Male child

“ Now my father did not mean by that interrogatory to challenge philosophical inquiry, nor to demand of the honest but unenlightened woman who had just rushed into his study, a solution of that mystery, physiological and psychological, which has puzzled so many curious sages, and lies still involved in the question, "What is man?" For as we need not look further than Dr. Johnson's Dictionary to know that a boy is "a male child,"—i.e., the male young of man,—so he who would go to the depth of things, and know scientifically what is a boy, must be able to ascertain "what is a man." ”

“ The child, together with woman, who, in so many respects in which the essential human characteristics are concerned, so much resembles him, is now beyond doubt the most prominent figure in individual, as well as in racial, anthropology. Dr. D. G. Brinton, in an appreciative notice of the recent volume on Man and Woman, by Havelock Ellis, in which the secondary sexual differences between the male and the female portions of the human race are so well set forth and discussed, remarks: "The child, the infant in fact, alone possesses in their fulness 'the chief distinctive characters of humanity. ”

“ Sometimes for private reasons a girl in par [145] ticular or a boy in particular may be desired, but the well-balanced mind of a parent, particularly of the first child, should welcome either a son or a daughter, each of whom has its peculiar charms, and neither of whom can be described as more valuable than the other. Our false estimate of boys as superior is largely due to economic conditions and the custom of male entail. ”

“ This irritation being removed, the boy is less apt to tamper with his sexual organs. The argument seems a good one, especially when we call to mind the high physical state of those people who have practiced the custom.
20. "Happy is the mother who can feel she has done her duty, in this direction, while her boy is still a child. For those mothers, though, whose little boys have now grown to boyhood with the evil still upon them, and you, through ignorance, permitted it, we would say, 'Begin at once; it is never too late.' If he has not lost all will power, he can be saved. ”

“ In return for the gift of our love, our own lives are rejuvenated by association with the light, joy, and laughter of youth.
But the arrival of puberty marks a change in our attitude toward our children of which we are not wholly conscious. At this age the boy is neither man nor child, but part of both, and we become impatient with the idiosyncrasies of his nature and conduct which constantly assert themselves at this period of life. ”

“ Two passengers on Baby's left had endured these escapades with patient and suffering dignity. When a boy is profoundly conscious that he is—well, a man—and yet a blind and unfeeling world conspires to treat him as—well, a child—he must protect himself and assert his position. ”

“ The result produces compensation.' The question of interest then is, what in nature is peculiar to the male sex and what to the female? What traits will be true of a boy, merely because he is a boy, and vice versa? This has been an extremely difficult question to answer, because of the difficulty encountered in trying to eliminate the influence of environment and training. Boys are what they are because of their original nature plus their surroundings. ”

“ Upon the growing boy.”
6 The little child, in his father’s house and under his father’s care, feels the stir of newborn gregarious instincts, and takes his first steps into the larger life of the world. Boyhood proper begins with the rise of impulses which make us citizens and lead us to take care of ourselves; and it ends with the rise of impulses which make us heads of families and lead us to take care of other people. Each step is an enlargement of life. ”

“ We shall notice sometimes that a little boy, perhaps seven years of age or even younger, will withdraw from the society of other boys, and will seek the company of some particular individual, for example that of a girl friend of his sister, of about his own age. ”

“ How grand is the boy who has kept himself undefiled! His complexion clear, his muscles firm, his movements vigorous, his manner frank, his courage undaunted, his brain active, his will firm, his self-control perfect, his body and mind unfolding day by day. His life should be one song of praise and thanksgiving. If you want your boy to be such a one, train him, my dear woman, to-day, and his to-morrow will take care of itself. ”

“ Let the father or the mother think long before they send away their boy—before they break the home-ties that make a web of infinite fineness and soft silken meshes around his heart, and toss him aloof into the boy-world, where he must struggle up amid bickerings and quarrels, into his age of youth! There are boys, indeed, with little fineness in the texture of their hearts, and with little delicacy of soul ”

“ A man thirty-seven years of age, supposed to have formerly been a private tutor, took boarders into his house for love, and not because he made his living by doing so. He also had under his care an orphan boy, and it appeared that this child was grossly ill-treated. ”

“ Why not teach your son the sacredness of womanhood and the manliness of protecting it? Pardon me, if I say I am not writing a theory, but am speaking out of my own heart. I commenced teaching my own son when he was twelve years old and had my last talk with him a month before he was married. ”

“ We are told that a boy with these tendencies prefers the society of little girls to that of boys, that he likes to play with dolls, and to help his mother in her housework. He takes naturally to cooking, sewing, and darning; and becomes clever in the selection of feminine dress, so that he can help his sisters in the choice of their clothes. Contrariwise, the girl who is destined in later life to display the characteristics of viraginity will be found frequenting the playground of the boys. ”

“ Why, the lad is a mere child when he goes—one-and-twenty on his last birthday, bless him!—still wanting a mother's care of his stomach and his clothes, and a father's heavy stick across his back from time to time to keep him from drink and too much love-making. ”

“ When my husband is not at home I spend my time studying the face of my child, and when I think it appears to resemble its father at such a moment I become terrified at the possibility of the baby’s growing up into a real likeness to its father. ”

“ Now and then there is the ambitious boy, and then again there is your studious boy; there is your bookish boy; there is your shy boy who does not get into the games. He is the boy you should watch all the time. There is the boy who has become delicate and finicky, because he has been doddled at home. I hope you haven't got so many of them here as we have in the East, but he is here and you must watch him, because his parents are doing everything in the world to spoil him. ”

“ Hans Gross, however, found a notable difference between boys and girls, of which I shall later give a detailed description. Here, I shall merely quote the comprehensive summary given in his Criminal Psychology: "My results show that the boy who has passed his first years of childhood is, if well trained, the best observer and witness that can possibly be found, because he watches with interest all that goes on around him, stores it impartially in his memory, and reproduces it faithfully; whereas the girl of like age is often an untrustworthy, and even a dangerous witness. ”

“ At about four or five years the child leaves the infantile stage of development, with its self-love and its intense devotion to parents and their substitutes. He begins to be especially interested in playmates of his own sex, to care more for the opinions of the gang—or if it be a little girl, of the chum—than for those of the parents. The life-force is leading him on to the next step in his education, freeing him little by little from a too-hampering attachment to his family. ”

“ Boys usually remain in the care of the mothers until they reach the age of puberty, at which time they leave the association of their mothers and sisters and have that of their older brothers and fathers, almost exclusively. ”

“ CHILD PSYCHOLOGY A SYSTEMATIC knowledge of the powers and limitations of the human mind and soul before maturity and the characteristic changes which they undergo at puberty will throw a flood of light on the boy-problem. ”

“ In the normal boy this means the evolution of ideals, ambitions, moral and religious ideas, attention to dress and appearance, interest in the opposite sex. In the case of the morally well-endowed boy, the sex impulses which have strengthened with the development of the physical potency find their outlet in a kind of vicarious functioning in the shape of polite and friendly association with his girl friends, in chivalric attentions and devotions, with more or less definite plans for future marriage and parenthood. ”

“ If it does not help these to a sympathetic understanding of a boy’s soul, one may at least hope that it will serve to warn them of those regions of it most foreign to their sex. Next to a knowledge of boy nature, comes the knowledge of when to keep hands off and let some man have his chance. To the smaller group of women, mothers and aunts and elder sisters, and especially teachers, who already possess the heaven-sent gift of understanding boys, any assistance may well seem superfluous. ”

“ Unnatural as was the custom, it by no means indicated a lack of family affection, as is seen in these charming compositions. In both cases, the child, at first an infant, and later a little boy a year or two old, is the centre of the group, fondled and admired by all. ”

“ After puberty, a child may as well be told the simple and necessary facts of sex. As things stand, the parent may as well do it. But briefly, coldly, and with as cold a dismissal as possible.—"Look here, you're not a child any more; you know it, don't you? You're going to be a man. And you know what that means. It means you're going to marry a woman later on, and get children. ”

“ No sooner have we finished with our public school days, when we are known as boys, and have either scrambled over the “Smalls” hedge with some humility and relief, or else have secured the privilege of lording it in a scholar’s gown, than we instantly become men. We may be anything between eighteen and twenty, but if a sister, brother, or cousin be unwary enough to refer to us as a boy—woe unto him or her! ”

“ To do this he must know the child’s changing mental processes and the evolution of his moral perceptions which are manifested in the four periods of his development, in each of which he exhibits a personality as far apart as those of four individuals of widely differing natures. The boy at six, ten, fourteen, and eighteen years of age is four different personalities, and he requires four different methods of treatment. ”

“ And certainly the boy should become a boy when he puts on trousers and not be made the laughing stock of his mirthful companions just because his "beautiful long curls are much admired by the mother and his aunts." ”

“ BOY-PROBLEMS, like boys, are always with us. Wherever there is a boy there are problems to be solved. The perfect boy may live somewhere—but not in my immediate neighborhood. Even though he possesses many of the attributes of perfection, he will be found wanting in industry, or thrift, or orderliness, or courtesy, or studiousness. He may even show such [2] traits as disobedience, untruthfulness, selfishness, truancy, thievery, or immorality. The complete boy does not just grow—he is builded and the parent is both architect and builder. ”

“ The youngest child understands a discipline of firmness conjoined with sweetness and affection—the smallest boy has an ineffable contempt for weakness and vacillation. From the “character” displayed by their elders, children draw their own conclusions. An impatient, hot-tempered father makes callous, indifferent, more or less contemptuous sons and daughters. ”

“ It may, indeed, be asked whether it would not be preferable that in the case also of the subjective processes, the child should be instructed before they actually make their appearance in the child's own consciousness, to render possible the adoption on the child's part of a more objective attitude towards these phenomena. ”

“ The precise form of early relationship between child and father is in general a matter of vast importance in both sexes, and plays a predominating part in the future development of the child's character ”

“ Well, Junius Brutus, go
And may you fail at acting and return.
{57}
A MAN CHILD IS BORN
(July 14th, 1839. The Farm.)
(Mrs. Booth is speaking.)
After such pain this child against my breast!
Oh what a cunning head and little face!
What coal black hair! You have begun to feed!
Look, doctor, how he feeds—why look at him,
He is a little man! Is not God good
To give me such a baby? ”

“ If he is well constituted in body and mind, his boy, eager for play, finds in him a sympathetic response, and their frolics, giving309 mutual pleasure, not only further the child's physical welfare, but strengthen that bond of good feeling between the two which makes subsequent guidance easier. ”

“ At the age of eight or nine, when the child emerges from infancy into early boyhood, he begins gradually and imperfectly to leave behind the characteristics of childhood and, with the development of his mental and physical processes, he acquires the distinguishing traits of the individualistic period. ”

“ We are wont to say, and I think I have seen strong proof of the truth of the assertion,—that 'the child is father to the man.' In truth, he is the future man, in all the leading traits of his character, as well at five as at fifty years of age ”

“ Wrinkles and limpness might betray them when they returned to the mother's fold at night, but her reproaches had no terror nor any restraint for happy children, who alone know the secrets of their own pleasures and have no remembrance of interference with them. With boy and boy there is a perfect equality; no pretentions are allowed, except those of age. ”

“ Wanted, in fact, a young male who shall seem fully adult to those who are younger still, and who may even appear the accomplished flower of virility to an idealizing maid or so, yet who shall elicit from the middle-aged the kindly indulgence due a boy. Perhaps you will say that even a man of twenty-eight may seem only a boy to a man of seventy. ”