Explore "Concerning Children" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The question of discipline is a serious one to every young mother; and most mothers are young to begin with. She feels the weight of maternal responsibility and the necessity for bringing up her child properly, but has studied nothing whatever on the subject.
What methods of discipline are in general use in the rearing of children? The oldest and commonest of all is that of meeting an error in the child's behaviour with physical pain. We simply hurt the child when he does wrong, in order that he may so learn not to do wrong. A method so common and so old as this ought to be clearly justified or as clearly condemned by its results.