Household duty

“ Is it true that you have taken the cares of the conduct of your household equally from the shoulders of your father and mother? In short, that you are the one who is consulted when there is any change to be made in the personnel of your service at home? ”

“ It is, indeed, not improbable, for there is in every clime the tradition of a time when household helpers were abundant, competent, and cheap,—a golden age when harmony reigned in the household and domestic discord was unknown. ”

“ How many hours a week of the time when his children are out of bed does the ordinary bread-winning father spend in the company of his children or even in the same building with them? The home may be a thieves' kitchen, the mother a procuress, the father a violent drunkard; or the mother and father may be fashionable people who see their children three or four times a year during the holidays, and then not oftener than they can help, living meanwhile in daily and intimate contact with their valets and lady's-maids, whose influence and care are often dominant in the household. ”

“ It is the foundation upon which 286 depends the welfare of each member of a household; for it is the housekeeper who plans the food and is responsible for its character and suitability to age, season, health, and occupation. It is she who superintends, if she does not carry out, the details of cleanliness, so arduous and discouraging in our great cities. It is she who selects the clothing of her family; who directs the order of their lives:—their work and play, their rest and exercise, their sleep and their habits. ”

“ We have reviewed the daily labors indispensable to all classes of homes, giving whatever suggestions or criticisms seemed to us most needed or desirable, not only as regards the manual labor of a household, but also the actions, motives, and principles which build up and secure the happiness of a family ”

“ Whoever the invalid may be, whether the mother, father, or the sweet youngling of the flock, the foundations of the household seem thrown out of course while the sickness lasts. You may have good servants and kind friends to aid you, but the hitch in the machinery is not to be smoothed out by their efforts. ”

“ To understand the economy of household affairs is not only essential to a woman’s proper and pleasant performance of the duties of a wife and a mother, but is indispensable to the comfort, respectability, and general welfare of all families, whatever be their circumstances. ”

“ She has indeed reached the conclusion that although one family may decide to forego the benefit of her assistance in their household because of some little peculiarity of hers, nevertheless she is sure of a position with some other lady on the street before twenty-four hours shall have sped. ”

“ But 318 in the family a good servant is always considered. When ill, she is carefully nursed as one of the family, has the family physician, and is subject to no deduction from her wages for loss of time. ”

“ The small household must choose servants according to convenience and requirements. Where there are three or four grown-up daughters and the home is a small one, one maid and one butler are sufficient. ”

“ As industrial conditions have changed, the household has simplified, from the mediæval affair of journeymen, apprentices, and maidens who spun and brewed to the family proper; to those who love each other and live together in ties of affection and consanguinity. ”

“ I wish that a young girl, quitting Écouen to take her place at the head of a small household, should know how to cut out her dresses, mend her husband's clothes, make her baby-linen, and procure little comforts for her family by the means usually employed in a provincial household ”

“ This great question, which is really so engrossing that it is more talked of in the family circle than any other—this profound and intricate problem, upon the solution of which the comfort, happiness, and thrift of every household in the land depend more than upon almost any other—surely demands the most careful study, and the deepest solicitude of the reformer and philanthropist. ”

“ Every member of the household must be habituated, constantly and as a privilege, to wait and forbear for the sake of others. The father takes the lead—as he ought to do in all good things. His children see in him, from year to year, an example of patient toil—patient and cheerful toil—whether he be statesman, merchant, farmer, shop-keeper, artizan or labourer. The mother comes next,—seen to wait patiently on her sick or helpless infant, and to be forbearing with servants and children, enduring in illness and fatigue, and cheerful through everything. ”

“ Depend upon it, if we thought of the poor primarily as husbands, wives, sons, and daughters, members of households, as we are ourselves, instead of contemplating them as a different class, we should recognise better how the house training and high ideal of home duty was our best preparation for work among them. ”

“ For unless yours be the only pair of feminine hands in the family, you will not find more than three hours occupied with household work, and part of that time will comprise a daily walk, a constitutional with an object, and the remaining part will not be disagreeable ”

“ Observing closely the lives of the immense majority, I think we shall see, that, in conducting their household affairs, the object they have in view is one and the same. I think we shall see that they all strive, some by their own labors wholly, the rest by covering over and piecing out the shortcomings of "help," to present a smooth, agreeable surface to husbands and company. ”

“ To make the improvident and negligent husband and father, as well as those who are liable for the maintenance of the dependant relatives, namely, the grandparents, parents, children, grand-children and relatives of a poor person of sufficient ability, realize the obligations that the law has cast upon them, to advise and admonish in the first instance as to their duty to their dependants, and to punish if advice be not followed, has been the rule and practice of the court. ”

“ In one class, the father may be busy in his office; and the mother in ordering a large household, taking care of the poor in her neighbourhood, and in study or keeping up her accomplishments; while the boys are with their tutor, and the girls with their governess, and the infants in the nursery.—In another, the mother may be instructing her girls, while busy at her needle ”

“ She must be master of all these special lines of work, and know a thousand and one things about the household not enumerated. She must not only be the housekeeper, but the homekeeper. [58] She must furnish her house with taste, and often at the same time with economy. She should understand the principles of the kindergarten, and not shrink from applying the fundamental ideas of ethics and psychology to the training of children. She must at all times be ready to perform her social obligations in the circle in which she moves. ”

“ But wherever the citizen becomes insensible to the interests of his fellow-citizen, the husband will contract feelings of cold indifference to the wife, and the father of a family towards the members of his household. ”

“ Every head of a household is called to be its educator, its companion, its religious instructor and exemplar; not only to furnish the wardrobe and to make the money to pay the bills when they come in, but to give his highest intellectual energies and social faculties to the amusement, instruction, and improvement of the household.
But I describe the history of thousands of households when I say that the tea is rapidly taken, and while yet the family linger the father shoves back his chair, has "an engagement," lights his cigar and starts out, not returning until after midnight. ”

“ That is to say, getting a group of children up to adult independence and saving the community most of the intimate duties of care of the aged and of the weak, while it calls upon the man-head of the family 281for greater activity in his special line, calls upon the woman-head of the family for a general and personal service as a primary duty. ”

“ A mother who has young children has her work at home, and she should stay at home with it, and care well for their education and physical wants. But having discharged this duty, having reared a well-developed and wisely-governed family, then let the state profit by her experience, and let the father and the mother sit down together in the councils of the nation. ”

“ DUTIES, RESPONSIBILITY.--Parents should be firm and just in their rulings; they should study the welfare of their children, and use every effort to train them to lives of usefulness and honor. It is the duty of parents to provide their children with food, clothing, shelter, and the means of acquiring an education. ”

“ Instead of this, God ordains that parents shall have a home of their own, where they can [56] have their children to themselves, to train them up in love and peace and plenty. And one main support of this blessed institution of family and home is, those domestics who are hired to do the chief labours of the family. Just take away from this country all the cooks, chambermaids, waiters, washers, and house cleaners, and what would be the result? The fathers could not leave their business to do the family work, the mothers would not have strength to do it, and the family state would be broken up. ”

“ For most families in average condition that person is naturally the housemother. If the husband and father is the chief or only wage-earner in "gainful occupations," then his health and strength are of primary concern to all the family and must be secured by adequate and healthful provision of food and clothing, and the home must give him what he vitally needs for maintaining power of economic service to his family. ”

“ Household rule should be equally firm and kind, neither provoking nor avoiding the displeasure of its subjects, inflicting no severity for severity’s sake, but shrinking from none that fidelity demands. ”

“ The reciprocal duty of support between parents and children. A father must support his children, [1] i.e. he must supply them with necessary food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and elementary instruction. ”

“ There are families in which such a state of things prevails; and such families, amid the many causes which unite to make the tenure of service uncertain, have generally been able to keep good permanent servants. There is an extreme into which kindly disposed people often run with regard to servants which may be mentioned here. They make pets of them. They give extravagant wages and indiscreet indulgences, and, through indolence and easiness of temper, tolerate neglect of duty. ”

“ In the growing discontent with our present methods of household service, while we waver between long-held prejudice, old and dear, and the irresistible pressure of new conditions, it is worth while to weigh well the relation between this present method of house-service and our present method of child-culture.
The home is the place in which we rear young children. It is also the place in which we perform certain kinds of labour, mainly cooking, cleaning, and sewing. ”

“ It will be wise for those parents who find little time to attend to their children, or to seek amusement and enjoyment in the domestic and social circle, because their time is so much occupied with public cares or benevolent objects, to inquire whether their first duty is not to train up their own families to be useful members of society. ”

“ If they have a father's house, they will not leave it for any length of time, as actual want is not known here in the country. Within a radius of five miles in every direction from my home, where I have lived eight years, I have never known or heard of a family or person suffering for any thing to eat, drink, or wear; and have never had a call for help in that direction. ”

“ It is the duty of the wife to assist in the maintenance of the family by such reasonable labor as the necessities of the family and their circumstances in life and financial position require; while the husband has no right to require her to do more than to care for the house and the family in the customary and proper manner. ”

“ The lady of the household has for several days been storing all kinds of small things by into drawers and boxes, that they might the more safely be transported, so that the family finds itself already deprived of the half of those things which are necessary to comfort, and the whole of what minister to luxury. ”

“ The real work of education in supplying the needs of the household is far more important. There are constantly arising in every household emergencies for which the housekeeper is, and must be, totally unprepared as regards the amount of available information she possesses. ”

“ Whereas we should train them to give as little trouble as possible; and by good management, or by sacrifices, such as getting up earlier, to do at least the extra work appertaining to their individual enjoyment. Why should they, for instance, require hot water brought to their rooms several times a day? Their grandparents used cold, and it was better for them. Why must girls have their hair brushed and braided for them? Why must their lost gloves be found for them, and their wardrobes tidily arranged for them to throw into confusion in their hurry? ”

“ The children in such a household are chief inducements to nerve the arm of labor, that they may be properly cared for, fed, clothed, educated, accomplished, instructed in some useful and honorable calling, and provided for when they shall go out upon the world. All its sentiments, religious and otherwise, all its affections for parents and kindred, all its tastes are so many impelling and stimulating forces. ”

“ Another particular in which domestics have great power is, the influence they exert in making home pleasant to husbands and sons. In a family where most of the work is done regularly and well, by domestics, the mother has time to take good care of her children, and her mind is cheerful and free from excessive cares. ”