We must expect our children to go out into their larger world.  The beginning of adolescence is the normal time of their social awakening, their conversion from a nature that turns in upon itself to one that moves out into a world of persons.  For them, now, the home group ought to be seen as a society as well as a family, as the social group gathering about a definite ideal and mission into which they should delight to project themselves.  The appeal of religion is peculiarly vivid just now, for it involves a recognition of one’s self as a person with the power of personal choices and with the opportunity to find association with other persons.  The family must aid its young people to see the opportunity which the church offers for ideal social relationships which direct themselves to high and attractive service.

Sec. 6.  AMUSEMENTS

What should the family do about the question of the amusements of young people?

Healthy young persons must have recreation.  They will seek it on its highest level first and find their way down the facile descent of commercialized amusements only as the higher opportunities are denied them.  They would always rather play than be played to; they would rather, where early labor has not sapped vitality, play outdoors than sit in a fetid atmosphere watching tawdry spectacles.  But play, the idealization of life’s experiences, they will find somewhere.  To this need the home must minister by the provision of space, time, opportunity, and the means of play.  If through either sloth, selfishness, preoccupation, or a mistaken idea of an empty innocence of life you make recreation and social intercourse impossible in the family, the young people will find it on the street or in the crowd.  In the family that plans for recreation and provides facilities and time for young people to play the problem is a minor one.

But young people will naturally desire to project themselves into the social amusements of the larger groups.  Then we ought to know what those amusements are; we must be able to advise, from actual knowledge, not from hearsay or prejudice, as to the healthful and worth while.  The home must insist on the provision in the community for the safe socialization of amusements.  The thousands of young girls in the cities, who tramp the pavements down to dance halls, primarily are only seeking the satisfaction of a normal craving; and they, on their way to the dance halls, pass the splendid plants of the schools and the churches, standing dark and idle.  Families must develop a public opinion that will demand, for the sake of their young people, a provision for amusement and recreation that, instead of poisoning the life, shall strengthen, dignify, and elevate it.  If the demand for clean drinking-water is a proper one, is the demand for healthful food for the life of ideals less so?