. She is making the girl reckless, because she is making her believe that she is under suspicion and is being talked about. Worst of all, she is firmly implanting in the girl’s mind the idea that she is expected to go wrong.

And if anything in the world will put the skids under a girl, it is for her own mother to be continually impressing upon her that she is a wrong ’un.

When you observe the dealings of parents with their children the thing at which you wonder most is that fathers and mothers never seem to realize the power of suggestion. Yet it is one of the most potent forces in the world, and one that can be directed with almost uncanny results to the molding and shaping of the characters of the young. It is hardly too much to say that as the parents think, so are the children. It is the fixed idea the parents stamp indelibly on the plastic childish mind which determines the fate in life of the man or woman.

You can, for instance, take a delicate child and literally “think” it into health or sickness. If the mother keeps the child forever reminded it can’t do what other children do because of its poor heart, it can’t eat this or that because of its bad digestion, and that it mustn’t be crossed because it is so nervous,—that child will grow up into a neurotic invalid. But if the mother impresses on it the thought that it is getting well, and is going to be strong and healthy, unless there is something radically organically wrong, it will overcome the weakness with which it was seemingly threatened.

All of us have seen people actually bring upon themselves diseases they believed they had inherited. They had had it impressed on them from their infancy that they were bound to die of consumption because all the Smiths had tuberculosis. Or, that they were doomed to perish with cancer, because cancer was in the Jones family. Or, to have rheumatism because the Simkins were all rheumatic, and they died of what they believed to be inherited diseases that science has proved not to be inheritable.

It is tragic to think how many parents have killed the children they loved by putting the death thought upon them, and by making them believe that they were doomed, and that there was no use in their trying to be strong and well. It is still more tragic to think of the millions of people who are failures in the world because their fathers and mothers have sapped their courage, and slain their initiative by implanting in their minds the conviction that they were dolts and had not the ability to succeed.

Once establish the inferiority complex in a child’s mind, and it is done for. It accepts the belief that it has no ability to do things, and it attempts nothing. It makes no struggle to rise. It slumps into the humble position its parents have assigned it. This is why perpetual fault-finding with a child intensifies its faults. To nag Johnny continually about his awkwardness, makes him still more awkward. To be forever calling attention to Tom’s shyness, makes him shrink more and more out of sight. To fret at Bob’s dulness, makes him feel that there is no hope for a boy who isn’t quick and alert. Many men never have the courage to demand their just deserts and take the place to which they are entitled in business and society because they were made self-conscious in their childhood. They had it so impressed on their minds that they were blundering louts, and stupid fools, that they shrank within themselves, and never had the nerve to push their fortunes.

And just as you can make a child a failure by holding the thought of its inferiority before it, you can do much to make it a success by holding the thought of achievement before it. We unconsciously strive to be what the people about us expect of us. If Jimmie knows that he has a reputation for beautiful manners, he will act as a gentleman. If Tom knows you expect him to make a mark at school or in business, he will try to make good. If Mary knows you do not think it possible for her to be anything but sweet and innocent, she is not likely to tarnish your ideal.

The power of suggestion is so far reaching in its influence that fathers and mothers should be careful how they use it, and avoid implanting a weak thought, an evil thought, a thought of failure in their children’s minds as they would avoid giving them poison.

XXXVII

WOMAN’S MISSIONARY OPPORTUNITY

As a sex women are highly altruistic. There is scarcely a movement in the world for the uplift of humanity or for ameliorating the sorrows of the poor and helpless that does not owe its existence to women. It is women who support the orphan asylums, the homes for old men and women, the reformatories, the houses for the blind, the places of refuge where the man just out of prison can go and gather himself together before starting out on a better life. It is women who nurse in hospitals, and who carry on mainly the work of the Red Cross and the fight against the great White Plague. Joan of Arc is the great feminine heroine. The women that other women envy most are not the great beauties and sirens of history, or the famous actors and writers, but the Florence Nightingales and Frances Willards who have been able to do some great service to their fellow creatures. And deep down in her secret heart, if every woman was granted her one great wish, it would be to be able to help her day and generation to make others happier, and to perform some miracle that would make life easier for all who come after her.

Well, little as she realizes it, that power is possessed by every woman who has children. In her hands lies the remedy for the greatest sorrow that tears at the hearts of men and women. She can wipe away half of the tears of the world. She has the magic that can change innumerable lives from misery to joy. For the greatest trouble in the world is domestic trouble. The bitterest disappointment is a marriage that is a failure. There is no place of torment so hard to endure as a home of bickering and strife. No enemy can stab you to the heart as does a cold, selfish, unkind husband or wife.

It lies within the power of mothers to put an end to all this misery, to stop divorce and the breaking up of homes, and the orphaning of helpless little children. It is in their power to provide every man and woman with a good husband and wife, to make every home a prosperous and peaceful one, and to save other mothers from the agony of seeing their children mistreated by the men and women to whom they are married. There is no more appalling thought than that every woman could raise her children up to be good husbands and wives, and that she does not do it. On the contrary, nine times out of ten she brings up her sons and daughters to be exactly the kind of husbands and wives from whom she prays God on her knees to deliver her own precious darlings.

Most likely the woman is herself the victim of another woman’s cruelty. Her own marriage has been wretched because her husband’s mother never taught him to treat women with any courtesy, or consideration, or chivalry. He was never brought up to consider a woman’s feelings, or even to extend to her common justice. As a result, his wife has had to walk on eggs to keep from rousing a demoniacal temper. She has had to wait on him hand and foot. She has had to wheedle every penny out of him, and never since her wedding day has her husband made one move to entertain or amuse her, or done anything to make her happy.

It would seem that a woman who had been through the arid desert of such a marriage would save some other poor girl from such a fate by raising up her son to be a good husband. You would think that she would teach him what a terrible crime it is to take a woman’s life into his hands and break it; that she would teach him to be gentle and tender to his wife; that she would impress upon him that a woman earns her share of the family income, and that it should be given to her outright instead of being doled out as alms.

You would think that she would ground him, from his infancy up, in the knowledge of all the little things that make a marriage a failure or a success to a woman—the little attentions, the little treats, the word of praise, the compliment on a new dress or hat, the little things that make a woman’s heart sing with joy, and that makes marriage worth while to her. The great majority of women, however, never even so much as think of training their sons to be good husbands. Nor do they train their daughters to be good wives. Very few mothers would be willing to see their sons marry the kind of girls their daughters are.

Mother has raised her daughters up to be selfish and spoiled and lazy and extravagant, and she is ready to foist them without mercy on any poor young fellows who are taken with their pretty faces. But Heaven defend her own boys from marrying girls who have never considered any other human being in the world but themselves, and whose only law is their own pleasure! You even hear mothers boast that they have never taught their daughters how to cook, or sew, or keep house, yet the very foundation of domestic happiness and the prosperity of the family depend upon the wife being a thrifty manager and making a comfortable home.

Nor do women instil into their daughters’ minds the truth about marriage—that it is an obligation that they take upon themselves, and that they have no right to throw it up and quit because it is full of hardships and self-sacrifice instead of being the joy-ride they thought it would be. Neither do mothers pass on to their daughters their own hardly won knowledge of how to get along with a husband, how to bear with him and forbear, how to jolly him and handle him with tact and diplomacy, yet that precious bit of information would save many a marriage. Believe me that the most important question that any mother can ask herself is this: “Am I raising up my son and daughter to bless or curse the woman and man who marry them?”

XXXVIII

HOW TO BE A GOOD HUSBAND

A young man said to me the other day: “I am going to be married, and I earnestly and honestly desire to make my wife happy, but beyond a vague and rudimentary impression that I must not beat or starve her, I haven’t an idea of how to go about the good-husband job. What should a man do to keep a woman blessing her lucky stars that she married him, instead of wondering what on earth the fool-killer was doing that she survived her wedding day?”

“Well, son,” I replied, “your theoretical ground work for being a good husband is a sound foundation on which to build, tho refraining from beating your wife is not the matter of course thing that you seem to think it is. There will be plenty of times when you will want to do so, and bitterly regret that no perfect gentleman can lay his hands upon a woman save in the way of kindness, no matter how much she needs a thrashing or he yearns to give her one.

“While as for giving a wife sustenance and raiment, believe me, that to be a good provider is one of the brightest jewels in the crown of a good husband. No matter what other charms and virtues a man may have, he is a poor makeshift of a husband if he cannot give his wife a comfortable living. And, on the other hand, no man is a total failure as a husband if he laps his wife in luxuries. Jewels, and motorcars, and fine houses, and fine clothes are a consolation prize that takes the curse off many a woman’s disappointment in marriage.

“Having, then, accorded your wife considerate treatment and given her a good home, the next step in being a good husband is to play fair with her on the money question. Get off on the right foot there and you will save yourself endless bickerings and prevent her from feeling a bitterness toward you that will grow and grow until it will kill out all of her affection for you. The first disillusion that many a bride gets is when she finds out that the prince of her dreams is a tightwad, who haggles with her over the market money and who is so stingy that he never gives her a penny of her own. There isn’t a woman in the world who is enough of a worm of the dust not to resent having to ask her husband for the money she knows she earns as a housewife. So go fifty-fifty with your wife on the money proposition. Give her as big an allowance as you can afford and be decent enough not to ask her what she does with it.