When I was four years old and just about to embark on my studies at Miss Brothers’ "exclusive school for young ladies and gentlemen" in Manchester, my parents decided to brief me on the matter. I already had a furious dislike for the school, which I had never seen, and was upstairs in my bedroom brooding about it, while the cold September rains of England lashed the windowpanes. I received the summons from my elderly parents — respectively twenty-four and twenty-six at that time — to join them before the parlor fire downstairs. That was usually the prelude to a thrashing, and I rapidly ran over my day’s sins in my mind while I reluctantly went downstairs to receive what undoubtedly would be a deserved and very severe punishment. I decided the major sin was being in the jampots that afternoon, in the scullery, while Mama was resting. So I was understandably apprehensive when I entered the parlor, and my parents’ expressions did nothing to relieve my fears.

"Stand there, on the hearth," said Papa, fixing me with his cold blue eyes. Mama’s stare was no less forbidding. So, I stood on the hearth, trembling, but determined — as usual — to get in a few licks myself while the thrashing was going on. My thrashings were never taken meekly, but with some telling kicks on my part, for though I was only four I was very big and strong.

"You are going to school tomorrow," said Papa, as if I didn’t know the disastrous day. "I will take you when I go to my studio at the Manchester Guardian, at eight o’clock. And I want to warn you," Papa added in a terrible voice of doom and threat, "if you do not behave in Miss Brothers’ School, and if I hear from her one word of your mischief or insolence, you will be thoroughly thrashed at home within an inch of your life. Is that clear?"

I nodded. Papa reached out and grabbed me. "What?" he demanded, shaking me and threatening a clout.

"Yes, Papa," I replied.

"You will be neat and tidy, eat nicely, be polite and obedient at all times, and never answer back," said Mama with severity. "You will learn. Your father will inspect your lessons every night. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Mama," I replied.

"And you’ll never be tardy," said Papa, who hated to get up in the morning and hated to be on time, and had to be rousted out of bed and hurried by Mama every day. But at least he thought promptness was a virtue if a foul nuisance, and never permitted a Child to comment on inconsistencies.

I could see that my parents were considering giving me a thrashing anyway, on the sound principle of "never a lick amiss," so I hastily curtseyed and got the hell out of there up to my bedroom, where I spent most of my time. I busied myself laying out my woolen frock for tomorrow. I then polished my boots. After that I took my bath, cleaned my teeth, brushed my long red hair, went to bed and contemplated how much I could cut out of my elaborate prayers. I decided not to speak to the Archangel Michael that night, nor to all the saints, and only a couple of lines of the Litany, and to omit Miss Brothers — whom I had never met — from my petitions. But I did pray for dear Mama and Papa, and for two dolls at Christmas, and went to sleep. Without any resentment, either, as the child psychologists say The Children always feel when they are sure they are being treated unjustly. It never occurred to me that there was any injustice in my life. I lived the life of the usual middle-class British child, and all my playmates were treated firmly and thumped regularly by their parents. C’est la vie. Children are tough little animals, not tender blossoms.

The next day was vile, as only English autumns can be vile, with heavy gray rain and shouting winds. Papa refused to be stirred from bed, even by doughty Mama, until nine, and it was now half-past six. "Let her go, herself," he said. "She knows the way."

I did. Mama’s maid-of-all-work boiled me a hard egg, which I loathed, and made me some burned bacon and toast and a livid kipper and some lukewarm tea, and I got into my Mackintosh over a warm coat, pulled on my tam-o’shanter, and went out into the wild cold weather — for a walk of well over a mile. I was about half a minute late, for which I was coldly rebuked and warned never to repeat, then introduced to my red-cheeked mates, all as abominably healthy as I was and all studiously bent over slates and books at their tables.

The School Day

It was a long and arduous and punishing day, and did not end until four o’clock. We worked on the alphabet, and writing figures up to ten. No "reading readiness," you will observe, or playtimes, or kindergarten, or finger-painting, or songs — except for "God Save the King" and a couple of hymns — and there was a special prayer for our Dear Guides and Mentors, the King, the Parliament, the Empire, our parents and our teachers. The Union Jack was gravely saluted, and at four o’clock we genuflected to the Crucifix on the wall, as we had genuflected before and after luncheon and tea. Then we were dismissed, to worse weather, our hands and feet icy, for Miss Brothers did not believe in fires until October. But we exuberantly raced home, our faces wet with rain and our boots splashing in puddles, and our Daily Report in our pockets. We weren’t tired at all, after eight hours.

That night, after High Tea, I was introduced — as a grownup person now — to laying fires in the parlor, the dining-room, and my parents’ room, and to lugging out the ashes. This had been the usual job for Agnes, the maid, but as I was now a schoolgirl it was my job. I thought nothing of it, nor was disturbed that I was called down from my bedroom at nine to wipe my parents’ dinner dishes — a new job. The scullery was warm, and Agnes had many blood-curdling tales of beasties and ghosties to tell.

I wasn’t thrashed at school or by my parents for a whole week, and very soon I was reading and writing simple sentences, and was being introduced to Latin. There was little playtime in my busy life from then on, only half an hour’s recreation at school, after lunch, and what I could snatch at home between High Tea and my parents’ dishes and the laying of new fires for the next day. Sunday was no quiet day. I spent three hours in Sunday-school, and helped Agnes with the dinner dishes, then was given an Improving Book — Bible stories — as a fun-time project, until it was time for bed. Incidentally, children of that time and place were not permitted to waste the precious hours in bed. Bedtime was between nine and ten, depending on tasks, or even later, and you were out of the quilts before six.

I was never sick, under this rigorous treatment. By the time I was six I had had two years of Latin and one of French, and was reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets, not to mention minor poets, and had had a good grounding in history and geography. No guidance counselors, no twitterings on the part of teachers, no "worry" for parents, no soft patting hands, no cherishing. We were being prepared for Life.

Was I "cowed"? Not a bit of it! Was I "fearful, insecure, timid"? Don’t be silly. I knew that life was for real, and it was up to me to deserve living, or God help me. No one else would. I was constantly being taught to be grateful to my parents for condescending to give me life, and to my teachers for teaching me and to God for letting me live. Above all, I was taught to have an independent and searching mind, to scorn weak tears, to detest dependency on the part of anybody, to be brave and to endure. To sin was intolerable. To defend yourself was demanded at all times.

By the time I was five I had a baby brother, and I had to help out with his care. I rocked him in his cradle — the only time British children were indulged. I prepared his bed, helped to feed him, folded his diapers, and sat in his room until he was asleep, for fear he would smother under all those eiderdowns. I wheeled him in his carriage after school, and on Saturdays and Sundays, between times. I amused him. I bathed him. It was all part of the job of living. I also won the National Gold Medal for my essay on Charles Dickens.

The Spartan Life

When I was six my father said to me, "We are going to America, and I hear it is a very foolish and uncultured country, and so I am warning you beforehand. No nonsense, when you go to school there! They indulge their children. You are not going to be indulged. You will keep yourself to yourself, as at Home. And, another thing: Every tub must stand on its own bottom. You are six years old and not a child any longer, and we have a younger child, and so you must be self-reliant — or else."

I was, too. And still am. My parents, as much as they could, carried on the Spartan life for me, and now for my brother in spite of the softness in America for The Children. I was earning my spending-money, and more, when I was eight, after I finished my school work and my chores at home. Saturday and Sunday were tough days. That meant cleaning out the furnace in the winter and carrying up ashes, ironing, mending, darning, window-washing, snow-shoveling, grass-cutting, bed-changing, glass polishing, stove-cleaning, floor scrubbing, and sundry other arduous tasks, and homework and Sunday-school, and church twice a day. At eight, I was lucky to get seven hours of sleep at night. And I got the Jesse Ketchum Medal and won prizes at school, in state competitions, for essays and short stories, and for painting and sculpture. Of course, I could never master mathematics, but as my parents were weak on the subject, too, I was Indulged in that one, but that one only.

When I was ten I was working at the local market on Saturday filling up bags and helping wait on customers. I looked all of fifteen. When I was indeed fifteen I held a full-time job as a secretary. (I had paid for my own tuition at the Hurst Business School.) After work — ten or so hours daily — I went to night high school. Sunday was my "free" day. I had a Sunday-school class of my own, then hurried home to help with dinner, wash up afterwards, make beds, prepare my clothing for the next day, work on homework, dust the upstairs thoroughly, clean up after tea, inspect the furnace and put on fresh coal, and other pleasant matters. I was usually in bed by midnight, and up at half-past five to get my father’s breakfast and mine and my brother’s, make beds, wash up, hastily glance over schoolwork for that night, and was out in the street at six-forty on the way to work. No time for loitering, you see.

In America of those days there was no time to be a "teenager," or to have the adolescent "turmoils." Yet, there were never any Unwed Mothers amongst us, and no Juvenile Delinquents among the boys. An Unwed Mother knew she would be branded for life, and was even likely to have to spend six months in jail for Public Indecency; and a Juvenile Delinquent, even at fourteen, was sent for years to a Reformatory. Yes, we knew. And, none of my schoolmates ended up on Welfare roles, even during the Great Depression, nor were any of them social workers, criminals, thieves, guidance counselors, murderers, or whiners. Our parents — even in America before the Depression — had been Tough, perhaps most not as Tough as mine, but all happily Tough enough.

Then something happened, not only in America, but in England, and that’s the trouble.

Ode to Social Consciousness

I had enlisted in the Navy when I was in my teens, during Wilson’s War, and it was thus that I was introduced to Washington, and all its waste, crime, drunkenness, street rioting — yes, race riots — arrogant officers and bureaucrats, the income tax on my small salary, and busybodies. The lawlessness and license of that dreadful White Sepulchre of a city impressed me with disgust. Prostitutes, richly clad, roamed the streets, and the judges were "tenderly lenient" even to the most terrible criminals. It was unsafe for a young woman to walk the streets at night, after a hard day’s work in a roaring government office, full of loafers, drunken officers, and open debauchery in the very government buildings. The "lovers of mankind" were already swarming into Washington.

When I applied for an honorable discharge from the Navy, I was "interviewed" tenderly by some horror of a woman, who asked me coyly, "Dear child, what is it about the Navy you don’t like?"

"People," I said. "And this damnable Washington."

This was not the right answer, I saw at once. I should have said — I found out later — that I didn’t like "militarism." Not liking "militarism" had become all the style then. "Besides," I said, "I don’t have enough to do in the office. Too much loitering, not enough work. I am bored to death. I am used to working ten hours a day. Now I work only seven. I’ve tried to go to art galleries and school at night, but I’ve been accosted almost every night I’ve walked on the streets, and so I don’t dare be out."

That was all wrong, too. Then I resorted to my last weapon. "I am married and pregnant," I said.

"At eighteen?" screamed the Tender Woman. "A child — you?"

"I’m not a child," I said. "I’m a mature woman." And, let me tell you, I sure as hell was.

I got my discharge, went home with my young husband, had my baby, and was back to work six weeks later, after hiring a babysitter, and worked again ten hours a day. When the baby was a few months old we went to the hard hills of Appalachia, living in tents and abandoned barns and cabins, while my husband searched for oil. While living in one small town I set myself up as public stenographer, and did very well, and fed the three of us adequately. I was Tough. I had been raised to be. And I was independent.

Today I hear huge, hulking men and women of the exact age I was then referring to themselves as "children" or "adolescents" and berating people older than themselves as "adults who refuse to understand Us!" Just recently a "teenage" idol named John Lennon, who is married and has a child and who specializes in idiot "music," had the imbecility to say, "I feel adults are now beginning to understand us teenagers. " He is, of course, only thirty-two. I hear people of grandfatherly age refer to themselves as "us kids." President Kennedy, at the time he was elected in 1960, was forty-three. I had two grandchildren at that age, and another on the way. I had already had several best-sellers published and considered myself — as I was — an elderly person. Yet, he was called "young"! I had my first grandchild when I was Mrs. John F. Kennedy’s present age, or a little younger, yet I hear her referred to as a "girl"! Such nonsense would be embarrassing to a people which did not worship the immature, the dependent, and the weak.

If all the softness and weakness and delayed manhood and womanhood I now see in America had led to firmer and more noble characters, to more justice and honor and principle and patriotism and virtue, to better health and longer fife, to less disease and fewer of the "retarded," to more manliness and courage among Senior Citizens, to more pride and harder work, to more intelligence and industry, to more respect for America in the world, or deeper regard for learning, I suppose I could tuck in my irritation and bear it. But it has led to the exact reverse. It has led to a nation of perpetual weepers, to weak sobbers, to timidity, to crime, to drug addiction, to degenerates on our campuses, to treason in public office and among the teaching fraternity, to gangs of thieves as young as ten years of age, to illegitimacy (one-third of all births), to widespread venereal disease (like a national epidemic, say public health officials), to judges and juries conniving to "save" the outrageous criminal, to child psychologists who corrupt our children in the elementary schools, to "enlightened sex," which has made our children into debauchees, to suicide (one of the highest rates in the world), to depraved youth, and to the approaching dissolution of our country. Worst of all, it has led to "social-conscious" clergy who have betrayed their covenant with God and man, to priests running out on the Church to marry and denounce the Rock of Ages for her "strictures," to clergy of other faiths offering not consolation and hope in their pulpits but the latest "Civil Rights" madness, and marching in the streets. It is all so insane! It is as if the Republic were hell-bent on suicide.

Thank God for Tough Parents

For most of my life I had pitied myself for having parents who were Tough, and being "deprived" of "tender, loving care" in my babyhood and childhood, and, in fact, all my life. When I’d hear people shout that they had enjoyed Lovely Childhoods I used to envy them — until I began to observe how many of these were very wretched people; often sour, hard-hearted, cynical, unsympathetic, tight with a copper, uncharitable, and even brutal. I could not reconcile this with the Lovely Childhoods filled with adoring Papas and Mamas. Being a very curious person I investigated. Sure enough, my odd specimens proved to have had wonderful and loving parents. I began to think that maybe that was the trouble with them. Perhaps when they encountered Real Life and the Real World they discovered it was not going to adore them, pamper them, treat them like royalty, and smile indulgently at their tantrums nor cater to them. If the World wouldn’t worship them like Papa and Mama, then, by God! they were going to make that damned World suffer one way or another!

On the other hand, some of the kindest, gentlest, bravest, and most considerate people I know had brutish, alcoholic fathers who beat them without provocation, mothers who were tramps and who deserted their children, and suffered hunger and cold and broken homes during their "formative" years. Many earned their own living almost from infanthood. Needless to say, none of these valuable and decent people of my acquaintance are "Liberals." They know the score. They are not out, as are the "Liberals," to make the whole world into one warm playpen for themselves and others, with "tender, loving hands" always ready with creamy gruel and toys and cosy pillows upon which to flounce. They know that adversity is the fire which tempers the steel of human character, and without that fire a man is not a man but a human pudding, full of sweet raisins and vanilla, and about as strong as a custard in his character. Such a man will rarely be driven to defend honor and principle, those iron virtues, for he will resent such things as brutal anachronisms devised by a stupid and obsolete civilization to restrain his sacred little psyche. By creating such human puddings, the past two or three generations of Americans have made eunuchs of their sons — now afflicting us in government and on the campuses — and Butches of their daughters, or at least slovens with dirty feet. Americans have been smothering their children with the syrup of "tender, loving care" instead of driving character into their backs like a ramrod.

When I survey the present scene I am not only appalled, but I thank God that my parents were Tough, and now I heartfully forgive their Toughness. I wish to God there were tens of millions of parents in America just like them! Unless we soon have them, we are done for as a nation.

A Solemn Plea

Take a hard look at your children, friends. If they are five or older set them to work in your houses after school and all day Saturday. See that they are well employed on Sundays at church, and in the house, and finishing up homework. By the time they are ten they should be doing gainful work in the neighborhood at something or other. When they reach puberty, tell them they are no longer children but are young adults. They should be working after school somewhere, to take up all that free time they have. Inspect their schools and talk harshly to the Children-Lovers. Talk harshly to the School Boards, too. Study your clergyman, and remove your family from his influence if he is all for the Social Gospel, and find a man who talks of the Eternal Verities only. If you can afford it — and even if not — remove them from the ghastly, Godless public schools and send them to sound private ones. Teach them respect for you and their God above all other things. Tell them that this world is only a way-station to eternity and time is precious and not for "fun." Teach them to be men and women in the real world. Be Tough!

Do all this, unless you prefer the coming barbarism and the Long Night of death and misery. It happened to other nations in the past, nations like ourselves, and it will happen to us. It is your choice. After all, you let America get into this condition. Now, help get her out.

Taylor Caldwell (1900-1985) was a best-selling author with millions of loyal readers. She wrote over 30 novels, including Dear and Glorious Physician, Great Lion of God, A Pillar of Iron, and Captains and the Kings. This article originally appeared in the September 1967 issue of American Opinion, a predecessor to THE NEW AMERICAN.