The Pittsburgh Press (April 26, 1941)
‘EDUCATING’ GRANDMA
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
The women of this country are harassed by experts who swarm over the place like a plague of locusts. They tell us exactly what to do at every moment of the day or night – and how to do it.
If you can hear and read, you are beset through papers, magazines, movies and radio by hordes of professionals in all fields giving advice about the most trifling details of your life.
They tell you how to hang your curtains, wash the spinach, clean the kitchen drain, select a corset, wear a cape, slim down or fatten up; how to manage your husband, rear your children, write your club paper, treat your neighbors; how to garden, set the table, put on makeup, keep up with the Joneses and deal with the servant problem. They instruct you in the behavior befitting a good daughter, sweetheart, wife, mother and mother-in-law.
One might think they could stop there, but evidently they have no respect for gray hairs, for now comes an announcement from New York City that classes for grandmothers are being set up so the old dears can learn how to deal with Junior and his Papa and Mama.
Thus the feminine world is invaded from another quarter. For 50 years or more, the experts have hammered us with advice on managing men – and the creatures still are completely out of hand. Then they turned their attention to the mothers-in-law of the land, bringing endless humiliation and suffering to hundreds of thousands of well-meaning souls who are now derided and maligned because the suspicion and animosity of a nation has been aroused against them.
Grandma, it seems, is to be the next victim. One higher-powered expert says:
Naturally, the woman who had brought several children into the world feels qualified to give a little advice.
Naturally, but experts who are long on theory and think very little of experience are going to stop that if possible. To them, Grandma is merely a foolish addle pate muddling her way out.
All right, but what about Grandpa? Isn’t he an old nuisance, too?