Gilded Age Advice to Mothers

“The common school is a good thing, but children do not imbibe unmixed blessedness therefrom. They are quite liable to meet other children from families of lax morals or none at all, who will teach them bad words and impure thoughts and actions…”

What a Mother Should Do

It is a part of the average mother’s creed that her child can do no wrong. If she doesn't acknowledge it, she feels it and acts upon it and is lulled into a false security by it, until her children have very likely acquired evil habits of which she little dreams and which will curse them for a lifetime. The common school is a good thing, but children do not imbibe unmixed blessedness therefrom.  

They are quite liable to meet other children from families of lax morals or none at all, who will teach them bad words and impure thoughts and actions, by which they will be greatly harmed, albeit secretly, unless the wise mother forestalls any such danger by plain and unequivocal teaching, both moral and physiological.

How much better for a girl or boy to learn the truth from the pure lips of a loving mother than from foul-mouthed and ignorant companions, in whose obscene conversations are blended about ten grains of error to one of truth. And in the matter of drinking and smoking, does not a boy always learn before his mother knows it? 

If every mother would study physiology a little, learn just what effect alcohol and nicotine have on the human system, especially the stomach and brain, and teach the same to her boys, it is altogether probable that few of them, comparatively, would ever willingly take such enemies into their mouths. And girls should be taught the same that they may in turn teach their children and set a good example in society. Good books on alcohol and tobacco are easily obtainable; if you don't know of one ask your minister or physician what to get.– Minneapolis Housekeeper, 1886

  🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Etiquette, Respect and Wise Mothers

She does not begin with exhaustive attention to the minutia of etiquette, knowing that way lies the danger of making her boys prigs and her girls self-conscious society misses before they are in their teens. 

The Wise Mother

Your wise mother is not given to worrying over trifles, says Harper's Bazar. She does not expect perfection in a day. And she has put from her, as far as the East is from the West, the ghastly possibility of setting vanity up in the room of love. So she does not begin with exhaustive attention to the minutia of etiquette, knowing that way lies the danger of making her boys prigs and her girls self-conscious society misses before they are in their teens. 

She lays down as the law of her household the broad principles of respect for elders, reverence for women, kindliness for all; and she permeates the home atmosphere with her finest conception of the deference and the sympathy due from soul to soul. Her children very early delight to place a chair for grandmother and to save father steps. They learn to be proud of that restraint, which enables them to keep self in the background, and to defer to brother and sister. It never enters their heads that servants are less worthy of respect than other people. 

They are unabashed in the presence of wealth and power as they are tender toward suffering and poverty. When she teaches them from time to time her code of manners — and she is careful to perfect it according to her best judgment—she teaches it for home use, and it becomes fixed by becoming natural. –The Daily Alta, 1891

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber is the Site Moderator for Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia