American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science;: Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian HomesStowe, Harriet Beecher
Religion
American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science;: Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian Homes
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Home economics
There are some mothers who take pains to teach their boys most of
the domestic arts which their sisters learn. The writer has seen boys
mending their own garments and aiding their mother or sisters in the
kitchen, with great skill and adroitness; and, at an early age, they
usually very much relish joining in such occupations. The sons of such
mothers, in their college life, or in roaming about the world, or in
nursing a sick wife or infant, find occasion to bless the forethought
and kindness which prepared them for such emergencies. Few things are
in worse taste than for a man needlessly to busy himself in women's
work; and yet a man never appears in a more interesting attitude than
when, by skill in such matters, he can save a mother or wife from care
and suffering. The more a boy is taught to use his hands, in every
variety of domestic employment, the more his faculties, both of mind
and body, are developed; for mechanical pursuits exercise the intellect
as well as the hands. The early training of New-England boys, in which
they turn their hand to almost every thing, is one great reason of the
quick perceptions, versatility of mind, and mechanical skill, for which
that portion of our countrymen is distinguished.
It is equally important that young girls should be taught to do some
species of handicraft that generally is done by men, and especially
with reference to the frequent emigration to new territories where
well-trained mechanics are scarce. To hang wall-paper, repair locks,
glaze windows, and mend various household articles, requires a skill
in the use of tools which every young girl should acquire. If she never
has any occasion to apply this knowledge and skill by her own hands,
she will often find it needful in directing and superintending
incompetent workmen.
The writer has known one mode of systematizing the aid of the older
children in a family, which, in some cases of very large families, it
may be well to imitate. In the case referred to, when the oldest
daughter was eight or nine years old, an infant sister was given to
her, as her special charge. She tended it, made and mended its clothes,
taught it to read, and was its nurse and guardian, through all its
childhood. Another infant was given to the next daughter, and thus the
children were all paired in this interesting relation. In addition to
the relief thus afforded to the mother, the elder children, were in
this way qualified for their future domestic relations, and both older
and younger bound to each other by peculiar ties of tenderness and
gratitude.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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