The Rights of Mothers : Part 7

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

(Page 25 of 28)

That is why I seek to draw attention to the rights not of women as women, - for neither men nor women have any peculiar rights as men or women - nor yet to the rights of wives as wives, but to the rights of mothers as mothers, whether married or unmarried, whether husbanded or widowed. The rights of women are the rights of human beings, and no special concern of a writer on woman and womanhood, paradoxical as the assertion may be. The rights of wives are often discussed, but I question whether the discussion ever helped a wife yet, except solely in the matter of her monetary claims upon her husband. Discussion and public opinion and consequent legislation can effect, and have effected, something for wives as wives in this matter. In other matters, much more vital to their happiness, each case is unique because all individuals are unique; and the discussion of the questions can amount to no more than futile and obvious platitude.

But when motherhood is concerned the monetary question becomes worthy of the adjective economic, so often prostituted, for the making of future life depends upon the provision of adequate means. The whole essence of motherhood is that it is a dedication of the present to the future. Every mother is in the position of the inventor or the poet or the musician for whose work the present makes no demand and no payment. The future is being served, but the future is not there to pay. The rights of mothers are the rights of the future, and its claims upon the present.

It can be abundantly shown that increasing prevision or provision marks the ascent of organic Nature; that as life ascends the present is more and more dedicated to the future. The completeness of this dedication is the most exemplary fact of the many which the bee-hive provides for our instruction and following. Consider the dedication of the hive to the queen. Realize that she is not in any way the ruler of the hive, but she is the only mother in it. She is the parent, and, on our principles, she is therefore the most important person in the hive. No one else has any rights but to serve her, for the future absolutely depends upon her. So does the future of our society depend upon its mothers. In our species there are many and not one, as in the bee-hive.

If there were just one individual who was to be the mother of the next generation, even our politicians would perceive that she was the most important person in the community, and that her rights were supreme. But the principle stands, though, as it happens, human mothers are not one in each generation, but many. They are in our society what the queen bee is in the hive, and the future will transcend the present and the past just in so far as they are well-chosen, and well cared for.

To the best of my belief this principle has not yet been recognized by any one. The rights of women and the rights of wives are often discussed, but the rights of mothers is a term expressing a principle which is not to be called new, only because in the bee-hive, for instance, we see it expressed and inerrably served.

Perhaps it may be permitted to close with a personal reminiscence which, at any rate, bears on the genesis of this chapter. Some nine years ago when I was resident-surgeon to the Edinburgh Maternity Hospital, I proposed to get up a concert for the patients on Boxing Day, and on asking permission of the distinguished obstetrician who was in supreme charge, was met with the question, "Do they deserve it?" After several seconds there slowly dawned the fact which I knew but had long forgotten, that the mothers in the large ward where the music was proposed, were all unmarried, and finally I answered, "I don't know." Nor do I know to this day, and though the answer was given in weakness and in a disconcerted voice, I doubt whether any wiser one could be framed.

We all know what desert means, and merit and credit, until we begin to think and study: and we end by discovering that we do not know what, in the last analysis, these terms mean. But, at any rate, these women, - one of them, I remember, was a child of fourteen - were mothers, and whatever favored their convalescence unquestionably made for the survival of their babies. It might have been argued that if the patients did not deserve music, they did not deserve the air and light and food and skill and kindness with which they were being restored to health. But it is not a question of deserts. These women were mothers. If they should not have been, they should not have been, and if the blame was theirs, they were blameworthy. But mothers they were, with the duties of mothers to perform, and therefore with the rights of mothers. They got their concert and were all the better for the remarkably indifferent music of which it consisted, as such concerts commonly do; and I am only very sorry if any of them argued therefore that she had nothing in the past to regret.

But the spiritual attitude revealed in the question, "Do they deserve it?" is one which must speedily go to its own place. Let us strive to dignify marriage, to educate the young of both genders for parenthood, to reduce illegitimacy, to reward virtue. But where there is motherhood in being, whether expectant or achieved, we have a duty which is the highest and most sacred of all because it is the Future that we are called upon to serve, and upon us it wholly depends.

As Mr. John Burns said to our first Infant Mortality Conference in Great Britain in 1907, "Let us dignify, purify and glorify motherhood by every means in our power." Evidently this can only be done through marriage, which is in its very essence an institution for the dignifying of motherhood. But a biological writer cannot distinguish as a theologian can between legal and extra-legal motherhood. He may declare that motherhood is hideously illegitimate when it is forced upon a wife married to an inebriate degenerate. He may accept marriage with all his heart as an institution which for him has natural sanctions millions of years older than any Church or State or mankind itself. But for him as a student of life all motherhood must be guarded as such - even if it be guarded in such a fashion that it can never recur, which is our duty to the feeble-minded mother.

If there be any reader who is unacquainted with M. Maeterlinck's "Life of the Bee," let him or her study that instructive book. Let him ask why the queen is the End of the hive, why all is for her. Let him ask whether the natural law upon which this depends - the law that all individuals are mortal - does not apply to all races, even our own, and perhaps he will come to agree that the rights of mothers are the oldest and deepest and most necessary of any rights that can be named.

And the recognition and granting of them - as they must necessarily be recognized and granted in every living race that depends upon motherhood - is even more imperative in our case than in any other, since human motherhood makes more demands upon the individual than any other. By our constitution we human beings must devote more of our energies to the Future than any other race. But it is a Future better worth working for than any of theirs.

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