The American Child, page 9 by Elizabeth McCracken
<< Return to Title Details & Download10
These garments are not "becoming" to the little girl, and they are a distinct hindrance to her hoydenish activities. They are not what she ought to have, and, moreover, they are not what she wants.
"I wish I had a middy blouse, and some bloomers, and an aviation cap, and a sweater, and a Peter Thompson coat!" I heard her say recently to her mother: "the other children have them."
"Children are never satisfied!" her mother exclaimed to me later, when we were alone. "I spend so much time and money seeing that she has nice clothes; and you hear what she thinks of them!"
"But, for ordinary wear, for play, wouldn't the things she wants be more comfortable?" I ventured. "You dress her so beautifully!" I added.
"Well," said my acquaintance in a gratified tone, "I am glad you think so. I had no very pretty clothes when I was a child; and I always longed for them. My mother didn't believe in finery for children; and she dressed us very plainly indeed. I want my little girl to look as I used to wish I might look!"
"But she doesn't care how she looks--" I began.
"I know," the child's mother sighed. "I can see how her little girls will be dressed!"
Can we not all see just that? And doubtless the little girls of this beruffled, befurbelowed tomboy--dressed in middy blouses, and bloomers, and aviation caps, and sweaters, and Peter Thompson coats, or their future equivalents--will wish they had garments of a totally different kind; and she will be exclaiming, "Children are never satisfied!"
If this principle on the part of mothers in America in providing for their children were confined to such superficialities as their clothing, no appreciable harm--or good--would come of it. But such is not the case; it extends to the uttermost parts of the child's home life.
Only the other day I happened to call upon a friend of mine during the hour set aside for her little girl's piano lesson. The child was tearfully and reb