With the average American family including four children in 1940, mothers of the era must have found themselves dealing with all kinds of child-rearing challenges. Here's a Dorothy Dix column on "egotism" in children first printed to February 17, 1940:
Dear Dorothy Dix - We have a family of five children. Four of them are very fine, cooperative and considerate of others. The other child, a girl of 14, is very aggressive and ambitious. She has no inhibitions about anything and apparently little sense of right and wrong. Somehow she manages to get the best of everything and dominates the others, and she has since she was a baby. How can I protect the other children against this ruthless egotist? And what can we do for the egotist? All of us know families who have been crushed by a dominant brother or sister and have wondered how it happened. Do you know the answer to my problem?
PUZZLED MOTHER.
Answer - No, I don’t. I doubt if anybody does. Some people just seem to be born go-getters, determined to take what they want of life regardless of the rights or feelings of others. They are strong and they trample down the weak without mercy. They are conscienceless and they have no regrets for the sufferings they inflict upon others. The only person they ever love is themselves.
Evidently your daughter belongs to the female dictator type and at 14 it is too late to change her. Possibly you might have made her less selfish if you had started making her play fairly with the other children when she was a baby, but I doubt it. Nature would have been too strong for you. The only thing you can do is to try to protect the other children from her ruthlessness as much as you can.
9 comments:
I about snorted when I read this. Short of her being a true psychopath, her daughter is still malleable and needs to be taught how to behave and get along with others. Dorothy Dix makes me sometimes wonder if she was a man!
I agree with Kalee--Dix's advice was terrible.
14 is NOT too old to take down a peg or two! "She always takes the best" would be answered with my finding the smallest and the least and giving it to her consistently.
I hope that woman went somewhere else for advice!
It'd be interesting to get John Rosemond's (parenting expert/columnist) take on Ms. Dix's advice on this. ;) I agree it was pretty paltry.
Apparently teenagers haven't changed a whit in 70 years.
I'm very surprised at Ms. Dix's answer. I mean, yes; some people are natural-born go-getters, but that's not an excuse to give them license to walk all over the rest of us.
I have lurked here for ages, but I wanted to post this time.....
I think that Dix's "advice" came from the pov that she herself is one of those "I want it and WILL have it" type of people. Hence, her allowance for such crude and unacceptable behavior. 14 is very much young enough to come don a notch or two.
I always seem to go against the grain. :) I think Dorothy is right on this time. I have a brother who is like that. He's always been that way. Played nice when he had to, but the second an authority figure turned his or her back he'd pull some stunt and then play all innocent and get every one else in trouble. He is 50+ years old and still doing it.
PS I don't agree with DD's using the word "weak".
So far I really dislike Ms. Dix's advice. A young girl's behavoir can be corrected. Maybe it has come to the mom's attention lately as she is 14. (puberty) Hormones could be playing a factor.
I'm inclined to think Ms. Dix's advice reflects the psychology of the time on child development. Today, we might think of a 14 year old as still a child - still fixable. But six decades ago, they would have been considered practically an adult. The legal ages for working, drinking, driving, marrying were younger then in most states than they are now. I think the 1950s and '60s really gave birth to a lot more interest in teenagers and in adolescent development. I'm always amazed at how college students in the '40s were treated as men and women and - today - they're coddled as if still teenagers.
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