THE IDEAL HOME

That we may understand, and to some extent formulate, the problem which we would have girls trained to solve, we must of necessity study homes. What must girls know in order to be successful homemakers?

A historical survey of the home leads us to the conclusion that although times have changed, and homes have changed, and indeed all outward conditions have changed, the spiritual ideal of home is no different from what it has always been. The home is the seat of family life. Its one object is the making of healthy, wise, happy, satisfied, useful, and efficient people. The home is essentially a spiritual factory, whether or not it is to remain to any degree whatever a material one. “Home will become an atmosphere, a ‘condition in which,’ rather than ‘a place where,’” says Nearing in his Woman and Social Progress. “The home is a factory to make citizenship in,” writes Mrs. Bruere.

But although this spiritual significance of home has always existed, we are sometimes inclined to overlook the fact. Because conditions have changed, and because our external ideals of home have changed and are still changing, we fail to see that the foundation of home life is still unchanged.

“I sometimes think that many women don’t consciously know why they are running their homes,” says Mrs. Frederick, author of The New Housekeeping. We might add that many of those who do know, or think they know, are struggling to attain to purely trivial or fundamentally wrong ideals. It seems wise, then, for us to face at the outset the question “What is the ideal home?”

Laying aside all preconceived notions, and remembering that changes are coming fast in these days, let us look for the ideals which may be common to all homes, in city or country, among rich or poor.

First of all, the home must be comfortable, and its whole atmosphere must be that of peace. In no other way can the tension of modern life be overcome. This implies order and cleanliness, beauty, warmth, light, and air; but it implies far more. It means a home planned for the people who will occupy it, and so planned that father’s needs, and mother’s, and the children’s, will all be met. What does each member of the family require of the house? A place to live in. And that means far more than eating and sleeping and having a place for one’s clothes. There must be not only a place for everything, but a place for everybody in the ideal house. The boys who wish to dabble in electricity, the girls who wish to entertain their friends in their own way, the tired father who wishes to read his newspaper “in peace,” the younger children who want to pop corn or blow bubbles or play games, all must be planned for. There will be no room too good for use, and no furnishings so delicate that mother worries over family contact with them. There will be a minimum of “keeping up appearances” and a maximum of comfort and cheer. There will be little formal entertaining, but many spontaneous good times. In addition to being comfortable, the ideal home must be convenient. There will be places for things, and every appliance for making work easy.

The ideal mother, who is the mainspring of the smoothly running mechanism of the ideal home, will be scientifically trained for her position. Her “domestic science” will no longer be open to the criticism that it is not science at all, nor will she feel that her business is unworthy of scientific treatment. Always she will keep before her the object of her work to make of her family, including herself, good, happy, efficient people. She will not be overburdened with housework, for overworked mothers have neither time nor strength for the higher aspects of their work. She will know how to feed bodies, but also how to develop souls. She will clothe her children hygienically, but she will teach them to value more the more important vestments of modesty and gentleness and courtesy. She will require obedience, but, as their years increase, the requirement will be less and less obedience to authority and more and more obedience to a right spirit within.

She will work for her children and will make them wish to work with her, teaching them the true value of work and sacrifice. She will play with them, for their pleasure and development, and she will also play, in her own way, for her own rejuvenation and her soul’s good. She will study each member of her family as an individual problem, and, abandoning forever the idea of pressing any child’s soul into the mold that she might choose, will rather strive to aid its growth toward its natural ideal. She will strive to hold and to be worthy of her children’s confidence, that they may turn to her in those times that try their souls. But she will always respect the personal liberty of either child or husband to live his own life.

She will interest herself in the interests of husband and children, that she may remain a vital factor in their lives; and she will make the home so delightful as to reduce to a minimum the scattering influences that tend to destroy home life. She will weave intangible but indestructible ties of affection, holding all together and to herself. She will keep her interest in the outside world, so that she may better prepare her children to live in it and may resist the narrowing influence of her enforced temporary withdrawal. She will take some part in civic work and social uplift, and, when her years of child rearing are ended, in the leisure of middle age she will return to the less circumscribed life of her youth, bending her matured energies to the world’s work.

The father of this ideal family will be first of all a man happy in his work. The plodding, weary slave to distasteful labor can be ideal neither as husband nor as father. Overworked fathers are quite as impossible in our scheme as overburdened mothers. In ideal conditions the father will have time, strength, and willingness to be more of a factor in the home life than he sometimes is at the present time. More than that, his early education will have included definite preparation for homemaking, so that his cooeperation will be intelligent and therefore helpful. He will know more than he does now about the cost of living and he will assist in making a preliminary division of the year’s income upon an intelligent basis. He will recognize the necessity for equipment for the homemaking business and will contribute his share of thought and labor to improving the home plant.

He will be a companion as well as adviser to his boys and girls and will retain their respect and love by his sympathetic understanding and his remembrance of the boy’s point of view. In all his dealings with his children he will be careful that interference with his comfort and convenience or the wounding of his pride by their shortcomings does not obscure his sense of justice. He will be a student of child nature and will keep in view the ultimate good and usefulness of his child. He will regard his fatherhood as his greatest service to the state.

The children reared by this ideal father and mother in their ideal home will grow as naturally as plants in a well-cared-for garden. With examples of courtesy and kindness, of cheerful work and health-producing play, ever before them in the lives of their parents, they may be led along the same paths to similar usefulness. Their educational problems will be met by the combined effort of teachers and parents, and natural aptitude as well as community needs will dictate the choice of their life work.

That this ideal family is far removed from many families of our acquaintance merely proves the necessity of training for more efficient homemaking, and indeed for a better conception of homemaking ideals and problems. If we are to teach our girls and our boys to be homemakers, we must consider carefully what they need to know. If we are to counteract the tendencies of the past two or three decades away from homemaking as a vocation, we must show the true value of the homemaker to the community, and the opportunities which domestic life presents to the scientifically trained mind.

Education for homemaking necessarily implies teachers who are trained for homemaking instruction; and we may pause here to notice that no homemaking course in normal school or college can be sufficient to give the teacher true knowledge of ideal homes. She must have seen such homes, or those which approximate the ideal. Perhaps she has grown up in such a home. More probably she has not. If not, it must then necessarily follow that the lower have been the ideals in the home where the teacher had her training, the more she should see of other homes, and especially of good homes. Her whole outlook may be changed by such contact; and with her outlook, her teaching; and with her teaching, her influence.

If all girls grew up in ideal homes, it seems probable that homemaking would appeal to them quite naturally as the ultimate vocation. Indeed, we know that many girls feel this natural drawing, in spite of most unlovely conditions in their childhood homes. The task of mother, teacher, and vocational counselor (who may be either) in this matter is a complicated one. Some girls are not fitted by nature to be homemakers. Some may with careful training overcome inherent defects which stand in the way of their success. Some have the natural endowment, but have their eyes fixed on other careers. Some have unhappy ideals to overcome. The fact, however, confronts us that at some time in their lives a very large majority of these girls will be homemakers. It is the part of those who have charge of them in their formative years to do two things for them: first, to train them so that they may understand the tasks of the homemaker and perform them creditably if they are called upon; second, to teach all those girls who seem fitted for this high vocation to desire it, and to choose it for at least part of their mature lives.