What, then, is the explanation of this lack of special provision for the real founder of the home? This utter unsuitability of the house to the child, and the child to the house, finds its crowning expression in our cities, where house-owners refuse to let their houses to families with children! What are houses for? What are homes for? For children, first, last, and always! How, then, have we come to this vanishing point of absurdity? What paradoxical gulf stretches between these houses where "no children need apply" and the rest of the houses. _There is no visible difference in their plans and construction._ No houses are built for children; and these particular landlords simply accent the fact, and try to limit the use of the house to the persons for whom it was intended--the adults.
What is there in the presence of children in a house to alarm the owner? "They are so destructive," he will tell you; "they are mischievous, they are noisy. Other tenants object to them. They injure the house when old enough to run about, and squall objectionably when babies." All this is true enough. Most babies are a source of distress to their immediate neighbours because of their painful wailing, and most little children continue to cause distress by their noise in play and shrieks under punishment. Is all this outcry necessary? Must the poor baby suffer by night and day; must the small child bang and yell, and must it be punished so frequently? Why is the process of getting acclimated to the world so difficult and agonising? Is there really no way that the experience of all the ages may be turned to account to facilitate the first years of a child's life?
Our behaviour to the child rests on several assumptions which are, at least, not proven. We assume that he has to be sick. We assume that he has to be naughty. We assume that life is hard and unpleasant, anyway, and that, the sooner he learns this and gets broken into it, the better. There is no more reason why a child should be sick than a calf or colt. Infancy is tender, and needs care, but it is not a disease. The Egyptian mother loves her baby, no doubt, though it goes blind through her ignorance and neglect--she knows nothing of ophthalmia, and lets the flies crawl over its helpless face, even while she loves it. We scorn and pity her ignorance, but we accept the colic, disorders of teething, and all the train of "preventable diseases" which kill off our babies, precisely as she accepts ophthalmia.