The Rights of Mothers : Part 2

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

(Page 20 of 28)

In the light of this fact the great argument of presidents and bishops, politicians and journalists, moralists and social censors generally is that somehow or other this decline must be arrested. To all of which one replies, for the thousand and first time, that, whatever it ought to be, it will not be arrested; that the really moral policy, the really human one, and the only possible one, is to take care of the children that are born. Then when we have abolished our infant and child mortality and have solved the substantial problem of finding room for all new-comers, having ceased to far more than decimate them, we may begin cautiously to suggest that perhaps if the birth-rate were slightly to rise we might be able to cope with the product. At present the disgraceful fact is not the birth-rate, but what we do with the birth-rate; though more disgraceful perhaps are the blindness and ignorance and assurance of the host of commentators in high places who waste their time and ours in animadverting upon a fact - the falling birth-rate - which is a necessary condition and consequence of organic progress, while the motherhood we have is so urgently in need of protection and idealization in the minds of the people.

We have reached the conclusion that all motherhood is to be protected. This means that from some source or other the money should be forthcoming for the maintenance of the mother and her children. For, in the first place, the children are not to work because, if they do, they will not be able to work as they should in the future. The State cannot afford to let them work. Further, the proper care of childhood is so continuous and exacting a task, and of such supreme moment, that it is the highest and foremost work that can be named; and therefore, in the second place, she whose business it is must not be hampered by having to do anything else. If any laborer is worthy of his hire, she is. Her economic security must be absolute. She must be as safe as the Bank of England, because England and its banks stand or fall with her. In the rightly constituted State, if there be any one at all whose provision and maintenance are absolutely secure, it will be the mothers. Whoever else has financial anxiety, they should have none.

Any State that can afford to exist can afford to see to this. No economist can inform me what proportion of the labor and resources of England are at this moment devoted to the means of life, and what proportion to superfluities, luxuries and the means of death. But it is a very simple matter with which the reader, who is doubtless a better arithmetician than I am, may amuse himself, to estimate the number of married women of reproductive age in the community, and allowing anything in reason for illegitimate motherhood and nothing at all for infertile wives, to satisfy himself that the total cost which would be involved in the adequate care of motherhood, is a mere fraction of the national expenditure. Few of us realize how extraordinary and how unprecedented is the margin of security for existence which modern civilization affords. A savage community may have scarcely any margin at all. The same may be true of many primitive communities which cannot be called savage.

They maintain life under such conditions, whether in Greenland or in a thousand other parts of the world, that they cannot afford to labor for anything which is not bread. The primary necessities of existence take all their getting. Some transient accident of weather or the balance of Nature in the sea or in the fields imperils the existence of the whole community. They, at any rate, are wise enough to take good care of their women and children. But in civilization we have an enormous margin of security. Not only are we dependent on no local crop or harvest, but the getting of necessities has become so effective and secure that we are able to spend a vast amount of our time and energy on the production of luxuries and evils. How little, then, is our excuse if we fail to provide the first conditions for continuance and progress!

Our first principles of the value of the child and therefore of motherhood are unchallengeable, nor will anyone nowadays be found to question that neither children nor mothers should work in the ordinary sense of that word, since the proper work of children who are to work well when they grow up is play, and since the mother's natural work is the most important that she can perform. It remains, then, for us to determine by whom mothers and children in the modern and future State are to be provided for.

The conditions of mothers are various, and we should best approach the problem by the consideration of different cases.

The simplest is that of the widowed mother who is without means. It is only too common a case, and we have already seen certain causes which contribute to the enormous number of widows in the community. Men do not live as long as women, and men are older when they marry. These natural causes of widowhood, as they may be called, are greatly aggravated by the destructive influence of alcohol upon fatherhood, as will be shown in the chapter dealing with alcohol and womanhood.

On the individualistic theory of the State, a theory so brutal and so impracticable that no one consistently upholds it, the widow's misfortune is her private affair, but does not really concern us. Her husband should have provided for her. Indeed she should, and indeed we should have seen that he did. But if he and we failed in our duty to her, the consequences must be met. The hour is at hand when the State will discover that children are its most precious possessions, more precious as they grow scarcer, and efficient support will then be forthcoming, as a matter of course, for the widowed mother and her children. The feature which will distinguish this support from any past or present provision will be that it recognizes the natural sanctity and the natural economy of the relation between mother and children. It will be agreed not merely that the children must be provided for, but that they must be provided for through her. The current device is to divorce mother and children. "Whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder," is quoted by many against the divorce of a married pair whom, as is plain, not God but the devil has joined together; but the principle of that quotation verily applies to the natural and divine association of mother and children.

If, then, the State is to provide in future for all widowed mothers and their children, husbands need no longer trouble to insure or make provision for them. Such is the proper criticism. The reply to it is that the State will have to see to it that, in future, husbands do take this trouble. To this we should return.

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