The tender mother, who hates dirt and loves neatness, and does not like
to hear her girls called tom-boys, may and does find it hard to
cultivate this free out-door life for her girls even when easy means
make the matter less difficult than it is for the caged dweller in
cities during a large portion or the whole of a year.
I may leave her to see that delicacy and modesty find place enough in
her educational trainings, but let her also make sure that her girls
have whatever chance she can afford to live out of doors, and to use the
sports which develop the muscles and give tone and vigor. Even in our
winters and in-doors, she can try to encourage active games such as
shuttlecock and graces. I know of homes where the girls put on the
gloves, and stand up with their brothers, and take gallantly the
harmless blows which are so valuable a training in endurance and
self-control.
I am reminded as I write that what I say applies and must apply chiefly
to the leisure class; but in others there is a good deal of manual work
done of necessity, and, after all, the leisure class is one which is
rapidly increasing in America, and which needs, especially among its new
recruits, the very kind of advice I am now giving. Severer games, such
as cricket, which I see girls playing with their brothers, tennis,
fencing, and even boxing, have for both sexes moral values. They teach,
or some of them teach, endurance, contempt of little hurts, obedience to
laws, control of temper, in a word, much that under ordinary
circumstances growing girls do not get out of their gentler games. These
are worth some risks, and such as they are need not trouble seriously
the most careful mother. Neither need she fear for girls up to the age
of puberty that they are any more liable to serious damage than are her
boys.
When for her young daughters this time of change comes near, she may
rest assured that their thorough physical training will have good
results. Beyond this point it is hard to generalize, and, of course, the
more violent games, in which girl and boy are or may be as one, must
cease But each case must stand alone, and so be judged. There are plenty
of healthy girls who may continue to row, to ride, to swim, to walk as
before, but there are individual cases as to which advice is needed,
although, as to all girls, it should be the rule that at certain times
temperate exercise, lessened walks, and no dancing, riding, rowing,
skating, or swimming should be allowed. Girls feel these restrictions
less if they are so stringently taught from the outset as to become
habits, and this is all I care to say.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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