by Elsie Lincoln Benedict
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Any student of Human Analysis would have recognized that of this quartet of children not one was being directed into the right vocation. He would have seen that the square-jawed Muscular Jimmie would make a much better lawyer than a minister; that little Johnnie should be a teacher or a lecturer; that fat Georgie was born for business instead of medicine; and that Helen had more ability than any of her brothers.
¶ Too many parents have gone on the theory that belonging to the female sex was a sure indication of home-making, mothering, housekeeping abilities.
The commercial world is full of women who have starved, wasted and shriveled their lives away behind counters, desks and typewriters when they were meant for motherhood and wifehood.
The homes of the land are also full of women who, with the brains and effort they have given to scrubbing, washing and cooking, could have become "captains of industry."
¶ If you are a parent don't allow yourself to set your heart on any particular line of work for your children. Your child is a sealed parcel and only his own tendencies, as they appear during youth, can tell what that parcel really contains.
Allow these traits to unfold naturally, normally and freely. Don't complicate your own problem by trying to advise him too soon. Don't praise certain professions. Children are intensely suggestible. The knowledge that father and mother consider a certain profession especially desirable oftentimes influences a child to waste time working toward it when he has no real ability for it. Every hour of youth is precious and this wastage is unspeakably expensive.
On the other hand, do not attempt to prejudice your child against any profession. Don't let him think, for instance, that you consider overalls a badge of inferiority, or a white collar the mark of superiority. Many a man in blue denim today could buy and sell the collar-and-cuff friends of his earlier years. The size of a man's laundry bill is no criterion of his income.
¶ Other parents make the equally foolish mistake of showing their dislike of certain professions. Not long ago we heard a father say in the presence of his large family, "I don't want any of my boys to be lawyers. Lawyers are all liars. Ministers are worse; they're all a bunch of Sissies. Doctors are all fakes. Actors are all bad eggs; and business is one big game of cheat or be cheated. I'm going to see that every boy I've got becomes a farmer."
¶ A very unfortunate case came to our attention several years ago. In Chicago a mother brought her eighteen-year-old son to us for vocational counsel. "I am determined that James shall be a minister," she said. "My whole happiness depends upon it. I have worked, slaved and sacrificed ever since his father died that he might have the education for it. Now I want you to tell James to be a minister."
We refused to take the case, explaining that our analyses didn't come to order but had to fit the facts as we found them. She still insisted upon the analysis. It revealed the fact that James was deficient mentally, save in one thing. His capacity for observing was lightning-like in its swiftness and microscopic in its completeness. And his capacity for judging remote motives from immediate actions was uncannily accurate.
He was a human ferret, as had been proven many times during his boyhood. At one time the jewelry store in which he worked as a shipping clerk lost a valuable necklace, and after the police of Chicago had failed to find a clew, James' special ability was reported and he was given a week's vacation to work on the case. He took the last three days for a long-desired trip to Milwaukee. He had landed the thief in the first four. We told the mother that her boy's ability was about the farthest removed from the ministerial that could well be imagined, but that he would make an excellent detective.
"I shall never permit it!" she cried. "His father was a policeman. I distrust that whole class of people! I am taking James to the theological seminary tomorrow"?and away she went with him. Two months later she came to us in great distress. She had received a letter from the Dean saying James had attended but one day's classes. Then he had announced that he was going home. Instead he had cultivated a gang of underworld crooks for the purpose of investigating their methods and had gotten into serious trouble.
