A Mother's Creed: Dangerous Questions and Difficult Answers

I

WHEN I graduated from college in 1915, I naturally pitied the older generation for what I was pleased to consider the narrowness of its views and the rigidity of the rules by which its members ordered their dull existences. Fifteen years later I became aware that the pity of earlier days had imperceptibly changed to envy — envy of a certain stability of conviction, and of a definitely established attitude toward life. As time goes by, my envy deepens and my reasons therefor increase. Physically our forbears had a much harder time than do we, but socially, mentally, and spiritually I believe their lives were easier.

In those days, peace and quiet were procurable — in fact, they were rather general. Simplicity of living was the rule, and not, as now, a misfortune due to the depression, to be borne as heroically as possible, much as we went without sugar during the war. But more than peace, and more than simplicity of life, I envy our progenitors the simplicity of their methods of child rearing. They were not hounded by experts whose years of intensive training had been devoted exclusively to the study of the child. They were not overwhelmed with ‘literature’ on the subject, ranging from pamphlets sent out by cereal manufacturers, drug companies, and insurance agencies, to ponderous tomes written by even more ponderous foreign gentlemen, no two of whom recommended the same method of dealing with the various manifestations of the child. Not only were they allowed to teach their children in peace, but they were fortunately assured of what to teach them. Their opinions and beliefs were established; their attitude toward life was well defined, and it was an attitude which they considered as adequate for the new generation as it had been for the old.

For guidance in bringing up their children, if any was needed beyond the light of nature and the memory of their own childhood, they had the Bible. Children were taught to follow in their fathers’ footsteps. It was hoped that they might improve upon these steps, but the general direction was assumed to be the same. By this I do not mean to imply that sons were supposed to enter their fathers’ professions, but merely that children, as a rule, followed their parents in such matters as politics and religion, almost inevitably accepting from them a belief that ‘life is real, life is earnest.’

Now, however, conditions of living have changed so much that all sense of permanence is gone, and convictions have become as ephemeral as fashions. The world which my children will inhabit as men will hardly be the world in which I dwell to-day. How, then, can I prepare them for their world? I am not now worrying about their formal education. I do not much care whether they attend college or university. I do not at all care whether they are educated as regards matters of fact. But I do care supremely that they shall have something which, for lack of a better word to describe it, I shall call religion, and, above all, I want for them an adequate conception of the meaning of life. If it is at all possible, I hope that they may somehow cultivate the outmoded ability to see life steadily, and especially to see it whole. And here, envying our fathers and mothers the unshaken foundations of their faith and the stability of their vision, I must confess my own total inadequacy to deal with the situation.

II

Billy is ten. Francis is nine. John Robert is ‘six-and-won’t-get-any-olderif-he-doesn’t-eat-his-vegetables-willhe-marmar?’ When the three stand before me, looking at me with the clear, confident gaze of childhood, assured that the words I utter will make clear to them, for all time, whatever problem of fact or of conduct is confronting them, my heart quails within me. How is it possible for me to tell them what God is, or where Yellow Boy (Billy’s kitten) went when he died, when I myself am more profoundly perplexed than are they?

Shall I depict God as a super-Santa Claus, a conception which is warm and comforting, but apt to explode with disastrous completeness at their first real contact with the cruelty which runs like a bloody thread through the warp and woof of life? Shall I depict Him as Absolute Law? Or Perfect Knowledge? Or Supreme Power? These conceptions are more durable, but not nearly so comforting. Shall I rely on the Bible to furnish them with their conception of the Almighty? Billy is logical and demands consistency; Francis is imaginative and demands loving sympathy — qualities which do not characterize Jehovah. No, the God of Israel will not satisfy them. And what about the possible after-life of Yellow Boy? What shall I teach them about death and the immortality of the soul? Remembering black hours when I —just Billy’s age — lay awake, vainly endeavoring to imagine some form of eternity that would be even remotely endurable, my heart yearns over Billy, and more especially over Francis and John Robert, who are imaginative. Will they find the idea of a godless universe and complete annihilation less appalling than I did? If they do, how will that belief affect their general attitude toward life?

Shall I teach them to pray? When I was their age I said the Lord’s Prayer nightly. It bored me and I felt that God, who heard it from so many people, must be even more tired of it than I was. Anyway God had put my father and mother on earth to look after me, and I could not think that He really had time to pay very much attention to me Himself. Still, I prayed from a vague sense of duty, in much the same way that I brushed my teeth. If Billy and Francis are to pray, I should like to make their prayers mean something to them, but I confess that I have no idea how to go about it.

Thanks to the painstaking care of my mother, I had acquired, at a comparatively early age, a fair general knowledge of the Bible. Very wisely she did not teach me that it was all true. But allegorical meanings are hard for a child to grasp; the notable inconsistencies of the text offended my sense of logic; and often, as in the case of Hagar and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, my sense of justice was outraged. Even the beautiful story of the Resurrection was destroyed for me by the unutterable suffering which preceded it. It seemed a queer thing for God to show His love for the world by allowing His only begotten Son to be put to a horrible death. In short, my opinion of Him was not improved by acquaintance with His word.

In view of my own experience I am compelled to ask myself how much of the Bible these boys of mine ought to be taught. On the answer to this depends the question of their going to Sunday School.

Then, again, Billy is orthodox in temperament. I am not. A conception of God which satisfies me will by no means appeal to him. Shall I inflict my unorthodox faith upon him, or shall I teach him what I myself cannot believe? Or shall I let him grow up untaught? Or is there some golden mean which I have not yet discovered? I am particularly anxious to avoid inflicting upon the children beliefs which they are almost certain to be obliged to discard as they grow older. Such spiritual upheavals are distressing, and dangerous to the whole vision of life which is my principal desire for them. I should like to lay for them a foundation of general faith upon which they can gradually erect the edifice of their own specific belief. Even though I can give them no definite creed, I do hope to be able to cultivate in them the habit of spiritual thought.

III

Important and perplexing as is the question of religious training, I am faced with another problem which is beginning to appear even more formidable. Will it be fair to the boys for me to try to pattern their aim in life after mine? Succeeding years are making me more and more aware that what I desire from life is not what most people desire. Even if I should succeed in what I have set myself to obtain, the world at large would probably count me a failure. About the opinion of others I do not greatly care, for I have the memory of the consulship of Plancus and of a simpler generation to sustain me; but how will Billy and Francis and John Robert, who have no such memory, feel about it? Are they not going to measure success by the standards of their contemporaries? Shall I not handicap them in the struggle if I try to set up for them a standard which, I am sometimes tempted to believe, is as extinct as the great auk?

With each amelioration of physical effort, the economic struggle becomes more and more exacting of mental effort. Material success may demand less of one’s office or factory time than it formerly did, but it demands more energy, more vitality, and all of one’s thought. If a man would succeed in business, his work must be, not only his greatest interest, but to all intents and purposes his sole interest. Is it not my duty to train the boys from their earliest beginnings to recognize this fact? Had I not better set their feet upon the concrete pavement of financial attainment rather than teach them how pleasant are the bypaths of Academe or the ferny way to fairyland? If Billy earns money by selling the Saturday Evening Post (the law and the prophets of his probable world), should I not urge him to buy a share in the Building and Loan rather than permit him to spend it in learning to play the violin, since his knowledge of the violin, though it may afford him some pleasure, will never bring him in a penny? If Francis and John Robert undertake newspaper routes, had I not better establish them in savings accounts rather than let them spend their earnings on books?

As men, they will probably be judged by the standards of materialism. Would it not be wise for me to train them to a belief in those standards? If, in spite of the depression, success is still to be measured in terms of motor cars, radios, electric refrigerators, country-club memberships, and trips abroad on boats ‘where one is assured of mingling only with the monde,’ am I justified in teaching the boys my less tangible definition of success, thereby taking upon myself the responsibility for what their contemporaries may well consider their complete failure in life? Will they be happier because they are wiser than their generation? Am I even sure that they will be wiser? The choice is not simply that between good and evil, but between what is generally admitted to be good and what seems to me, individually, to be better. But have I the right to judge for them? How I envy our forefathers, who, by example and precept, bent our twigs with few misgivings as to the proper angle at which the tree should incline!

Having thus set forth in detail the questions which puzzle me, I had originally intended to end my article at this point, hoping that I might receive some helpful response from those parents who have faced, or are facing, the same problems. It has been suggested to me, however, that I ought at least to indicate my own tentative solution, and this I shall attempt to do, although I am still by no means certain that I am even tending in the right direction. Right or wrong, one must do something. The issue cannot be evaded. Inadequate as one may feel to guide a growing child wisely, guidance of some kind the child will get, if not from one source, then from another. The decision of many harassed parents to do nothing and trust to luck represents a commitment no less real, and far more dangerous, than any other, for the child who does not, at home, receive help in forming his basic philosophy of life will pick up his ideas elsewhere — in school, on the street, out of the very air he breathes. Those parents who are content thus to let matters take their course do not, then, escape the responsibility for having made a choice, negative but momentous.

IV

The twenty or thirty specific questions which I have raised fall under two general heads: —

1. What religious or spiritual training should my children have?

2. What standards of life should be set before them — those of the American Gospel of Success, or the less tangible but perhaps more durable standards of cultivation, responsibility to others, and — outworn expression — ‘high ideals’ of the good and the beautiful?

For some years I had been considering these problems as entirely separate and distinct, and it has taken the depression to make me realize that they are merely two aspects of the same question: the old, old choice between God — under another name — and Mammon. For if the standards by which one lives do not depend upon one’s religious and ethical beliefs, then on what do they depend? Accordingly, it would seem that if there is to be, as I hope, a strong spiritual element in the lives of my children, their ideal of attainment cannot be that of material success. For, while there is no reason why the owner of Elaborate Eights and superheterodynes and all the other magnificent adjuncts that go to make up American life de luxe should not also possess real spirituality, the fact remains that with a few striking exceptions he does not. For all our inventions, we have not yet discovered a way to serve two masters.

So it seems to me that the first aspect of my problem, and the most important, is the question of religious or spiritual training. And here, as before, I run into difficulties, for my own beliefs are unorthodox and inchoate, difficult to formulate even to myself, and impossible to convey to children even if I were perfectly sure that such conveying would be desirable. In the meantime the boys are going to Sunday School — Episcopalian in deference to family feeling. There they are learning certain things concerning the forms and ceremonies of the Church, and some Old Testament history, which apparently impresses them in the same way as does the American history they learn at school. It is something that happened a long time ago, sometimes interesting, sometimes distinctly the reverse, but having, fortunately, nothing to do with life as they live it. If they are, to my regret, learning little of the spirit on which religion depends for its value, they are at least learning nothing that they will later have to unlearn.

I supplement their Sunday School instruction with my own explanations whenever they are moved to question me as to the creation of the world, what God really looks like, and what and where Heaven is. The boys cannot fail to be aware, of course, that their Sunday School teacher and I differ a good deal in our beliefs, but I have no clue as to which of us they consider more apt to be right. I am very doubtful whether I do not make confusion worse confounded in their minds, and whether it is good for them to realize what enormous divergences of opinion there are on these subjects; but at least they will be spared the shock which was mine when I first learned that people did not know about God and the life beyond the grave with the same definiteness that they knew about the King of England and the customs in China.

At all events, my explanations, feeble and unsatisfactory as they seem to me, apparently content the children, at least the two older ones. John Robert at six forms his own opinions without reference to those of others; my tentative beliefs, which suffice for Billy and Francis, mean nothing to him. When, in an early November dusk, the little sister was run over by an automobile and almost instantly killed before our eyes, the two older boys were only too thankful to accept my assurance — the expression of a hope rather than of a belief— that somewhere beyond the sight of us who love her so dearly she still lives, now forever safe from pain and fear. But John Robert, whose constant companion and playfellow she was, would only sob through his tears, ‘How does Mommie know?' This refusal to accept the ideas of others, though it renders him a rather difficult member of the family, somewhat relieves me of responsibility in regard to his training. No matter how I may try to incline him, he is one little twig that will choose its own angle!

V

But the combination of my teaching and that of the Sunday School does not seem well adapted to develop spirituality or the ability to see life whole. When I speak of seeing life whole, I mean two things. I hope, first, that the boys will be able to see events in their own lives in proper perspective; that they will realize that the happiest moment they ever know, as well as the unhappiest, is extremely brief compared with the entire span of time they will probably have to live through; and that these moments are few and far between. They are rightly of high importance to us, but, though they give meaning and color to life, they are not the sum and substance of it. I want them to understand that life, though inevitably influenced by such moments, depends upon our own inner consciousness for its success or failure. The tendency to live only for the high moments, and to ignore the broad and often deep valleys which separate them, is, I think, one of the weaknesses of this generation. It is this weakness that the long view of life should correct.

Then, second, I want the boys to see their own lives in proportion to what may be termed the life stream; to realize profoundly that their individual pattern, infinitesimal though it be, is still a part of the universal life pattern; that there is no joy however great, no tragedy however utter, that has not been experienced by countless predecessors. I should like to have it part of their very natures to feel that in joy, and above all in sorrow, they are akin to all who have gone before and to all who are coming after. If they can attain this understanding, joy and sorrow will fall into their proper places in the pattern, and as men they will never know the hopelessness (the one thing I dare ask that they may be spared) of believing themselves to be particularly singled out for misfortune. Remembering the myriads who, since long before recorded time, have undergone the identical sorrow we suffer, accepted it, and made it a part — perhaps not the least beautiful part — of their pattern, can my sons, ‘heirs of all the ages,’ show themselves less heroic than those long-forgotten ancestors?

Religion can be a great help in gaining this sharp perception of the universality and continuity of life and experience. The communion of saints expresses just that idea of shared experience which I have tried to convey, but many people who have no religion do perceive universality, just as many people who think of themselves as intensely religious have no comprehension of it. But, though religion is not a necessity, no one except a natural-born mystic (if there is such a thing) can gain this understanding without having cultivated the habit of spiritual thought.

Now the average Sunday School quite naturally touches on none of the foregoing ideas, and of course the children are much too young to grasp such abstractions. Still it seems to me that now, if ever, is the time to lay a foundation for this understanding, and it is just that which I am failing to do. The lack that I feel is not the fault of the Sunday School teacher, nor, altogether, of the Sunday School system. If I want my children to develop this perception, surely I am the one upon whom rests the responsibility. That my attempts in this direction have met with little success is surely no justification for thrusting my responsibility upon other agencies, even accredited ones.

VI

Although I am still wondering how to give the children the right spiritual training, the second aspect of my problem no longer troubles me, since I now know beyond peradventure what standards in life I desire for them. Even if there were no question of spirituality in their lives, I should not set up before them the ideal of success according to the industrial plan. Like every other mother in the world, my chief wish is for the boys’ deepest and most enduring happiness. Dazzling as are the rewards of successful commercialism, happiness does not seem to be among them, and the tragedies of the depression have reminded us that riches are still as deceitful as a mirage. Where now are the brilliant exemplars of the Gospel of Success, men whose command of comfort and, above all, of leisure — which they never seemed able to endure— it was impossible not to envy? A is in a sanitarium; B, on $5000 a year, is without ambition and without hope; C has given up and is being supported by his wife; D is in exile beyond the reach of the law; E, F, and G have committed suicide.

It is obvious that the people who have suffered least during the past three years, regardless of the size of their money losses, are those who live subjectively rather than objectively. They do not depend for their mental and spiritual well-being on highpowered automobiles, electric kitchen ranges, radios, or any of the other innumerable articles which, in making life easier, have so immeasurably complicated it. I suspect that most of the suicides caused by the depression are among those to whom ‘having’ had become more important than anything else in the world — not necessarily their own having, but that of their dependents. It must indeed be difficult, for a man who has given his wife pearls and sables to be unable to afford a maid for her or even to permit her to send out her laundry, and still harder to deprive his children of the advantages which they have always taken for granted — expensive toys, cars of their own, private schools, summer camps. It is no wonder if, facing the sudden loss of all that our American scheme denotes as important, overstrained men so far lose their sense of values as to deprive their families of one of the few things in the world that are irreplaceable and for which no substitute can be found — the guardianship of a father.

And here comes in one great value of ethical, religious, or spiritual training. It enables one to discern the essential from the nonessential, and such discernment is far more conducive to the happiness I want for my boys than is the possession of the most gilt-edged of stocks — if such there still are. The lives of most of us are so cluttered up with unimportant possessions, unnecessary duties, foolish anxieties, that we only occasionally catch sight of the real essentials upon which happiness still depends, the same in sœcula sœculorum: love, honor, sincerity — yes, even that much derided virtue of our Puritan fathers, a sense of duty. In trying to find for my boys the road to happiness, I have been brought back to the ancient landmarks.

VII

I think that the happiest man I know, and the one whom, on the whole, I should most like the boys to resemble, is a man now in his late sixties who was for years the president and principal stockholder of a small country bank. In the depression of 1920, about 60 per cent of similar institutions in his district failed, but the high reputation of this president carried him and the people of his neighborhood safely through the crisis. Then followed ten lean years for nearly every small agricultural bank in the West. During that period this president carried the financial affairs of his entire locality. In 1930 his bank was closed by the state examiner. Here was a blow to take the heart out of a strong man. Every one of the depositors was his own personal friend, and he had known the fathers of most. For years his bank had been as stable as the Bank of England. He had been his people’s financial guide, philosopher, and friend; in crisis, their prop and mainstay. Now, even though he sacrificed everything he owned, his depositors suffered heavily at a time when they could least afford it. Still they were loyal to him, and I understand that there was not a word of blame for him even among those who had suffered most heavily. In a week the work of his entire productive life was destroyed. Yet he never lost his composure, or his courage.

Now he has no business and very little income; nothing but peace with honor. This, however, seems to be enough, for he is, as he has always been during the forty years I have known him, the happiest person I know, in the sense of being the most deeply satisfied. He finds pleasure in his garden, in doing a small kindness now that he can no longer do a great one, in watching the ships along the Embarcadero, or the sunset across the causeway. Certainly this quiet contentment with the conditions of his life does not come from those conditions, but from the possession of the essential qualities, and from the cultivation of genuine spirituality.

It is exactly this kind of happiness that I want for my boys, and, while it is not incompatible with a certain degree of material success, it is not the kind usually associated with captains of industry, Presidents of republics, or even Senators. I am not deprecating the value of money, for, in the world we live in, money and a certain amount of thought for the morrow are necessities. I hope my children will find a métier which they really like, and that their work will bring them something more than a bare subsistence; but beyond that I do not go.

Since my material ambitions for the boys are so moderate, I can encourage Billy to spend part of his Saturday Evening Post money on good books; I can help Francis to pick out exactly the right word in his school compositions; and I can let John Robert hang over the living-room mantelpiece the crude red and black ‘designs’ that his little fumbling fingers have painstakingly created, without feeling that I ought to be turning their attention to the ’really useful’ things of life. We talk little about money, and a good deal about fairness and kindness, and not doing things to other people that you don’t want them to do to you. The children are, on the whole, honest, truthful, responsible, and kind.

They are also happy—happier by far than a slightly older boy of their acquaintance whose toys have always been elaborate and expensive, who goes to every show and every circus, who in the intervals between tutors and private schools spends a week or two at the Metabolic Clinic building up his weight and ‘adjusting his basic metabolism.’ This boy is more brilliant, I think, than any of mine, but he is undisciplined and discontented, with an avidity for pleasure and a restlessness that amaze Billy and Francis. But his perseverance and his really excellent mind, coupled with what his family is able to do for him, may take him a long way, — much further than mine are likely to go, — so that he may well come to be called a success while my three remain, comparatively speaking, failures. And yet, contrasting the man he is likely to be with the man whom, as I have already said, I should most like the children to resemble, I realize that his standards will never be those of my friend the banker, and that he will never know the happiness that is inalienably my friend’s.

So I shall keep on trying to develop in my boys the older ideas of what is important in life, honor and honesty, responsibility toward others, and a high ideal of goodness and beauty. For, to-day as yesterday, it still nothing profiteth a man that he gain the whole world, if he lose his own soul.