THE ADOLESCENT GIRL

Adolescence, the critical period of the training of the boy and girl, presents a complexity of problems before which parents and teachers alike are often at a loss.

The adolescent period, the growing-up stage of the girl’s life, is physically the time of rapid and important bodily changes. New cells, new tissue, new glands, are forming. New functions are being established. The whole nervous system is keyed to higher pitch than at any previous time. Excessive drain upon body or nerve force at this time must mean depletion either now or in the years of maturity.

But, on the other hand, the keynote of the girl’s adolescent mental life is awakening. Her whole nature calls out for a larger, fuller, more intense life. Home, school, society, dress, all take on new aspects under the transforming power of the new sex life stirring and perfecting itself within. The world is beckoning to the emerging woman, and her every instinct leads her to follow the beckoning hand.

Now, if ever, the girl needs the influence and guidance of some wise and sympathetic woman friend. It may be let us hope it is her mother; or, failing that, her teacher; or, better than either alone, both mother and teacher working in sympathetic harmony.

The first care demanded for the maturing girl is the safeguarding of her health. School demands at this age are likely to be excessive under existing systems of instruction. In many ways the secondary school, in which we may assume our adolescent girl to be, merits the criticism constantly made, that it works its pupils too hard or, perhaps more accurately, that it works them too long. Nothing but the closest cooeperation between parents and teachers can afford either of them the necessary data for working out this problem. It can never be anything but an individual problem, since girls will always differ whether school courses do so or not, and adjustment of one to the other must be made every time the combination is effected. Some schools content themselves with asking for a record of time spent on school work at home. Many parents merely acquiesce in the girl’s statement that she does or doesn’t have to study to-night, and the matter rests. Other schools and other parents go into the question with more or less detail, but usually quite independently of each other in the investigation. It is only very recently that anything like adequate knowledge of pupils has begun to be gathered and recorded to throw light upon the home-study question.

School girls naturally divide into fairly well-defined classes: the girl who is overanxious or overconscientious about her work, the girl who intends to comply with rules but has no special anxiety about results, and the girl who habitually takes chances in evading the preparation of lessons. How many parents know at all definitely to which class their girl belongs?

The same girls may be classified again with regard to activities outside the school. They may help at home much or little or not at all. They may have absorbing social interests or practically none. They may be in normal health or may already be nervous wrecks from causes over which the school has no control.

There is no question about the value of definite information on all of these points gathered by home and school acting together for the best understanding of the child. The modern physician keeps a carefully tabulated record of his patient’s history and condition. The school should do the same thing and should prescribe with due reference to such record.

It frequently happens, however, that the schoolgirl’s health is menaced less by her hours of school work than by misuse of the remaining portion of the twenty-four hours. No mother has a right to accuse the school of breaking down her daughter’s health unless she is duly careful that the girl has a proper amount of sleep, exercise in the open air, and hygienic clothing, and that her life outside the school is not of the sort that we describe in these days as “strenuous.”

It is this strenuous life which our girls must be taught to avoid. Any daily or weekly program which is crowded with activities is a dangerous program for developing girlhood. The very atmosphere of many modern homes is charged with the spirit of haste, and parents scarcely realize that the daughter’s time is too full, because their own is too full also. They have no time to stop and realize anything. A quiet home is an essential help in preserving a girl’s health and well-being.

It need scarcely be said that the children of a family should be troubled as little as possible with the worries of their elders. Parents are often unaware how much of the family burden their sons and daughters are secretly bearing, or how long sometimes they continue to struggle under the burden after it has mercifully slipped from father’s or mother’s shoulders.

Good health means buoyancy, a springing to meet the future with a tingle of joy in facing the unknown. The adolescent period is essentially an unfolding time, in which probably for the first time choice seems to present itself in a large way in ordering the girl’s life. In school she is confronted with a choice of studies or of courses. To make these choices she must look farther ahead and ask herself many questions as to the future. What is she to be? Nor is she loath to face this question. Some of the very happiest of the girl’s dreams at this time are concerned with that problematical future. There was a day when girls dreamed only of husbands, children, and homes. Then, as the pendulum swung, they dreamed of careers, a hand in the “world’s work.” Now they dream of either or both, or they halt confused by the wide outlook. But of one thing we may be sure our girl is dreaming, and she seldom tells her dreams.

It is during this period in a girl’s life that she is most likely to chafe at restraint, to picture a wonderful life outside her home environment, and to demand the opportunity to make her own choice. As she goes on through high school, she longs more and more for “freedom,” quite unconscious of the fact that what seems freedom in her elders is, in reality, often farthest removed from that elusive condition. Her imagination is taking wild flights in these days. Sometimes we catch fleeting glimpses of its often disordered fancies, although oftener we see only the most docile of exteriors standing guard over an inner self of which we do not dream.

The wise mother and the wise teacher are they whose adolescent memories, longings, misapprehensions, and mistakes are not forgotten, but are being sympathetically and understandingly searched for light in guiding the girls whose guardians they are. They recognize once and for all that normal girls are filled with what seem abnormal notions, desires, and ideals. They recall how little they used to know of life, and the pitfalls they barely escaped, if they did escape. Thus only can they keep close to the girl in spirit and help her as they once needed help. They respect her longing for freedom of choice and they teach her how to choose. It is of little use to attempt to clip the wings of the girl’s imagination, however riotous. The wings are safely hidden from our profaning touch. Instead we must teach her to dream true dreams and to choose real things rather than shams.

At this time the girl’s life often seems to the casual observer to be bounded by her schoolroom walls. As a matter of fact, however, school work appeals to her much less than it has probably done earlier or than it will do in her college days. Dress is becoming an absorbing subject. “The boys,” however little you may think it, are seldom far from her thoughts. Intimate friendship with another adolescent girl perhaps affords an outlet, beneficial or otherwise, for the crowding life which is too precious to bear the unsympathetic touch of the world of her elders. Or perhaps the girl becomes solitary in her habits, living in a world of romance found in books or in her own dreams, impatient with the world about her, feeling sure she is “misunderstood.”

What can home, school, and society in general do for the adolescent girl, that her awakening may be sweet and sane, that her future usefulness may not be impaired or her life embittered by wrong choice at the brink of womanhood?

Any wise plan for the training of girls “in their teens” must include provision for:

1. Outdoor play and exercise. In the country this is much more
easily accomplished. City problems bearing on this question
are among the most acute of all concerning boys and girls.

2. Systematic attention to the work of the schoolroom. Thus the
girl acquires habits of concentration and industry that she
will need all her life.

3. Some manual work in kitchen, garden, sewing room, or workshop.
Here the girl’s natural tastes and inclination may be
discovered and trained.

4. Food for the imagination. Books, music, pictures, inspiring
plays. The Campfire Girls’ movement is valuable in its
imaginative aspect.

5. Attention to dress. Laying the foundation for wise lifelong
habits.

6. Healthful social intercourse under the best conditions with
boys and with other girls, both at home and at school. Croquet,
tennis, skating, offer fine opportunities for such
intercourse. “Parties,” dancing, present more difficulties, but
have their value under right conditions. Not all “fun” should
include the boys. Athletic contests between girls do much to
develop a neglected side of girl nature.

7. Companionship with her mother, or some other woman of
experience. Nothing can quite take the place of this. The girl
is sailing out upon an uncharted sea. She needs the help of
someone who has sailed that way before.

8. Preparation for marriage and motherhood. Much that the girl
should know can come to her through no other medium than that
indicated in the preceding paragraph confidential intercourse
with the woman of mature years. For the sake of the girls who
fail to find this woman elsewhere every school for adolescent
girls should have on its faculty a woman who will “mother” its
girls.

9. Acquaintance with the lives of some of the great women of
history, as well as of some who have lived inspiring lives in
the girl’s own country and time. A long list of such women
might be made.

10. Some unoccupied time. Our girl must not be permitted to
acquire the bad habit of rushing through life.

11. Study of vocations and avocations for women. Avocations the
work which serves as play should be wisely studied, and some
avocation adopted by every girl.

Part of this training girls everywhere in this country may get if the opportunities open to them are seized. The proportion of purely mental work and of handwork will vary according to the locality in which the girl finds herself. In general, however, such matters receive more consideration than the more complex ones of direct social bearing.

How a girl shall dress, with whom and under what conditions she shall find her social life, what she shall know of herself, of woman in general, of the opposite sex, what her relations with her mother shall be these things are more often than not left to chance or to the girl’s untrained inclination.

The dress question rests fundamentally upon the personal question, What do clothes mean to the girl? Behind that we usually find what clothes mean to her mother, to her teachers, to the women who have a part in her social life. Instinct teaches the girl to adorn her person. Environment is largely responsible for the sort of adornment she will choose. To bring the matter at once to a practical basis, what standards shall we set up for our girls to see, to admire, and to adopt as their own?

“Well dressed” may be interpreted to mean simply, or serviceably, or conspicuously, or becomingly, or fashionably, or cheaply, or appropriately, according to the standard of the person who uses the term. It would necessarily be impossible to establish a common standard for any considerable group of women, since individual conditions must govern individual choice. A wise standard for girls and their mothers, however, will conform to certain principles, even though the application of the principles be widely different.

These principles may be expressed somewhat as follows:

1. Beauty in dress is expressed in line, color, and adaptation to
personal appearance, not in expense.

2. Fitness depends upon the occasion and upon the relation of cost
to the wearer’s income.

3. Simplicity conduces to beauty, fitness, and to ease of upkeep.

4. Upkeep, including durability and cleansing possibilities, is as
important a consideration in selecting clothes as in selecting
buildings and automobiles. Freshness outranks elegance.

5. Individuality should be the keynote of expression in dress.

Conformity to the foregoing principles in establishing a personal standard will of necessity prevent slavish imitation and the striving to reach some other woman’s standard which bears again and again such bitter fruit. The erroneous notion fostered by thousands of American women, that if you can only look like the women of some social set to which you aspire you are like them for all social purposes, is a fallacy, in spite of its general acceptance. We might as well expect blue eyes, straight noses, or number three shoes to form the basis of a social group.

The mother or the teacher who bases her instruction in this matter on the assumption that pretty clothes of necessity breed vanity and all its attendant evils is merely sowing the seed of her influence upon stony ground when once the girl discovers her belief. Nature is telling the girl to make herself beautiful. It is not only useless but wrong to set ourselves against this instinct. Instead we must show her what beauty in clothes means, and how to attain it without paying for it more than she can afford, in money, in time, or in sacrifice of her spiritual self. The school does its share when it teaches the general theory of beauty, with practical illustration in study of line and color schemes. The individual teacher and the mother have to impart the far more delicate lessons concerning influence and cost mental, moral, and spiritual in other words, the psychology of clothes.

Our girl must grow up fully cognizant of what her clothes cost. When she desires, as she doubtless will desire, silk petticoats, and an “up-to-date” hat, and high-heeled shoes, and an absurdly beruffled dress, and a wonderful array of ribbons, she must discover what each and every one of these things costs and whether it is worth the price. The high heels sometimes cost health; the conspicuous dress may cost the good opinion or the admiration of those who value modesty above style; the silk petticoat may be bought at the cost of mother’s or father’s sacrifice of something needed far more; the trimming on the hat may have cost the life of a beautiful mother bird and the slow starvation of her nestlings. Nothing the girl wears costs money only.

She must also learn that fine clothes are out of place on a girl whose body is not finely cared for; that money is better expended for quality than for show; and, most of all, that clothes are secondary matters, when all is said.

Wisdom and sympathy and tact are never more needed than in this sort of teaching. The principles of good dressing cannot be laid down baldly and coldly, like mathematical rules, for the guidance of a girl palpitating with youthful and beauty-loving instincts. The mother who says, merely, “Certainly not. You don’t need them. I never had silk stockings when I was a girl,” is failing to meet her obligations quite as much as the mother who allows her daughter to appear at school in a costume suited only to some formal evening function. There are mothers of each of these sorts.

The wise mother whose daughter has developed a sudden scorn for the stockings she has worn contentedly enough hitherto does not dismiss the subject in the “certainly not” way, however kindly spoken. She treats her daughter’s request seriously, asks a few questions, in the answers to which “the other girls” will probably figure largely, and talks it over.

“Of course, there is the first cost to consider. The price of three or four pairs of silk stockings would give you a dozen pairs of fine cotton. Yes, I know there are cheaper silk ones to be had, but their quality is poor. We should scarcely want you to wear coarse, poorly made ones. And of course you know silk ones do not last so long. They are pretty, and pleasant to wear, and cool, I know. How would it do to have silk ones to wear with your new party dress, and keep on with the cotton ones for school? We don’t want to be overdressed in business hours, you know. Then, it seems to me, it is a little hard on the really poor girls at school if the rest of you are inclined to overdress. They are so likely to get into the habit of spending their money for cheap imitations of what you other girls wear or if they are too sensible for that they are probably unhappy because they have to look different. Wouldn’t it be kinder not to wear expensive things to school at all?”

The object is not so much to keep the girl from having unsuitable garments as to teach her to see all sides of the clothes question, to realize her responsibilities, and to learn to choose wisely for herself.

It is highly desirable that mothers keep up their own standards of dress as they approach middle life and their daughters enter the adolescent period. Some women even make the mistake of dressing shabbily that they may gown their daughters resplendently. They are educating their daughters to a false standard and to a selfish life.

Teachers also probably seldom realize how wide an influence they may exercise upon their adolescent girl pupils in the matter of dress. Many a girl forms her standard and her ideal from what her teacher wears. Teachers must accept their responsibility and make good use of the opportunities it gives them.

It is approximately at the time of her awakening to the beautifying instinct that the girl begins to take a special interest in social matters. Here again she needs wise guidance, and usually more guidance and less direction than most girls get. The American mother is prone in social questions to trust her daughter too much, or not enough, and to train her very little.

In many cases adolescent society centers about the school. There are the everyday walks and talks of the boys and girls, the games and meets and contests, with their attendant social features, the literary societies and debating clubs, the school parties and dances. The school thus comes to assume a considerable part in the boy’s and girl’s social training, much more than was the case twenty or even ten years ago; and the whole trend of educational movement in this matter is toward doing more even than it now does.

In some cases schools have merely drifted into this social work, without definite aims and without conspicuously good results, just as some parents have drifted into acceptance of the situation, with little oversight and a comfortable shifting of responsibility.

When this sort of school and this sort of parent happen to be the joint guardians of a girl’s social training, it usually happens that the girl discovers some things by a painful if not heartbreaking trial-and-error method, and other things she quite fails to discover at all. Most of all, she needs her mother at this time a wise, interested, companionable mother, who knows much about what goes on at school parties and at school generally, but who never forces confidences and, indeed, who never needs to; an elder sister sort of mother, who helps. And she needs also teachers who supervise and chaperon social affairs with a full realization that social training is in progress and that lives are being made or marred.

There are schools and there are mothers who look upon every phase of school life as contributing to the educative process, and these find in the social affairs of the school their opportunities to teach some vital lessons. Some schools are lengthening the free time between periods, merely for the purpose of adding to the informal social intercourse between pupils.

Wise teachers as well as wise mothers will see that the social phase of school life, especially in the evening, is not overdone. Not only health but future usefulness and happiness suffer if the girl “goes out” so much that going out becomes the rule and staying at home the exception. It is not usually, however, the social affairs of the school alone which cause the girl to develop the habit of too many evenings away from home. It is the school party plus the church social, plus the moving pictures, plus the girls’ club, plus the theater, plus choir practice, plus the informal evening at her chum’s, plus a dozen other dissipations, that in the course of a few years change a quiet, home-loving little schoolgirl into a gadding, overwrought, uneasy woman.

Unless one has tried it, it is perhaps hard to realize how difficult it is for an individual mother to regulate social custom in her community even for her own daughter without causing the girl unhappiness and possibly destroying her delight in her home. No girl enjoys leaving the party at ten when “the other girls” stay until twelve. Nor does she enjoy declining invitations when the other girls all go. But what the individual mother finds difficult, community sentiment can easily accomplish. The woman’s club or the mothers’ club or the parent-teacher association, or better yet all three, may profitably discuss the question, and may set about the creation of the sentiment required.

Quite as important as “How often shall she go?” is the question “With whom is she going?” There are two ways of approaching the problem here involved. One requires more knowledge for the girl herself, that she may better judge what constitutes a worthy companion. The other is reached by the better training of boys, that more of them may develop into the sort of young men with whom we may trust our daughters.

Parents who take the time and trouble to acquaint themselves with the boys in their daughter’s social circle will find themselves better able to aid the girl in her choice of friends. The very best place for this getting acquainted is the girl’s own home, to which, therefore, young people should often be informally invited. Nor should parents neglect occasional opportunities to observe their daughter’s friends in other environment at the church social or supper, at entertainments, at school, or on the street. Fortunately the revolt against a dual standard of purity for men and women holds promise of a larger proportion of clean, controlled, trustworthy boys.

It will never be quite safe, however, to trust either our boys or our girls to resist instincts implanted by nature and restrained only by the artificial barriers of society, unless we keep their imaginations busy, and unless we implant ideals of conduct high enough to make them desire self-control for ends which seem beautiful and good to themselves. The adolescent period is especially favorable for the formation of ideals, and a high conception of love and marriage will probably prove the truest safeguard our boys and girls can have.

The reading of the period is of special importance. At no other time of life will altruism, self-sacrifice, high ideals of honor and of love, make so strong an appeal as now. Adolescent reading must make the most of this fact. Some of the great love stories of literature and biography should be read, especially one or two which involve the putting aside of desire at the call of a higher motive. At least one story involving the world-old theme of the betrayed woman The Scarlet Letter, perhaps, or Adam Bede should be “required reading” for every adolescent girl, and should after reading be the subject of thoughtful and loving discussion by the girl and her mother in one of the confidential chats which should be frequent between them.

Girls must learn from their mothers and teachers to distrust the boy who shows any inclination to take liberties, and they must also learn that girls, consciously or more often otherwise, daily put temptation in the way of boys who desire to do right, and invite liberties from the other sort. Restraint, in dress, in carriage, in manners, and in conversation, must be made to seem right and desirable to the girl, for her own sake and no less for the good of the other sex. This of course means that teachers must set fine examples before the girl in their own dress and deportment.

To counteract the dangerous tendencies which have become intensified by the wholesale breaking of social customs during the war, it is necessary that parents and teachers give very careful attention to the dress of girls and to the demeanor of boys and girls of the adolescent period. Many teachers are improperly dressed and setting the wrong example. Many parents are dressing carelessly and sending their girls to high school improperly dressed. The boys are tempted yes, are forced to observe the bodies of their girl classmates, in study-rooms, halls, laboratories, and on playgrounds. These girls who are immodestly dressed are not only exposing themselves to danger and inviting familiarities, but are tempting the boys to go wrong. Many of the tragedies in our schools can be traced to this source.

To handle this very serious and very difficult problem it is necessary that all mothers of high-school boys and girls organize and cooperate with principals and teachers. The task is gigantic, for the customs and suggestions which are responsible for present-day conditions are many and permeate our magazines, books, moving pictures, dances, and nearly all social gatherings.

Many superintendents, teachers, and parents have been very seriously studying these social and moral problems and making plans to start reforms at once in the public schools. The most practical method thus far presented appears to be the requirement of uniform dress for all girls in the upper grades and in high school. This custom is already established in some of our best private schools. Uniform dress has a very democratic training which commends it. It is less expensive than the present varied styles. It is practical, for it avoids discrimination which would lead to many private difficulties.

The girl has now reached the time when her bits of knowledge of sex matters, gained gradually since the first stirrings of curiosity in her little girlhood, should be gathered, summarized, and given practical application to the mature life she will soon enter upon.

Thoughtful investigation does not lead to the conclusion that girls need especially a detailed physiological presentation of the subject so much as a study of the psychological aspects of the sex life. Personal purity is primarily a matter of mind.

Girls who all their lives have been familiar with the mystery of birth, who at puberty have been instructed in the delicacy of the sexual organs and processes and in the care they must exercise to bring them to normal development, are now ready to be taught the vital necessity of subordinating the animal to the spiritual in the sex life.

It may seem unwise and unnecessary to put before young girls so dark and distressing a subject as the social evil. Yet I know of no way to combat this evil without teaching all girls what must be avoided. When girls realize that the social evil

1. Rests upon a foundation of purely unrestrained animal
instinct;

2. That a single sexual misstep has ruined thousands upon
thousands of girls’ lives;

3. That ignorance or the one misstep has led thousands to a
permanent life of shame;

4. That such a life means, sooner or later, sorrow, impaired or
destroyed health, disgrace, and early death to its woman
victims;

5. That the social evil destroys the efficiency and the moral
worth of men;

6. That it sets free deadly disease germs to permeate society,
causing untold misery among the innocent,

then, and not until then, can they be taught

1. To recognize and fear animal instinct unrestrained by higher
motive;

2. To guard their own instincts;

3. To hold men to a high standard of social purity and to help
them attain it.

Nor does this teaching necessitate morbid consideration of the subject. It will, in fact, in many cases clear away the morbid curiosity and surreptitious seeking after information in which untaught girls indulge. Skillfully and delicately taught this knowledge as an important and serious part of woman’s work, girls will be sweeter and more womanly for the knowledge of their responsibility to society and to their unborn offspring.

Schools that attempt such a course for girls are finding their chief difficulty in discovering people properly endowed by nature and properly trained to teach it. To give such work into any but the wisest hands invites disaster. To make it a study of the physical basis of sexual life is disaster in itself. Service, through making one’s self a pure member of society, and through helping others to keep the same standard this must be the keynote of the teaching, an education toward social efficiency and social uplift.