A Sort of Defense of Mothers

A Brief for the Old Fashioned People Who Still Respect the Best Traditions of the Home

HEYWOOD BROUN

WHAT are you going to do if you love your mother? For that matter what are you going to do if you hate her? The boys with the new psychology will get you if you don't watch out. They will get you in any case.

Of course, at this late date I do not need to point out what happens to men who love their mothers—spots before the eyes, sudden giddiness, and even discomfort after meals. And the hair falls out.

Not even a painter of the acid courage of Whistler would dare today to paint a portrait of his mother or if he did so his obligation would be to blacken at least one eye and make the nose a flaming scarlet. So boldly I declare that the young gentlemen in the schools of advanced writing, versifying and painting have gone too far. No man need accept this modern rule and hate his mother. To me there is nothing necessarily neurotic in the statement, "I think my mater, when in good health and sober, has her moments."

To write, as some have done, in novel and in play, as if maternal affection were only slightly less painful and fatal than a hanging, is to betray suspicious emotion. The Freudians will get you on the rebound. No man is free from a fixation when he has a tendency to tantrums. And when anyone tells you, "Frankly I dislike my mother" put him down as one not yet free from the rope marks of the silver cord.

I AM all for much more calmness concerning mothers. The day set aside by the florists and confectioners as a holiday of adulation does not appeal to me but even if one neglects to proffer candy he need not send bombs. I would not deny that I have known men who suffered in body and in soul from a surplus of maternal affection and interference, but I think that modern thought is not quite fair to the extreme difficulties of the situation. Being a mother is just about the last job in the world I would choose to take. Shower attention on the infant and he becomes dependent and grows up with an inferiority complex. Neglect him and he loses ego satisfaction, becomes dependent and grows up with an inferiority complex. It's all very complicated.

Moreover a parent can't forever go around saying to himself, "Just what effect will my present phrase have upon this young one twenty years from now?" There are a few standard devices for curbing the exuberance of infants and some of them are probably harmful. "If you're not a good little boy I'll take you out and give you to the great big policeman." Doubtless this has been said in millions of homes and the scar of the scare is with us yet.

The curious thing is that people threatened by the policeman bogey do not all behave similarly in later life. Some grow up with a terrific respect and fear of authority. It is possible to find poor psychic cripples who go about the world saying, "Yes, sir" to assistant managing editors and the vice-presidents of small banks. But it isn't always that way. In the spring of the year there will be somewhere along the Atlantic seaboard a collegiate riot in which certain students will steal the clubs and helmets, too, of the officers sent against them. Analyze the wild fury in the most savage student and without much doubt you will find a young man whose nurse or old black mammy threatened to ship him to a policeman when he whimpered. But this particular individual did not grow up with any marked respect for authority. Instead of being afraid that cops would get him he made it his business to get the cops. This process is known as over-compensation and is on the whole delightful.

ONCE, when I was small and finicky in feeding, they took the lunch with which I coyly toyed and gave it to a black spaniel. Rover was his name. The whole thing comes back to me as if it were yesterday. Unfortunately the incident has marred my later life to a considerable degree. Now when I dine at any house where dogs beg about the table there is always danger of a situation. If my host or hostess happens to hand down so much as a partridge wing to the poor pets a sudden and uncontrollable wave of anger surges over me. It is the memory of that ancient incident. My unconscious mind whispers to me, "They are going to take your dinner and give it to the dog." It was actually lunch that Rover got but things do become a little twisted in the unconscious. And in a fit of buried rage and fear I lash out with both feet. With my right foot I kick the host and with my left the hostess. At times this is resented and there are houses to which I never have been asked more than once. However, they occassionally take the gesture to mean, "Why not a highball?" and so my complex has its compensations.

But to get more close to the subject I want to contend that the present day realists have put too much emphasis on the tribulations of children who are coddled, frustrated, stifled and misunderstood by their parents. Is nobody ever any more going to pay tribute to the amount of stifling a woman must endure in raising a child? Any mother who takes care of an infant for fifteen or twenty years without throwing him into the pond deserves a medal. What if she has marred his psychic life? If that is all that happens to him I think the young person has an exceedingly lucky break.

Now I have known grown persons, some of them parental, who said that they loved children. The statement is silly. Anybody who loves children in the large lacks discrimination. Some of the most unpleasant bores, cads and bounders I have ever met were little fellows less than five years old. It is reasonable and possible to be fond of a few carefully selected children. But even in this instance there must be some limit as to the amount of time you wish to spend with them. No grown person can spend twenty-four hours a day with a child and have any honest emotion toward him except great repugnance. Indeed I doubt if a sensitive adult can spend more than five.

There is no use denying the self-evident fact that the habits of children are horrid. Much has been written of fundamental sexantagonism. I suppose it does exist but it is no more deeply rooted than the inevitable opposition of infant and adult. Although an adult myself, I don't want to appear prejudiced in the matter. There is much to be said against adults. The issue between child and grown person has nothing of morality in it. The gulf fixed between them is one of taste. A child of six months shares no interests in common with me. He likes food and drink for which I have no fondness. There is no intellectual bond. His idea of a good time is to seize upon my nose and twist. There are a hundred things which I like better.

THE pity of it all lies in the fact that the community refuses to recognize the fact that these infants in our land are aliens. Never is the cry raised, "If they don't like it here why don't they go back where they came from?" And it is obvious that the infants do not like the civilization which we have prepared for them. There's no grumbler like a young one. It has been said of me that under proper stimulus I grow grouchy. A legend is abroad that as soon as I get $100 behind I go in for moaning and for groaning. This may be true and yet I remain a saint compared to a child into whom a pin is sticking. I'm a saint even compared to a child into whom no pin is sticking. The only remedy for the whole sad mess is segregation. Let us have separate pullmans and smokers on all the trains. No child should be allowed into an adult waiting room and the better hotels and restaurants ought to bar them. Nor does one have to be all child to fall into the proscribed classification. One drop of infantile blood and you have a kiddie even though he may wear a thirty four year old size.

Accordingly I call upon all men, including the modernists, to take off their hats to the American mother. If there were no children the world would not go on. There could be a debate as to whether or not it should but after very careful deliberation I should be inclined to say "Yes". Rearing children is not a pleasant job. Maybe it isn't a woman's work but fortunately that tradition has been set up. Mother love can be at times a destructive thing but I don't know that children, the little nuisances, deserve anything better.

Surely if it is the fashion for emancipated men to speak of mothers with extreme indifference or dislike, parents have an equal right to be cavalier with their children. Maternal affection should be permissible; it ought not to be obligatory.

My suggestion is that every man born into the world alive should be allowed to choose his own mother when he arrives at the age of discretion.