Explore "Concerning Children" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In the growing discontent with our present methods of household service, while we waver between long-held prejudice, old and dear, and the irresistible pressure of new conditions, it is worth while to weigh well the relation between this present method of house-service and our present method of child-culture.
The home is the place in which we rear young children. It is also the place in which we perform certain kinds of labour, mainly cooking, cleaning, and sewing. In the vast majority of our homes, fully nine-tenths of them, as shown by the United States Census Report, giving the number of domestic servants in proportion to the number of families, these industries are carried on by the mother. She is the domestic servant. In the remaining one-tenth of our homes the labour is performed by hired servants, the maid-of-all-work still greatly predominating. The questions here suggested for consideration are: first, is a mother, who is also a house-servant, able to supply proper conditions and care to young children? And, second, is the company of domestic servants, other than their mothers, and constant association with their industries, a desirable condition for the education of young children?