The Inefficient HomeBy Mrs. Laura P. Young(From a paper read at the Third International Congress on “Welfare of the Child.”)
By Mrs. Laura P. Young
(From a paper read at the Third International Congress on “Welfare of the Child.”)
At present the chief reason I see for the fostering of a recreative social relationship among high school students is the inefficiency of the average home....
For instance, there is the home where the father may assume the attitude that after working all day at his own necessary pursuits, he cannot be annoyed by a riotous lot of youngsters all over the place in the evening. This is the short-sighted home....
There is the home in which the mother values her housekeeping above her home-making, the mother who cannot have her cherished lares and penates marred or displaced by visiting young people or indeed even by her own. This is the home of things, not of children....
And an especially pitiful type of inefficient home is that materially prosperous one in which the parents are too absorbed in their own affairs, social and business, to encourage home social life in their children. This type flourishes in many so-called exclusive suburban districts.
From whatever type of home a child goes to school, it is in that home that his standards of conduct and ideals of life are formed, and it is these that he carries to his association with his fellow-pupils.