Concerning Children by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Since we have so carefully and thoroughly beaten back the new brain-growth which should distinguish each successive generation, and fostered in every way the primitive mental habits of our forefathers, the natural consequence is a prolonged survival of very early tendencies. Outside, in the necessary contact and freedom of the world's life, crude ideas must change, and either become suited to the times or lost entirely. But in the privacy of the home, under the conditions of family life and the dominant influence of feminine conservatism, we find a group of carefully cherished rudiments which never could have survived without such isolation.

Among primitive races the stranger is an object of legitimate derision. The differences in his speech and manner are held as visible inferiorities, and his attempts to assimilate are greeted with unchecked merriment. This attitude of mind is still common in children, who are passing through the same stage of culture individually. Among intelligent and well-bred grown people such an attitude of mind is rightly despised. To them the stranger is entitled to respectful consideration because he is a stranger; and nothing could be ruder, in the estimation of such persons, than to laugh at the stranger's efforts to learn our language and manners.