The Rights of Mothers : Part 4

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

(Page 22 of 28)

At all times the community has been entitled to say this to the father. It is even more entitled to say so now, when, as everyone knows, parenthood has come so entirely under the sway of human volition. The more knowledge and power the more responsibility. The more important the deed, the more responsible must we hold the doer. The time has come when fatherhood, whether within marriage or without it, must be reckoned a deliberate, provident, foreseen, all-important, responsible act, for which the father must always be held to account.

On a recent public occasion, having endeavored to show that the history of animal evolution teaches us the increasing importance and dignity of fatherhood, I was asked whether I had any argument in favor of parental responsibility. To this the fitting reply seemed to be that, primarily, I believe in parental responsibility because I believe in human responsibility. It need hardly be said that the questioner belonged to that important political party which loathes the idea of paternal responsibility and styles it a "fetish." Without it none of us would be here. Yet the Socialists are less likely than any other party to abandon the idea of human responsibility. They propose to hold men responsible for the remoter effects of their acts - upon the present - as no other party does.

The maker of money is held to account for his deeds and their effect upon the life around him. I agree with the principle: but I maintain that the maker of men is also to be held to account for his deeds and their effect upon the future and the life of this world to come. No Socialist can afford to question the practical political principle that men are to be held responsible for their deeds: and no Socialist can explain the sudden and unexplained abandonment of this principle when we come to the most important of all a man's deeds. To be consistent, the Socialist should uphold the doctrine of a man's responsibility for the remoter consequences of his acts in this supreme sphere, more earnestly and thoughtfully and providently than any of his opponents.

The position of those who would free the father from responsibility is even less defensible when, as we commonly find, they are prepared to make the mother's responsibility more extensive and less avoidable than ever. Why this distinction? And if parental responsibility is a "fetish" when it refers to a father, why is it not the same when it refers to a mother? In the schemes of Mr. H. G. Wells, kaleidoscopic in their glitter and inconsistency, there remains from year to year this one permanent element, that while the mother must attend to her business, it is no business of the father. This is the essential feature, the one novelty of his scheme. Already the married mother - he proposes nothing for the unmarried mother - is legally entitled to some measure of support. His endowment of motherhood is essentially a discharge of fatherhood, and should be so called. There can be no compromise, nothing but a fight to the finish, between the principle of endowing motherhood by making fatherhood less responsible, and the principle here fought for, of endowing motherhood by making fatherhood more responsible.

As Nature has been doing so, in the main line of progress for many millions of years, - a statement not of interpretation or theory but of observed fact - I have no fear of the ultimate issue. But it might well be that any portion of mankind, perhaps a portion ill to be spared, should destroy itself by an attempt to run counter to the great principle of progress here stated. There is an abundance of men who will be very happy to side with Mr. Wells. Men have never been wanting, in any time or place, who were happy to gratify their instincts without having to answer for the consequences; and it has always been the first issue of any society that was to endure, to see that they did not have their way: hence human marriage.

The "endowment of motherhood" sounds as if it were a scheme greatly for the benefit of women. Let them beware. Let them begin to think of, not the remoter, but the immediate and obvious consequences of any such schemes as are proffered by the overt or covert enemies of marriage, and they will quickly perceive that the last way in which to secure the rights of women is to abrogate the duties of men. The support allotted to such schemes as these is not feminine but masculine. That is the impression I derive from discussions following lectures on the subject; and that is what I should expect, judging from the natural tendencies of men, and the profound intuition of women in such matters. And, conversely, the opposition to such principles as are expressed here, and embodied in the "Women's Charter," will be masculine. But woman has been civilizing man from the beginning, and she will have her way here also - for, in the last resort, not merely youth, but the Unborn must be served.

Before we consider the alternative suggestions that some are making, and proceed to indicate how the paternal endowment of motherhood can be enforced in every class, as public opinion practically enforces it in the upper and middle classes, let us meet the objection that, if fatherhood is to be made so serious an act, and if so much self-sacrifice is to be exacted from those who undertake it, the marriage-rate and the birth-rate will fall more rapidly. And as regards the marriage-rate, the answer is that marriage and parenthood are not inseparable, a proposition which might be much amplified if a writer who wishes to be heard could afford to have the courage of everybody's convictions. But already, in the middle classes, men limit their families to the number they can support. They simply practice responsible fatherhood, and the mothers and children are protected. On what moral grounds this is to be condemned, no one has yet told us.

And as regards the effect of more stringent responsibility for fatherhood upon the birth-rate, it must be replied, for the thousandth time in this connection, that the question for a nation is not how many babies are born, but how many survive. The idea of a baby is that it should grow up and become a citizen; if babies remained babies people would soon cease to complain about the fall in the birth-rate. But, in point of fact, a vast number of babies and children are unnecessarily slain, and if we could suddenly arrest the whole of this slaughter, the increase of population would become so formidable that everyone would deplore the unmanageable height of the birth-rate. Its present fall is quite incapable of arrest, and is perfectly compatible with as rapid an increase of population as any one could desire. We must arrest the destruction of so much of the present birth-rate, so that it means not for the future. By nothing else will this arrest be so accelerated as by those very measures for making fatherhood more responsible for the care of motherhood, which are here advocated. Let it be freely granted that these measures will lower the birth-rate. Much more will they lower the infant mortality and child death-rate, and diminish the permanent damaging of vast multitudes of children who escape actual destruction.

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