The Child and Parental YouthBy Elizabeth McCracken(American contemporary. From “The American Child.”)
By Elizabeth McCracken
(American contemporary. From “The American Child.”)
A Frenchwoman to whom I once said that American parents treat their children in many ways as though they were their contemporaries remarked, “But does that not make the children old before their time?”
So far from this, it seems, on the contrary, to keep the parents young after their time. It has been truly said that we have in America fewer and fewer grandmothers who are “sweet old ladies,” and more and more who are “charming elderly women.” We hear less and less about the “older” and the “younger” generations; increasingly we merge two, and even three, generations into one.