Before Womanhood : Part 1

Woman and Womanhood: A Search for Principles
by C. W. Saleeby, M.D.

(Page 7 of 23)

We have seen that the gender of the individual is already determined as early as any other of his or her characters, though the realization of the potentialities of that gender may be much modified by nurture, as in the contrasted cases of the queen bee and the worker bee. Children, then, are already of one gender or other, and though our business in the present volume is not childhood of either gender, a few points are worth noting before we take up the consideration of the individual at the period when the distinctive characteristics of gender make their effective appearance.

Despite the abundance of the material and the opportunities for observation, we are at present without decisive evidence as to the distinctiveness of gender in any effective way during childhood. Here, as elsewhere, we have to guard ourselves against the influences of nurture in the widest sense of the word; as when, to take an extreme case, we distinguish between the boy and the girl because the hair of the one is cut and of the other is not. The natural, as distinguished from the nurtural, distinctions at this period are probably much fewer than is supposed. It is asserted - to take physical characters first - that the girl of ten gives out in breathing considerably less carbonic acid than her brother of the same age.

Therefore foreshadowing the difference between the genders which is recognized in later years. If this fact be critically established it is of very great interest, showing that the gender distinction effectively makes its presence felt in the most essential processes of the body. But we should require to be satisfied that the observations were sufficiently numerous, and were made under absolutely equal conditions, and with due allowance for difference in body-weight. They would be the more credible if it were also shown that the number of the red blood corpuscles were smaller in girls than in boys in parallel with the difference between the genders in later years.

Children of both genders have fewer red blood corpuscles in a given quantity of blood and a smaller proportion of the red coloring matter, or hemoglobin, than adults. Women have very definitely fewer red blood corpuscles than men, and a smaller proportion of hemoglobin, and their blood is more watery. According to one authority this difference in the hemoglobin can be observed from the ages of eleven to fifty, but not before. The specific gravity of the blood is found to be the same in both genders before the fifteenth year. Thereafter, that of the boy's blood rises, and between seventeen and forty-five is definitely higher than in women of the corresponding age.

Therefore seems quite clear that, as we should expect, these differences in the blood, which are certainly, as Dr. Havelock Ellis says, fundamental, make their appearance definitely at puberty - a fact which supports the view that fundamental differences of practical importance between the two genders before that age are not to be found. Careful comparative study of the pulse of children is hitherto somewhat inconclusive, though it is well known that the pulse is more rapid in women than in men.

On the other hand, it seems clear as regards respiration that as early as the age of twelve there are definite differences between the genders. Several thousands of American school children were examined, and between the ages of six and nineteen the boys were throughout superior in lung capacity. The girls had almost reached their maximum capacity at the age of twelve, and thereafter the difference, till then slight, rapidly increased. It appears that from eight to fifteen years of age a boy burns more carbon than a girl, the difference, however, being not great. But at puberty the boy proceeds to consume very nearly twice as much carbon per hour as his sister.

Perhaps the matter need not be pursued further. It is sufficient for us to recognize that puberty is really the critical time, and that in the consideration of womanhood we may, on the whole, be justified in looking upon the problem of the girl before that age as almost identical with her brother's. Yet we must be reasonably cautious, since our knowledge is small, and there is some by no means negligible evidence of fundamental physiological differences between the genders before puberty, relatively slight though these may be. Therefore, though on the whole we need make few distinctions between the girl and her brother, and though we are doubtless wrong in the magnitude of the practical distinctions which we have often made hitherto, yet we must remember that these are going to be different beings, and that the main principles which determine our nurture of womanhood may be recalled when we are doubtful as to practice in the care of the girl child.

Physiological distinctions, we have seen, probably exist during these early years, but are of less importance than we sometimes have attached to them, and of no importance at all compared with what is to come. Psychological distinctions, we may believe, are still more dubious. For instance, it is generally believed that the parental instinct shows itself much more markedly in girls than in boys, and the commonly observed history of the liking for dolls is quoted in this connection. As this instinct bears so profoundly upon the later life of the individual, and as we may reasonably suppose the child to be the mother of the woman as well as the father of the man, the matter is worth looking at a little further.

Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co., New York.
Copyright 1911 by Mitchell Kennerley.