Manuscript Releases, vol. 7 [Nos. 419-525]

Children Seven Years Old Can be Taught Useful Labor

Some mothers dislike the discipline it gives them patiently to teach their children how to do little duties and cultivate in them a love for these duties, which love shall grow up with them. Some think children of seven and eight years old are too young to have their tasks assigned to them in sewing, in washing dishes, in mending neatly their own garments, in making beds, and sweeping and dusting. But to let the children grow up unused to these important habits of useful labor, with the thought that they will take to it by and by, is a sad mistake. These duties neglected in childhood will be found in youth and womanhood an irksome task, and the child that with proper training might mature into a pleasant, useful woman will, by occupation, be turned into a drudge.—Manuscript 4, 1876, 14. (“Testimony to E. H. Gaskill and Wife,” circa 1876.) 7MR 3.1