It is not surprising that a boy or girl should chafe under the system
even if the resentment stopped short of open rebellion. In the
families studied in which there was no evidence of friction it seems
to have been avoided either by such a firm establishment of the
authority of the parents while the child was young, that the child
had not yet questioned it, or by wise use of the child's earnings for
the benefit of the child. In several instances it was reported that
they gave the child "all she asks"; one girl was being given lessons
on the violin, which she specially desired. In these cases the issue
did not appear to have been raised, but we have no reason for thinking
the children were satisfied with the arrangement.
In other families the beginnings of friction could already be seen. A
Russian woman said that her two working girls, aged seventeen and
fourteen, did not need money, and in the presence of the investigator
refused the request of one for money for a picture show, telling her
that men would pay her way. The eight parents who did not take all
their children's earnings had not all changed their practices
voluntarily. In some cases it was done because the children refused
any longer to turn their earnings in.
When the parent takes the entire earnings of the child and continues
to bear the burden of support, there is probably no question on which
the ideas of the child and those of the parent are so likely to
conflict as on the question of clothes, especially clothes for the
girl. The chaotic and unstandardized condition of the whole clothing
problem has been pointed out in an earlier chapter, and attention has
been called to the fact that it is one of the causes of conflict
between parent and child.
It is only natural that the young girl should want to look as well as
possible, and it is to be expected that the girl of foreign-born
parents should quickly learn at school or at work the prevailing
opinion that to be well dressed is to be dressed in the latest
fashion. She is also in a position to observe how quickly the fashions
change, and thus early learns the unimportance of quality in modern
clothing. She undoubtedly underestimates its importance because her
models are not those on display at the highest-grade department
stores, where the beauty of the quality occasionally redeems in slight
measure the grotesqueness of form; she sees only the cheap imitations
displayed in the stores in her own neighborhood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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