Mothers, Manners and the Sexes

Why is a little girl adjured from her birth to act like a lady, while a boy is permitted to conduct himself like a hoodlum? 

Boys, as Well as Girls, Must Be Taught Manners!

WHY is it that mothers take so much trouble to teach their girls good manners and none to teach their boys any manners at all? Why is a little girl adjured from her birth to act like a lady, while a boy is permitted to conduct himself like a hoodlum? Why are there “finishing schools” for girls, where they are taught the little niceties of conduct that set apart the well-bred from the ill-bred, while a boy is left to form his own manners, and become a Beau Brummel, or a boor, as it happens? Do we consider that good manners and social adroitness are less necessary to a man than they are to a woman? Do we hold that women should have a monopoly on good manners? Or do we think that good manners come by nature, as Dogberry thought, a knowledge of reading and writing did? 

Whatever the answer is to these queries, there is no disputing the fact that the average little girl, of good family, has charming manners, and the average little boy is a savage. When the little girl comes into the room when you are calling on her mother she drops you a courtesy and treats you with respectful consideration. But let little brother come into the room, and he doesn’t notice a visitor any more than if she was a piece of furniture. He keeps his hat on his head, and cuts across the conversation to ask mother whatever he wants to know, and when you speak to him, he doesn't even answer you. 

Boys Rude Everywhere

One of the sights of this city that is enough to make any one weep is the horde of boys that you encounter on the streetcars. They are well dressed, evidently come from respectable families, but they have the manners of hoodlums. They rush pell-mell into a car, seize every good seat, and sit there while gray-haired women and women with babies stand. It makes one wonder what sort of mothers these boys have that they have not been taught the first element of good manners, or the first principles of the art of being a gentleman. 

Last summer I stayed all night at a New England summer resort. At dinner, at the table next to mine, were eight or ten young girls and boys, having a jolly time together. Presently to this table came an elderly woman. All of the other boys went on with their eating and laughing, but one lad sprang to his feet and stood while a waiter drew out the old lady’s chair and settled her comfortably. My companions and I looked at each other with smiles of approbation. “If I were looking for a boy to take into my business I’d give that youth a chance,” said the man of the party. “I’d like to know that boy’s mother,” I said. “If he had his pedigree hung around his neck and coat of arms branded on his forehead you wouldn’t know any more what sort of family he comes from,” said the other woman. 

Good Manners Influence All

Now very likely that boy didn't have any more intelligence, and wasn’t any kinder-hearted, and had no more real worth than the other boys at the table with him, but he had better manners, and his good manners had prejudiced everybody in the whole room in his favor. Every one of us felt like doing something for him out of sheer gratitude giving a living illustration of how a gentlemanly lad t should act. There is no bigger asset in the world manners. They are a letter of credit that every one of us honors at sight. They are the open sesame before which closed doors fly open. They make friends for us, and smooth the rough places. They will carry a man farther than brains, or industry, or the whole category of virtues, and, this being true, it passes all understanding that mothers do not think it worth while to teach their boys even the elements of courtesy and how to conduct themselves toward other people. 

If a mother can do but one thing on earth for her son, she can polish up his manners. If she can teach him but one thing, she can teach him courtesy. If she can give him but one thing, she can give him the charm that comes of being well bred, and that will make friends for him of everybody he encounters. And if be has that he doesn’t need Bishop Quintard, in speaking of Sewanee University in the South, that he founded, once said: “We can’t turn out every man who comes to Sewanee a scholar, because the good God hasn’t given every man the brains of a student, but we do turn out every boy that comes to Sewanee with the manners of a gentleman, and that’s the next best thing.” 

How One Mother Succeeded 

Some mothers do appreciate the necessity of teaching their boys good manners, and one of these whose little eight year old son is a perfect Chesterfield, said this to another woman who rhapsodized over the child’s manners in a mannerless age: “Well, we’ve tried to help Jack make a gentleman of himself, which is about the finest thing that any man can be. As soon as he could understand we began talking to him a great deal about gentleman-hood—if I may so express it —until we created an ideal of knightly conduct in his mind, and we keep this standard unfalteringly before his eyes. “We tell him that a gentleman can’t lie, a gentleman can’t steal or cheat, a gentleman protects the weak and helpless, and is extra courteous to servants and poor and afflicted people, a gentleman never strikes any one who is smaller or weaker than himself, a gentleman is very courteous to ladies; he takes his hat off in elevators; he gives ladies his seat on the cars; he lets them pass first out of a room, and so on. “I don’t know what Jack is going to do in the world, or how far he may wander off of the straight and narrow path, but I will stake my life that whatever he does he will do with the manners of a gentleman.” Would that there were other mothers like this mother. – Dorothy Dix, 1916

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