Written or selected by a member of the staff of the Juvenile Instructor, 1887 –

The question, “What shall be done with the boys?” is, to the average American parent, far more perplexing than that other equally momentous one, “What shall be done with the girls?” The boys must be trained to some profession of business by which, when they become men, they can earn sufficient money to support not only themselves; but too often the idle and almost useless women they are foolish enough to marry. As for the girls, it is only necessary to educate them in a showy, superficial manner, to dress them as handsomely as the father’s means will permit, and in due time to pass them over to the young men, who are expected to hire one, or two, or three servants to wait on the dainty, helpless creatures.

What to do with the boys is, under this order of things, becoming every day a more and more difficult question to determine. The cost of living has so greatly increased, in consequence of the multiplication of home luxuries in the shape of fine furniture and expensive houses, and in the too frequent abandonment of households to the waste and destruction of servants, that the young man who is to take upon himself the maintenance of a wife and family must be thoroughly educated in some business by which he can obtain the means to enjoy the blessings of a modern home. But success in any business or profession comes only after years of patient labor, and the father knows but too well that in almost any choice of a life pursuit which his boy may make, the chances of a prosperous result are largely against him. He finds too often most of the prominent places already filled by more favored ones, and is forced to accept a position that offers little apparent advantage. The look forward is, in consequence, by no means hopeful or encouraging.

If the question, “What to do with the girls?” was more carefully considered and more wisely determined, this other question of “What to do with the boys?” would be one of easier solution. Why should the girls be raised in idleness? Why should work and service be a disgrace to them, and an honor to their brothers? Why should the home be filled with ignorant and half-trained servants to waste and annoy when there are two or three almost useless daughters in the house-hold who would be healthier in mind and body if each took her share of the work, giving order and comfort to every department? The father and brothers devote themselves to earnest service; but the wife and daughters too often sit in comparative idleness at home, demanding to be served.

It is just here that the social life of the great middle class of Americans, especially in our cities, is so sadly defective. In this false home-training of our girls we hurt the body politic, for in that training lies the fruitful source of one of the most deplorable of all social evils. Young men cannot, unless rich, or in prosperous business, afford to marry. The cost of supporting a woman who thinks it degrading to make a loaf of bread, cook a dinner or wash the dishes, even if she knew how, and who must have silks and laces and jewels like the rest, is too great for most young men who have to depend solely upon their own hands and brains for a livelihood. Some will not marry at all. Others take the risk and the burden with a half-blind confidence that all will come out right. But too many of these, after a few years, find themselves hopelessly in debt, while the family expenses go on steadily increasing. Then come shifts and expenditures. Some break up their homes and try boarding, in order to reduce the cost of living. Some make desperate business ventures and fall, in consequence, even more hopelessly into debt. While others cheat, rob their employers, plunder in public trusts, or join the steadily increasing army of miserable defaulters, in order to keep up a style of living as good as their neighbors. Until girls are taught that work and service are as honorable to them as to their brothers, and idleness as wrong and disgraceful, we shall see little or no change for the better in our social life.

What, then, shall be done with the girls? Need we answer the question? Let them be trained from the beginning to regard all household work as good and honorable, and to be skilled in every department of home economy. Let duty and service be set before them as the highest end of life, and pleasure and self-indulgence as the lowest. It is the false sentiment which reverses all this that is yearly working such sad disasters in so many beautiful homes; homes built upon the sands of pride and self- indulgence, instead of upon the solid foundations of prudence, industry, economy and a loving self-sacrifice.