Similarly, with the mother of the feeble-minded child.  At first the child is viewed as a bit slow in walking, talking, in keeping clean, and the mother explains it all away on this ground or that.  A previous illness, a fall in which the head was hurt, difficulty with the teething, diet, etc., all receive the blame.  Alas!  In the course of time the child goes to kindergarten and the terrible report comes back that “the child cannot learn, is clumsy, etc.”, and the teacher thinks he should be examined.  Then either through the examination or through the pressure of repeated observations mother love yields to the truth and feeble-mindedness is recognized.

There are plenty of women who, with this fact established, adjust themselves, make up their minds to it.  But others find that it takes all the pleasure out of their lives, become morbid, and do not enjoy their normal children.  For with all due respect to eugenics and statistics I am convinced that the most of feeble-mindedness is accidental or incidental, and not a matter of heredity.  Once a mother gets imbued with the notion that the condition is hereditary, she falls into agonies of fear for her other children.  In my mind there is a thoroughly reprehensible publicity given to half-baked work in heredity, mental hygiene, and the like that does far more harm than good and interferes with the legitimate work.

There is no offhand solution for the case of the incorrigible boy or girl.  Of course the largest number sooner or later reform, sometimes overnight, and in a way to remind one of the religious conversions that James speaks of in his “Varieties of Religious Experiences.”  So long as a child has a social streak in his make-up, so long as he at least is responsive to the praise and blame of others and understands that he does wrong, so long may one hope for him.  But the child to whom the opinion of others seems of no value, who follows his own egoism without check or control by the accepted standard of conduct, by the moral law, by the praise and blame of those near to him, is almost hopeless.  Some day intelligence may keep him out of trouble, but by itself it cannot change his nature.

It is not sufficiently realized that while there has been a rise of feminism there has also been a great change in the status of children, a change that makes their care far more difficult than in the past.  They have risen from subordinate figures in the household, schooled in absolute obedience, “to be seen and not heard,” to the central figures in the household.  One of the strangest of revolutions has taken place in America, taken place in almost every household, and without the notice of historians or sociologists.  That is because these professional students of humanity have their attention focused on little groups of figures called the leaders, and not nearly enough on that mass which gives the leaders their direction and power.