Page 41 - 1930 October - To Dragma

40 To DRAGMA

one who asked a question about intelligence did so in order to enter
upon a lengthy recital of how brilliant her seven-year-old son is.

The group was typical of many mothers who have had far more
schooling. I may labor the point that what I try to offer is a point
of view—not a panacea; that children are all different, and the mother
must make for herself her own application of the principles we develop;
that what is wrong in most problems of discipline is the parent, not
the child. But what these mothers want to know is what shall I do
with Johnny. Mothers, it seems, have almost unconquerable difficulty
in thinking of children i n general terms. For this very reason they
sometimes find help in attending a child study class for it means some-
thing to a woman to discover that most children are just like hers: that
her problems are the problems of every mother, no matter whether she
is rich or poor, schooled or unschooled.

One of the nice things about the job I have—I have the ponderous
title of lecturer and field worker for the Chicago Association for Child
Study and Parent Education—is that monotony is unknown. Every
group is different and interesting in its own rights. The only common
element in the wide variety of women who attend my classes is their
desire to rear their children so that they will be better equipped to
meet life than they themselves were. I n one class last winter I had
one member with a master's degree in psychology, and a Jewish doctor,
very intelligent, but handicapped by her difficulties with English. The
rest of the class included women with all kinds of schooling or lack
of it, and one negro man, a volunteer worker in the Juvenile Court,
with a mania for taking courses and a surprising list of long words up
his sleeve. I always knew that someone, before the hour was over,
would propound a question that would cause an audible intake of
breath—always a question that needed some solid thinking.

I shall not soon forget the intelligent, quiet-voiced woman who
began so innocently and ended by exploding a bombshell. She ex-
plained that in her home they had no religion, and its sanctions or prohi-
bitions carried no weight. Then, "What argument, apart from re-
ligion, could you give a sixteen-year-old girl to keep her from sexual
experience until her marriage?" The bomb came when I , in order to
be sure that I understood the woman correctly asked, "Are you con-
vinced that you want your daughter to come to her wedding with no
previous sexual experience?" and she answered simply, "No, I ' m not."
Now I submit that that is a question of fundamental importance. I
can't tell you all the answers she got—most of them beside the point
—and I certainly shan't tell you what I said. (Send stamped and
self-addressed envelop for reply. Better yet, read chapter X I V in
Walter Lippmann's A Preface to Morals).

But not all my classes are of so heterogeneous a composition as
this one. Three are composed of women who have all gone to college
and have as a requirement for admission, at least one child of pre-

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