However, even the more distinguished and well-to-do parents are still too negligent and unconcerned in this respect. Frequently, one relies too much on the wet nurse or child minder, oneself looking after the small and older children much too little as one worries that domestic duties will suffer because of it, or that one would have to do without any amusements away from home. Yet I am aware of many a praiseworthy exception to this; even in our parts, there are mothers who strive to fulfill the entire extent of their duties even in this respect, only parting company from the children reluctantly in the most extreme emergency. As much as they deserve praise on this account, they, too, sometimes err in this respect in two ways. Either they are too timid and worried regarding their children’s health; they keep them away from the open air, for which every child strives instinctively, immediately fearing the most dangerous consequences from any stiff breeze; they pamper the children more yet in the case of even the most insignificant indispositions, tormenting them with medicines etc. However, this is precisely a method by which they deprive the children of their health, shaping them into greenhouse plants that in future will become a burden on society. Alternatively, they are equally unable to stay away from pleasures and their beloved children, taking them along to social gatherings, meetings, concerts, plays, balls, and masquerades, only to have them under their supervision all the time; in this, though, they do not consider how little they are capable of carrying out this good intention, and how easily on such occasions their children are not only corrupted morally but also suffer damage to their bodies, falling down, becoming hot or catching cold, especially when in the course of balls even small children are granted admission to every dance.
As much as such mothers may err, however, they do err with good intentions, betraying at least by their behavior that they know how necessary good supervision is to children. Of this fact, by contrast, there seems to be no awareness at all among those mothers who leave their children entirely to the wet nurses and child minders, or they have probably stifled their sense of duty toward them already. [ . . . ] In that case, however, it happens quite often that the parents find their child, whom they left in good health, in a sick state, having to call the doctor, who in turn only rarely learns about the true cause of the illness, unless his knowledge of the family directs him to suspect it.
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