PREPARATION FOR PARENTHOOD.
"If a merchant commenced business without any knowledge of
arithmetic and book-keeping, we should exclaim at his folly and
look for disastrous consequences. Or if, before studying anatomy,
a man set up as a surgical operator, we should wonder at his
audacity and pity his patients. But that parents should begin the
difficult task of rearing children without ever having given a
thought to the principles--physical, moral, or
intellectual--which ought to guide them, excites neither surprise
at the actors nor pity for their victims."--_Herbert Spencer._
Whether as bearing on the happiness of parents themselves, or as
affecting the characters and lives of their children, a knowledge of the
right methods of juvenile culture--physical, intellectual, and moral--is
a knowledge of extreme importance. This topic should be the final one in
the course of instruction passed through by each man and woman, but it
is entirely neglected.
"If by some strange chance," says Mr. Herbert Spencer, "not a vestige of
us descended to the remote future save a pile of our school-books or
some college examination papers, we may imagine how puzzled an antiquary
of the period would be on finding in them no sign that the learners were
ever likely to be parents. "This must have been the _curriculum_ for
their celibates," we may fancy him concluding: "I perceive here an
elaborate preparation for many things, but I find no reference whatever
to the bringing up of children." They could not have been so absurd as
to omit all training for this gravest of responsibilities. Evidently,
then, this was the school-course of one of their monastic orders."
Parents go into their office with zeal and good intentions, but without
any better knowledge than that which is supplied by the chances of
unreasoning custom, impulse, fancy, joined with the suggestions of
ignorant nurses and the prejudiced counsel of grandmothers. "Against
stupidity the gods themselves are powerless!" We all understand that
some kind of preparation is necessary for the merchant, the soldier, the
surgeon, or even for making coats and boots; but for the great
responsibility of parenthood all preparation is ignored, and people
begin the difficult task of rearing children without ever having given a
thought to the principles that ought to guide them.
How fatal are the results! Who shall say how many early deaths of
children and enfeebled constitutions, implying moral and intellectual
weakness, are caused by ignorance on the part of parents of the
commonest laws of life? Every one can think of illustrations. Our
clothing is, in reference to the temperature of the body, merely an
equivalent for a certain amount of food, for by diminishing the loss of
heat, it diminishes the amount of fuel needful for maintaining heat.
Those parents cannot be aware of this who give their children scanty
clothing in order to harden them, or who only allow a dawdling walk
beside a grown-up person instead of the boisterous play which all young
animals require and which would produce warmth.
Fathers who pride themselves on taking prizes at cattle-shows for their
sheep and pigs are not at all ashamed never to ascertain the best kind
of food for feeding children. They do not care if their children are fed
with monotonous food, though change of diet is required for the
preservation of health.
And then as to the intellects of children. Ignorance puts books into
their hands full of abstract matter in those early years when the only
lessons they are capable of learning are those taught by concrete
objects. Not knowing that a child's restless observation and sense of
wonder are for a few years its best instructors, parents endeavour to
occupy its attention with dull abstractions. It is no wonder that few
grown-up people know anything about the beauties and wonders of nature.
During those years when the child should have been spelling out nature's
primer and pleasurably exercising his powers of observation, grammar,
languages, and other abstract studies have occupied most of his
attention. Having been "presented with a universal blank of nature's
works" he learns to see everything through books, that is, through other
men's eyes, and the greater part of his knowledge in after life consists
of mere words.
We are aware that it will provoke laughter to hint that for the proper
bringing up of children a knowledge of the elementary principles of
physiology, psychology, and ethics are indispensable. May we not,
however, hold up this ideal of Mr. Herbert Spencer to ourselves and to
others? "Here are," he says, "the indisputable facts: that the
development of children in mind and body follows certain laws; that
unless these laws are in some degree conformed to by parents, death is
inevitable; that unless they are in a great degree conformed to, there
must result serious physical and mental defects, and that only when they
are completely conformed to can a perfect maturity be reached. Judge,
then, whether all who may one day be parents should not strive with some
anxiety to learn what these laws are." "I was not brought up, but
dragged up," said the poor girl in the tale; and she touched
unconsciously the root of nine-tenths of the vice and misery of the
world.
Great as is the importance of some information, if children are to be
properly reared, still knowledge is by no means all that preparation for
parenthood should include. While Doctor Johnson was musing over the fire
one evening in Thrale's drawing-room, a young gentleman suddenly, and,
as Johnson seems to have fancied, somewhat disrespectfully, called to
him: "Mr. Johnson, would you advise me to marry?" _Johnson_ (angrily):
"Sir, I would advise no man to marry who is not likely to propagate
understanding."
Would the doctor have extended this restriction to all men and women who
are not likely to propagate good bodies and souls? We know that there
are people whose misfortunes and vices will spoil and ruin, not merely
the lives of those they marry, but the lives of their children too. The
miserable inheritance of their imperfections will be transmitted to
coming generations. If it were only possible to keep all these people
single, those who will be living thirty years hence would be living in a
very different world from this.
The only restriction public opinion now puts to any marriage is that it
should not be forbidden by the "Table of Kindred and Affinity" contained
in the Prayer Book. When will all improvident marriages be equally
illegal? When will scrofula, madness, drunkenness, or even bad temper
and excessive selfishness be considered as just causes and impediments
why parties should not be joined together in holy matrimony. Only the
best men and women of this generation--could these be discovered--should
become the parents of the next.
It has been flippantly asked why we should consult the interests of the
next generation since the next generation has done nothing for us. The
answer is plain. We have no right to bequeath to it an heritage of woe.
Every man and woman can do much to make themselves worthy of the honour
and responsibility of being a parent. Let them preserve their health,
cultivate their social affections, and, above all, abstain from those
sins which science and bitter experience assure us are visited on
children. It is only when they do this that a new edition of themselves
is called for.
"Who is the happy husband? He
Who, scanning his unwedded life,
Thanks Heaven, with a conscience free,
'Twas faithful to his future wife."
And who are the happy parents? Those who, scanning their unwedded lives,
thank Heaven they were faithful to future children.
It is to be hoped that few men now are as careless or as ignorant of
consequences to children as was Mr. Tulliver in George Eliot's "Mill on
the Floss," when he picked his wife from her sisters "o' purpose, 'cause
she was a bit weak, like." We have come to see that, in order to be good
mothers, women must be very unlike Mrs. Pullet in the same story, who
was bent on proving her gentility and wealth by the delicacy of her
health, and the quantity of doctor's stuff she could afford to imbibe.
But parents have not altogether given up sacrificing their own health
and the health of their children to the Moloch of fashion. They have not
quite ceased to burn incense to vanity. We have still to complain, as
did Frances Kemble, that the race is ruined for the sake of fashion. "I
cannot believe that women were intended to suffer as much as they do,
and be as helpless as they are, in child-bearing; but rather that both
are the consequences of our many and various abuses of our constitutions
and infractions of God's natural laws. Tight stays, tight garters, tight
shoes, and similar concessions to the vagaries of feminine fashion, are
accountable for many of the ills that afflict both mother and child."
When King David was forbidden to build a temple for God's service
because he had shed blood abundantly, with noble self-forgetfulness he
laid up before his death materials with which Solomon his son might have
the honour of building it. If parents would imitate his example and lay
up the materials of good character and health, what glorious temples
they might erect to God in the bodies, minds, and souls of their
children!