The Rights of Mothers : Part 6

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

(Page 24 of 28)

The working-out will be that the legislation of the future will benefit the right kind of husband and father, but will restrain and irk the wrong kind. But that is precisely what good legislation should do. Therefore the right kind of father, who in any case will do his best to care for his wife and children, will be helped in the future by the State. It will insist that he does the duty which in any case he means to do, but it will make the doing easier. We see admirably working parallels to this in the German insurance laws and their provision for death, disease and old age. They benefit those whom they appear to harass. Insurance against fatherhood will work in the same way. The State will not be antagonistic to the father, but will be his best friend, knowing that its best friends are good fathers and mothers. There will be far less worry and anxiety for well-meaning parents, especially for mothers, but also for fathers. Nor do I, for one, much mind how substantial may be the State's contribution to the father's efforts, provided only that those efforts are demanded and obtained.

Nothing is more certain than that we are about to free ourselves from the crass blindness of the nineteenth century in its great delusion that the wealth of a nation consists in the number of things it makes and possesses. Parenthood and childhood will shortly come to be recognized as the first concern of the State that is to continue, and while the birth-rate continues to fall, the honor paid to fathers and mothers will continue to rise. We should become as wise in time as the Jews have been ever since we have record of them. We should estimate the relative value of these things as well as if we were the kinds of people we call "Savages." Fatherhood will not be such an uncompensated sacrifice in those days, even apart from its inherent rewards.

The point I am trying to make is that the legislation and the social changes here advocated as necessary in the interests of women, and indeed asserted to be their rights, do not involve any injury to men. This common delusion is a mere instance of the poisonous principle of politicians, notably fiscal politicians, and of many business men. Their belief is that what benefits Germany must hurt England, that what hurts Germany must benefit England, that all trade is a question of somebody scoring off another or being scored off. The idea that there are great games in which both sides stand to win, if they "play the game," is meaningless to them. That German prosperity can favor English prosperity, that true commerce is a mutual exchange for mutual benefit - these are notions obviously absurd to people who think on this horrible assumption which reigns unchallenged in a thousand columns of fiscal controversy every morning. And when these people turn to the question of legislation as between the genders, they naturally assume that anything which promises to benefit women will injure men. The vote i. Therefore regarded as a means of injuring men - necessarily, because it advantages women - and assuredly such people will suppose that any measures in the direction of granting what I here prefer to call the "rights of mothers" (leaving to one side the "rights of women"), necessarily involve a proportionate disadvantage to men. I deny it utterly:

The woman's cause is man's: they rise or sink
Together, dwarfed or God-like, bond or free.

The rights of mothers, we have seen, are fundamental for any society, and to satisfy them is to meet the most clearly primary of social needs. But there will be some readers of this book, perhaps, who miss any discussion of the "rights of women." I do not care for the phrase, because I do not think that we often see it usefully employed. For me the propositions are self-evident that men and women, being human beings, have the rights of human beings. Each of us has the right to the conditions of the most complete self-development and expression that is compatible with the granting of the same right to others.

It is true that women have been largely debarred from these conditions as a gender, and in so far there is some meaning in the phrase "Women's rights." But otherwise we all agree that men and women alike have the right which has just been stated in terms that are a paraphrase of Herbert Spencer's definition of liberty. Men's rights and women's rights are the rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." If any one disputes the application of this principle to women as unreservedly as to men, I will not argue with him. I write for decent people.

At this stage in the development of civilization, our business is to see, first, that our social proceedings and reconstructions of enterprises are compatible with the nature of the human individual, male and female. It is always necessary for us to be reminded of the facts of the individual, for in the last resort they will determine the failure or the success of all our schemes. And then we must see where our existing social structure fails to satisfy the needs of individual development and of individual duty. In seeking to rectify what may here be wrong, of course we must take first things first - we must set the case right for the most important people before we go on to the others.

Now it is the simple, obvious truth, - so obvious and unchallengeable that somehow it has never been stated - that in any human society the parents are the most important people. The division is not between education and the lack of it, or wealth and the lack of it, or breeding and the lack of it. It is not the aristocracy that matters supremely; nor the "great middle-class"; nor the masses; nor the teachers; nor the doctors; nor the servants of modern industrialism. The classification is a biological one - into parents and non-parents. The non-parents may be invaluable in their way, if only they beget something that is valuable. Heaven forbid that I should undervalue the children of the mind.

But if we are to classify any nation, the first and last classification of any moment is none of those in which we always indulge and which all our customs and traditions and prejudices are ever seeking to perpetuate; but the classification into those who will die childless and those who create the future race. That is why, for me at any rate, the subject of women's rights is jejune and sterile compared with the subject of this chapter. First let us ascertain the rights of mothers and grant them, to the very uttermost; then let us do the same for the fathers. Let us exact of each the corresponding duties; and the next generation, brought into being under such conditions, will solve all our problems. But while we neglect the first things we should permanently solve no problem at all. We may seem to do so, but if we dishonor parenthood, if we leave the inferior women to mother the future, the degenerate race that must ensue will find itself in difficulties compared with which ours are trivial, and our solutions of them impotent.

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