PART IV

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MOTHERHOOD

MOTHERHOOD

AND THE

RELATIONSHIPS OF THE SEXES

BY

C. GASQUOINE HARTLEY

_Author of “The Truth About Women,” “The Age of Mother-Power,” etc._

[Illustration]

NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

1917

COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.

Dedication

TO LESLIE

In writing at last this book on Motherhood, which for so many years has

had a place in my thoughts, one truth has forced itself upon me; the

predominant position of Woman in her natural relation to the race. The

mother is the main stream of the racial life. All the hope of the future

rests upon this faith in motherhood.

To whom, then, but to you, my son, can I dedicate my book? You came to me

when I was still seeking out a way in the futility of Individual ends;

you reconciled my warring motives and desires; you brought me a new

guiding principle. You taught me that the Individual Life is but as a

bubble or cluster of foam on the great tide of humanity. I knew that the

redemption of Woman rests in the growing knowledge and consciousness of

her responsibility to the race.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

PART I

INTRODUCTORY

I A RETROSPECT: THE POSITION OF WOMEN BEFORE THE

GREAT EUROPEAN WAR 9

II THE POSITION OF WOMEN AS AFFECTED BY THE WAR 29

PART II

THE MATERNAL INSTINCT IN THE MAKING

III INSECT PARENTHOOD 55

IV PARENTHOOD AMONG REPTILES AND FISHES: A CHAPTER

ON GOOD FATHERS 77

V PARENTHOOD AMONG BIRDS, WITH FURTHER EXAMPLES OF

GOOD FATHERS 97

VI PARENTHOOD AMONG THE HIGHER ANIMALS: THE FIXING

OF THE PARENTAL INSTINCT IN THE MOTHER 117

PART III

THE PRIMITIVE FAMILY

VII THE MOTHER IN THE PRIMITIVE FAMILY 137

PART IV

MOTHERHOOD AND THE RELATIONSHIPS

OF THE SEXES

VIII THE FAMILY AND THE HOME 161

IX MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN 187

X MARRIAGE: A CONTINUATION OF THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER,

WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE CHARACTER OF WOMAN 207

XI SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE 227

XII THE UNMARRIED MOTHER 255

XIII THE DANGER OF SECRET DISEASES 283

PART V

SEXUAL EDUCATION

XIV THE MOTHER AND THE CHILD 301

XV SEXUAL EDUCATION, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO

THE ADOLESCENT GIRL 327

XVI A CONTINUATION OF THE LAST CHAPTER, WITH AN ATTEMPT

TO SUGGEST A REMEDY 349

BIBLIOGRAPHY 379

INDEX 395

PART I

INTRODUCTORY

It is now a well-established truism to say that the most injurious

influences affecting the physical condition of young children arise from

the habits, customs and practices of the people themselves rather than

from external surroundings or conditions. The environment of the infant

is its mother. Its health and physical fitness are dependent primarily

upon her health, her capacity in domesticity, and her knowledge of infant

care and management. Thus the fundamental requirement in regard to this

particular problem is healthy motherhood and the art and practice of

mother-craft. Given a healthy and careful mother we are on the high road

to securing a healthy infant; from healthy infancy we may expect healthy

childhood, and from healthy childhood may be laid the foundations of a

nation’s health.

“Education and Infant Welfare.”

_Annual Report for 1914 of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of

Education._

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER I

A RETROSPECT—THE POSITION OF WOMEN BEFORE THE GREAT EUROPEAN WAR

The overwhelming events of the Great War—Change in my own

views—Primitive conception of the relative position of the

two sexes—The war divides the feminist struggle into two

periods—The demand of woman to live her own life—The merits

and demerits of the Suffrage Movement—The vote gospel a

drug swallowed to still the craving for something vitally

needed—Women swept out of their own interests into a swirling

sea of desire—Emotion the strong guide to action—Militancy—A

tremendous adventure—The mob spirit—Sowing a crop of feminine

wild oats—What has been gained—Much experience and some

knowledge—Experience indispensable as a foundation of a broader

feminism—Solidarity of women—War came like a thunderbolt from a

clear sky—The clamour and deception of meetings and propaganda.

CHAPTER I

A RETROSPECT

THE POSITION OF WOMEN BEFORE THE GREAT EUROPEAN WAR

“There is one profound weakness in your movement towards

emancipation. Your whole argument is based on an acceptance of

male values.”—DR. ANANDA COOMARASWARY.

As I set out to write yet another book on Woman, I find it necessary

first to decide whether the primary interest should rest in the eternal

instincts, passions and typical character of womanhood, or in women’s

actions and characters as affected by the unusual conditions of the time

in which my work is undertaken. It is a decision by no means so simple as

it would seem.

Always the realisation of what is immediately before us tends by its

vivid nearness to give an over-estimation of its significance. But to

read life in this way is to understand very little. Something must be

done to clear our vision so that we may take a wider view. The present,

after all, is but the day at which the past and the future meet.

Yet there are times when some overwhelming event so sharply changes the

present as to obscure all the shining wonder of life. And at no period in

history has this been more true than it has been in Europe in the last

two years. Nowhere and never in the world can there have been a period

of deeper or more rapid change. War came upon us without warning, like

a thunderbolt from a clear sky; and in a day the outlook of life was

changed.

Now, this thought of surprising and quick-coming change brings me to

something it is necessary for me to say. My book should have been begun

many months back, at the very beginning of the war. But here I have to

make a confession. The war caused in my mind a confusion that for some

time left me extremely uncertain upon many things about which hitherto I

have been sure. It has been a war of miracles in so far as it has made

real much that seemed outside the world of possibility. Our sluggard

imaginations have been stirred by an appeal that has aroused many

primitive emotions.

I recall the opening sentence in the last book that I wrote on Woman.[1]

“The twentieth century is the age of Woman. Some day, it may be, it will

be looked back upon as the golden age—the dawn, some say, of feminine

civilisation.”

Now, as I read this statement, which, when I wrote it, I felt to be true,

it appears so wrong as to be almost ridiculous. That sort of dream is

over.

What a fantastic picture it was that Suffrage militancy made for itself

before the outbreak of the war. We pictured a golden age which was to

come with the self-assertion of women; an age in which most of those

problems that have vexed mankind from the dawn of history were to be

solved automatically by a series of quick penny-in-the-slot reforms,

that would follow on the splendour and superiority of woman’s rule.

Militants, aflame for the reformation of man, discussed prostitution, the

White Slave traffic, and all sex problems with a zeal that was partly

pathological and partly the result of a Utopian dream.

Then, at the most crucial hour in the history of women’s struggle for

power and political recognition, all this dream was arrested. In the

stress of war, the promise of an accumulating betterment was swept down,

even as a too-bright dawn that passes into storm; the ugly aspects of

life sprang upon us with intensifying urgency. Yes, the sudden events of

war seemed, for women, to have blotted out the present and the past, and

to have made all action uncertain.

So it is always when life is stirred at its depths. The change was almost

staggering. Women have had to learn many new and strange lessons; they

are more changed than perhaps they themselves know.

There had come a time when, without any preparation, we women were

brought back to the primitive conception of the relative position of the

two sexes. Military organisation and battle afford the grand opportunity

for the superior force capacity of the male. Again man was the fighter,

the protector of woman and the home. And at once his power became a

reality. The striking and praise-demanding work was done by men. And at

the first violent change there seemed to be nothing for women beyond the

patience of waiting and the service of sacrifice. Later, women have been

called to step in to take the places of men, and there has been work

for them to do of all kinds and in ever-increasing amount. But of this

work, and the new conditions that have thereby arisen, I propose to speak

in the next chapter. Here I am considering only the events that rushed

upon women at the oncoming of war. And inevitably they were pushed aside

into obscurity; they had to be content with unnoticed work that not

infrequently was futile.

It is hard to step so suddenly out of the limelight. And women were

acutely aware of this change in their prospects, and many of them

expressed the situation with engaging frankness. Let me give a small

illustration. I had occasion in the late summer of 1914, a few weeks

after the war had started, to visit a friend. Some months had passed

since I had previously seen her. At that time she was actively engaged

in the suffrage campaign. Now, I found her knitting woollen comforters

for the soldiers, and she was knitting them very badly. I expressed my

surprise. Her answer to me was, “It is all that there is to do.” She then

added this significant statement, “We women have had to learn our place.”

There was, of course, exaggeration in her remark. But it does, I believe,

picture what happened in the thoughts of many women with the sudden

ceasing of their active struggle for political recognition. It was a

state of resigned surprise.

And may it not be that women had need of some lesson?

In the curious phases witnessed before the war, in that struggle which

was but a more violent expression of the eternal effort at adjustment

between the sexes, there were many strange signs to give pause and fear

to all who think. Women did not, as I believe, realise the possible

results of their sex rebellion. They did not sufficiently distinguish

between those limitations and hardships which could comparatively easily

be removed and those limitations and hardships which are due to the

nature of their sex. Old traditions, without any discrimination, were

cast aside in a violent seeking, and women broke out in unexpected ways,

to fight nervously, carelessly, yet hungrily, as if they were trying to

force the pace of progress.

Women are possessed of great elasticity and cleverness; they are, and

possibly will always remain, more imitative than creative. And from this

follows a very real danger, plainly arising from the quick feminine

receptiveness which is at once the strength of women as well as the cause

of their pitiable weakness. In every direction the new independence and

work capacity of woman was proved in following and imitating men. Thus

it was easy for women to externalise their life in every way, and to

gain success in many different kinds of work. But the question has never

been—could women do this, or do that, kind of work? rather it is—what

work is it most worth while for them to do?

Wounded by the narrowness of their lives, women spent immense energy

out of which much that is good has been gained. Much that was false has

crumbled into ruins, but also much that was fine. What was wanting most

was this: the complete absence in the entire programme of reform of any

kind of feminine idealism.

Did women forget? I think that they did. The realm of woman was still

splendid, still vast. Why, then, this rage against all restrictions? Why

this continuous effort to obliterate the wise differences of sex?

In their violent seeking for life, women were ready to spend all to gain

something which may well prove to be absolutely unnecessary to them. And

to many it must have seemed that they wasted the whole of themselves only

to lose something within themselves. There was much heroic fighting.

Women robbed life for the sake of what they believed was freedom;

yet may it not prove that they have been in love with that which is

unattainable for women?

The demand of woman to “live her own life” brought, as it seems to some

of us, a slavery not less strong or less evil than that from which

an escape was sought. Women, however unconsciously, were suppressing

themselves in new ways, and still doing things alien to themselves.

This restless seeking was but a further foolish forgetting of the truth

that the only freedom worth having is the freedom to be one’s self. All

that women had promised themselves in a new order of existence must

depend on their acceptance of the responsibilities and limitations of

their womanhood. And by this I mean a full and glad acceptance of those

physical facts of their organic constitution which make them unlike men,

and should limit their capacity for many kinds of work. It can never be

anything but foolishness to attempt to break down the real differences

between the two sexes.

This may be a hard saying to some women: I believe that it is true.

It is necessary to emphasise this fact again, and yet again, because it

is the almost complete disregard by women of their own sexual nature and

its special needs that is the grave evil that is robbing us of life;

this was also the inherent weakness in the Women’s Movement, which,

so far from fulfilling the promise of its earlier period, had ceased,

even before war brought us back to realities, to exert any widely

representative or serious influence.

The predilection for wild pranks, which in this country marked the later

efforts of women to gain political recognition, may, I think, be traced

back to causes bent on crushing and levelling the sex characteristics.

Women had not sufficiently valued themselves, and thus they ceased to

care to be essentially feminine. Instead there was an insatiable desire

to enjoy experience, arising from lack of disciplined culture and from

excess of energy and idleness. It is manifest that militancy gave to

women excitement and occupation.

And this avidity to know and feel and shine, to establish new contacts

with life and affairs, was coupled also with that deeper seeking of

the spirit which has robbed peace from the modern woman. Possibly such

defects are essential to such a movement, a mere destructive phase in the

process of renewing—a clearing of the ground. But the way to gain freedom

is long and toilsome; it is a way that permits of no such energetic

short cuts as the militant Suffragists would have achieved. Mixed up

with all that was fine in their movement was an infinity of glitter and

tinsel, vanity and restlessness. There was present always an intense and

theatrical egotism, a yearning to make an impression and force applause

at any cost.

There was, of course, another side—a side which most gladly I

acknowledge. No movement that was founded merely on excitement would

have overcome difficulties as the Suffrage movement did, nor could its

members have worked and suffered as they did for a common end. There was

always much even in the most mistaken militancy that was generous, ardent

and wholesome. But these useful qualities were deformed by a want of

proportion and sanity; by feelings run riot that made women impatient of

all restraints, overweeningly sure of themselves, and incapable of facing

troublesome facts or foreseeing the most certain consequences of their

own actions. There is nothing here that should surprise us.

In many cases, perhaps in all, emotion is the sole and strong guide of

our actions. At least, I am sure this is true of women. What we do is to

invent reasons to justify acts to which we are impelled by some emotion

arising from an instinctive need. I do not see how this can be avoided,

nor do I at all regard it in itself as evil. Reason by itself too often

is an excuse for doing nothing; it is the excuse of all those who take

infinite care not to see in case they may come to feel. Reason alone

never does anything; it is too reasonable. The necessary thing is first

to feel. And the only possible method of guiding emotion is to realise

its force and to use it successfully; not to take cover fearfully in

avoidance of feeling.

There is, indeed, a very deep reason for this human need for emotion.

The springs of our actions may be traced back in almost all cases to

certain excitements arising from some need or desire of whose existence

in ourselves we are in nine cases out of ten quite unconscious, but

which (unless dammed up when the fear of an escape is always great and

imminent) will find an expression in characteristic instinctive acts. And

the most forcible human excitements are fear and anger: these exercise an

energising influence on body and mind often leading to the accomplishment

of quite extraordinary acts. Periods of intense excitement will yield a

consciousness of overwhelming strength, so that the individual reaches a

state of self-forgetfulness in which almost anything may be done. Almost

every one must at some time have experienced this super-strength. And

what is important to note is that at an opportunity for exercising these

emotions, the most peaceable people have felt the stir of the primitive

instincts of hate and fear, of anger and the desire to destroy and to

hurt. They have developed—often to their own surprise—the destructive

capacities of the fight-loving, danger-braving animal. And when such

emotions seize on individuals in groups, their effect is greatly

intensified and is felt by many who would be only slightly susceptible to

such emotions when isolated.

This explains, I believe, the surprising revolt of women and how it was

they broke out in such unexpected ways. There is in the sex an immense

and unrecognised capacity for adventure, due to the surplus of energy

unused that was so painfully present in the lives of many women, and to

the expression of which the narrowness of their lives had afforded little

opportunity. The danger here was strong for women, because in their

lives, to a far greater extent than in the lives of men, there had been

so many dammed-up channels of emotion. It is the things they might not

do that had mattered for women, and not the things they had been allowed

to do. Then the fever of this anger caught hold of them, and they became

conscious of an obscure travail in their souls. Here, indeed, were causes

of unrest; here were the first shadows of some subtle decay.

The suffrage movement was a search—yes, a wild search—for something to

bridge the gap, for something to do that mattered, something to open the

gates to adventure. The militant revolt to many women proved an exciting

game. This may appear strange; but what I want you to mark is that such

violence was a necessary thing for women. They felt impelled to get into

their lives something that meant movement, excitement, joy, and the

stinging of adventure.

And they have been happy.

To many people, and especially to men, it seemed that in adopting

militancy women were departing entirely from their womanhood. But it

is just here they were mistaken; they did not grasp the fact that women

had felt injured, and that this injury aroused in them an excitement

of anger forcing wild action. Women, too, I think, have not themselves

understood the real causes of their actions. It was impossible to follow

the procession of excuses by which the militant apologists attempted to

justify their often senseless outrages on the law without realising how

erroneously they comprehended their own movement. They honestly thought

that they were espousing the cause of Woman’s freedom; it never struck

them that they were not working for this, at least that this was not

the motive which impelled their actions of violence. They did not know

that they were taking the quickest way to fill lives left empty, and to

express in action the clamorous excitement that surged within them. It is

never easy for women to be quite honest even to themselves.

Manifestly this violent seeking was but an outgrowth of woman’s fierce

race-protecting passion; an unconscious expression of that instinct to

give life which rules not only in the body but in the spirit of woman.

Many women fought without truly wanting to fight, and merely because

their deep hidden instincts demanded something on which to expend

themselves.

There was in the Suffrage movement a wise policy of action. And this

using of women’s stored-up energy, however wastefully it may have

been expended, inflamed in them a gladness that made easy all their

payments of imprisonment, of forcible feeding, and even of death. In

militancy women gained an object and a satisfaction: they were the

centre of something that depended on them. Their movement, with all its

absurdities, was a live thing in their hands. Thus the members gave

to the cause their labour and their enthusiasm, and, because they had

given it so much, they came to love it. Their energetic organisation

came to stand above them like a big, greedy child, grabbing at anything

and everything. It robbed from them the flying hours of life, little by

little devouring them. But in so doing new fuel was thrown on the dead

flames of women’s passions. For they gained that for which they were

seeking. A new, strange opportunity for sacrifice was here, supplying the

need which, however unrecognised and denied, is the fundamental desire of

woman. This was the joy that was gained by the Suffrage martyrs—something

vivifying, flooding dead lives with colour, action and emotion. Yes,

these women yielded themselves to their movement with joy, just as a

woman yields herself to her lover that she may give life to his child.

And then all this audacious, hardly understood movement was brought

to an end by war. Militarism put a swift close to militancy. As far

as women were concerned, their hope of forcing political recognition

fell to confusion. The war came like a great shadow across the whole

bright complex problem of the future. So much was this so that writing

of militancy now feels almost like referring to a forgotten event that

happened in the very far past. It would be easy to pass over the whole

Suffrage movement in silence. And, indeed, I should have done this if I

did not believe that its inner effect on women had been more lasting than

the outward gain.

I wish to emphasise the change that came to women in the period

immediately before the war. The Suffrage movement was a collective

movement in which the individual had to win honour in self-forgetfulness

and in group work. And this co-operation for the gaining of the Vote

carried with it also a co-operation of service and a great development

of mutual helpfulness. And from this it has followed very directly that

many women have turned their backs for ever on petty interests and

disloyalties to one another, and have recovered a quite fresh sense of

honourable emulations and loyalty.

This concord and unity in duty had much the same quality of joy that

sends the soldier to face death. It stirred something very deep in

women’s nature. Militancy brought a rare chance of happiness: it made

women aware of their souls. Through it they first found escape from the

deadness of sterile lives and gave up separate little aims that made

conflicts between woman and woman. The petty strifes of no issue and

no importance were changed into one struggle that must be won; and by

expanding from an existence of aimlessness and stagnation into one of

common purpose and advance, women gained the chance they were seeking of

adventure and sacrifice for body and spirit. No wonder, then, that they

gave themselves up to a great holiday of the emotions. This may have

expressed itself basely in the wrecking of property and much that was

useless, but it was not all base. In the lives of numberless women it has

meant something much more than hatred and vanity, or self-deceiving work.

Militancy has been a great as well as a very little thing. As a movement

it was foolish and morally perverse, no doubt, but its members were

morally passionate. The disorder of purpose, the spectacle of wasted

effort and folly, which filled many of us with anger—all this did bring

gladness and liberation of spirit to the women themselves. They felt

that their fighting was noble and glorious, which it was not, but they

felt this with a power that came from the perverse conviction of their

whole nature. And we shall need a conviction as passionate as this, but

not perverse, before women can in the same way be won again to an equal

passion of sacrifice and service.

And this very rapture of escape from an aimless existence was in itself

the sign of the failure in women’s lives, a proof that there was, indeed,

something to be escaped from. We may not claim more than this for the

Suffrage movement.

War, such war as is now loose upon the world, came to accomplish its

miracles, acting swiftly and almost without women knowing what was being

done. The reality of life and of death has shaken up everything, and the

quick pressure of events is changing all the conditions of life.

Let us try to see a little more clearly.

It has been a common mistake that amongst civilised peoples intellectual

views and peace interests have superseded the primitive fighting

instincts. But the cultural period in which wars have been exceptional

and peace the normal state has been short, and is, indeed, only a span

when compared with the long history when men had to fight in order to

live. This violence was a necessary phase in human, as in all animal,

development. War is only an organised and specialised replacement of

this indiscriminate and blind struggle for life. It is probable that the

instinct of battle was once for all developed and fixed; and the question

arises, as to whether we shall ever get far away from this deeply rooted

stimulus to action. It may even be a condition of life that we should not

get too far away from it.

We have had a striking example of the enthusiasm and interest evoked by

situations of conflict and danger, in the intense and primitive emotions

revived in all of us by the war. War is the thunder and voice of the

trumpet without which the wisest moral and political ideas never attract

sufficient attention to lead to difficult action. For the world will not

listen to a truth until bloodshed and violence have awakened its sluggard

imagination.

And in these new circumstances we all, women as well as men, have been

caught by a powerful excitement. The war has us in its grip, there is no

other thought, no other remedy, no other interest. In many ways war is

the most uniting of all forces. We are all joined in one work of service

and co-operation. No man or woman can turn away, skulk in the individual

garden of their own petty interests, because they do not want to be

bothered. Something fresh has come, something that had to come, and all

that went before is changed.

We see thus that war has brought to all of us a succession of disturbing

revelations of reality. And the lesson has come most severely on those

whose lives have been most unreal. Here is a force against which there

is no argument. We are involved in a struggle of the most momentous

dimensions. No one as yet can mark the limits of destruction, and in the

harshness of the war’s lesson the struggle of women for sex mastery at

once became uninteresting.

For hundreds of centuries and myriads of generations the life of fighting

has gone on for men. But women’s opportunity waits upon leisure and

peace. The savagery of war brings the two sexes back to primitive values.

And the truth is forced upon us; we realise the gulf which lies between

the man and the woman.

All our days we women have been denying this separation, and, enslaved by

male ideals, have sought to break through the barriers of sex. We have

been pursuing power, wrapping ourselves up in one garment after another,

calling these coverings romance, adventure, work, individual development,

and what not; now we have come in our hearts to know the falsity of it

all. Somewhere in the confusion of war stark facts awaited us. We had to

face life as a reality, not as theories, or movements, or sex development.

For many of us women the lesson has been sharp and sudden. War leapt upon

us as it were a beast out of some hidden darkness; leapt upon us, holding

us powerless, tearing our illusions into shreds with its blood-stained

claws.

And on a sudden women were held by a new, quick-striking, absolute

realisation of the truth. They had not seen it nor felt like this before.

But this beast of war crouching in front of them said to women, “Always

I have been beside you waiting for this hour. I have waited for a long

time. You have struggled; you have fought; you have played; you have

come to think yourselves important in strange ways, meddling in all the

affairs of the world. This you have done, and you have learnt much of the

means of life, but you have everything yet to re-learn about life itself.

“In all your struggles for political recognition and in all your work

reality has not touched you. You have feared to be yourselves. You have

been ashamed of your sexual differentiation. You have gathered power

around you to pretend that you were the same as men, your strength as

their strength, that your work was the same as their work. You have

mocked at those qualities that were your own, that set you apart from

men, denying your womanhood. You have suffered. But you will not suffer

less by any such efforts to escape. Who can wonder that you have been

dissatisfied? For you have wasted in haste the power that is your own.

And conscious of, though not understanding, the want in your own lives,

you have been deeply conscious of the discords in the rest of the world.

The instinct of motherhood has been strong within you, and wasted, it has

not ceased to torment you.

“You have gained excitement and applause, much work you have done and

had many triumphs. It has seemed a big thing. Yet, after all, has the

gain been worth the payment? Have women indeed escaped from their prison?

Think, do you not know deep in your hearts that its bars have not been

broken?”

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER II

THE POSITION OF WOMEN AS AFFECTED BY THE WAR

The new conditions brought by the war—Seriousness of the

position—My object in writing a book on motherhood—The

Annual Report of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of

Education for 1914—The condemnation of motherhood shown by

the facts of this Report—The greatness of the evil that we

are permitting—Women ill-trained as women and incapacitated

for their supreme duty—The inquiry into the conditions of

working-class motherhood made by the Women’s Co-operative

Guild—The miserable health of the mothers of our working

classes—This one of the greatest dangers and social crimes of

the day—The health of women must be safeguarded—The problem

greatly increased by the special war conditions—Report issued

by the Health of Munition Workers Committee on “Employment

of Women” and “Hours of Work”—The danger of overworking

women—Woman sows in her flesh for the race—She needs to store

energy, not to expend it—The confusion and failure in efficient

motherhood—We have got to find what this failure is.

CHAPTER II

THE POSITION OF WOMEN AS AFFECTED BY THE WAR

“To be mothers were women created and to be fathers

men.”—Sayings of MANU.

I have spoken in the last chapter of the changes that came in the

thoughts and attention of women in the first few months of the war. We

saw how war spoke with a more powerful voice, and the women who had

been snatching at power felt the quickening of a quite new spirit of

humbleness. That uplifting was the great opportunity. Women discovered

something stronger and more important than themselves.

Our inquiry now is this: What has happened since then? what fresh

conditions is war developing or likely to develop? And first it is well

to note the strange power of war to stir us into action. Two years ago

it would have seemed impossible to feed the hungry and clothe the ragged

and to turn all the wasters and slackers into vigorous heroes. Now these

things have been done; and much that in peace time seemed a far-off

possibility has become a present fact.

War has a terribly effective way of dealing not only with men but with

their problems. And one result is that a quite new interest is being

taken in motherhood and child welfare.

England can no longer afford to be wasteful of the lives of her citizens.

She has been wasteful in the past, and her new mood of caring must be

made a conviction and a purpose.

As a result of this world war there has been and will continue to be an

immense sacrifice of men, much in excess of any wars in the past history

of nations, and it is evident that every belligerent country must lose

from her best male stock; and it is not only the physically fittest, but

the mentally and morally fittest, that are sacrificed.

For years to come the birth rates will be lowered throughout the greater

part of Europe. In our own land the situation is one that must give fear.

Our death rate has been very high in numbers and in quality, while at the

same time our birth rate has been the lowest on record. Even the civilian

death rate has risen; and, worst and most menacing of all, the infantile

mortality rate has risen two per thousand above the average of the last

two years.

Put these grave facts together, and, with even a fraction of realisation

of their meaning, it becomes clear that we have to face a wastage of life

unparalleled in the annals of our race. What are we going to do?

Now, I am not one who believes in the advantage, or even in the

possibility of any forced excess in procreative activity. Numbers are

of less importance to a nation than the moral, mental, and physical

superiority of its men. The wholesale waste of these qualities in war

is just what must be of such enormous menace to the future. The nation

that does nothing to meet this and to ensure as far as possible the

superiority of the next generation of her children will gain nothing even

from victory, for it will mean only defeat in the future.

The issues of life and death have by the lurid war-light been forced

upon our attention. And again I ask, What are we going to do?

The answer is plain. This terrible loss of life and of the forces of

life abroad in war must be made good by a more intelligent and efficient

care of the young lives at home. This we must do, and we must do it

quickly. It is possible for a nation by such increased care of the rising

generation of its children to compensate itself for the loss of lives

during the war within a comparatively short period after the close of

war. Indeed, if we have the will, as we possess the means, we can make it

true that because of the war there will be more people—yes, and healthier

and happier—in this land of ours in ten or fifteen years’ time than if

the war had never happened.

This is what we can do. Shall we do it? The answer is with women. We can,

within limits, do almost what we please. There has come to us a great

opportunity, and out of the gates of death itself we may snatch life.

Much waits to be done, not only in the actual saving of infantile life,

but further, by providing effective and prompt remedies to all bad

conditions of living, so that the health and the mental capacity and

moral character of the children dependent upon these conditions, or

related to them, may be raised and maintained at a right standard of

efficiency. Then we have to realise that more even than this is needed,

and that all our efforts will fail of their full effect unless we go

further back than the child, and the problem of the mother be frankly

faced. The question of infantile mortality and child welfare is really

the question of motherhood. And there is now no ultimate need of the

State greater, more imperative, than this of securing a more enlightened

motherhood.

This need is the reason for my book. I know that the days of war are not

a time suitable either for the writing or reading of long books. Yet I

offer no apology, so convinced I am of the urgency of this matter of

saving motherhood that I had to write.

The object of my book is twofold. First, to put forward a fresh plea for

assigning that high value to motherhood in practice which at present it

receives only in words. This would ensure at once right conditions for

all mothers and all children; it would also serve better than anything

else to do away with many age-old mistakes, misunderstandings and

disorder. In the second place (or rather in connection with all that

is said), I wish to set forth what seem to me to be the chief causes

that hitherto have hindered motherhood and bound my sex from the full

enjoyment of life; and to suggest that the reason of this bondage is not,

as is so often stated, the aggressive selfishness of men, but is due

much more to women’s own actions, to their absurdly wrong education and

entire misunderstanding of the sexual life; a misunderstanding which has

decided the direction in which they believed the freedom they have been

so ardently, yet wastefully seeking, was to be found.

So that we may understand our present failures better, I have attempted

to seek causes and to suggest reasons. My inquiry reaches back before

human parenthood and examines the parental instinct in its making; it

shows the way and for what reason this instinct of caring for the young

became fixed and stronger in the mother than in the father. It sets out

from this beginning, and, after a short chapter on primitive motherhood,

passes to the consideration of women and the home, marriage as it affects

parenthood, the unmarried mother and sexual relationships outside

of marriage, as well as other allied questions. It tries to offer a

practical solution to some of the problems involved, in particular the

problem of education and new ideals of conduct and sexual health for all

girls. It recommends a revolution in our schools and methods of training;

changes that must, as I believe, be made, unless we are prepared to

accept as inevitable the decay of motherhood, as well as an increasing

failure of happiness in marriage, with its resulting antagonism between

sex and sex.

But to return to this present introductory chapter. I have upon my

study table two documents. The one is that from which I have taken the

quotation placed before this opening section of my book. It is the

Annual Report for 1914,[2] of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of

Education. The second consists of two pamphlets on the Health of Munition

Workers, treating of the Hours of Work and Employment of Women, both

prepared by the command of Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, and published

in connection with the important illustrated Report, which shows and

explains all the numerous and different engineering operations on which

women are now engaged in munition work. The object of the Report is

to attract more women workers; but it is with the two pamphlets I am

concerned. For the present, however, I shall leave them, returning to

them later in order to show how closely they are connected with the other

Report, which treats of infant mortality, child disease and neglect, and

all the wastage of motherhood. It is on the shameful significance of the

facts given in this Report that we must now fix our attention.

It would be difficult to find a more complete condemnation of motherhood.

The Report is full of condemning facts. For, let us not disguise it

from ourselves that, in spite of much that has been done, many efforts

and real improvements, motherhood remains very evil; about the lives of

little children lurk cruelties, disease, dirt, and neglect that ought not

to be permitted.

Let me take one group of facts from this Report; facts that cry out to us

all how urgently wrong things are. In the year 1914, 92,166 children died

in England and Wales under one year of age. Think of the wanton wastage:

in every thousand children born one hundred and five have died. Their

number of the year’s toll of new lives reaches close up to the recorded

deaths for the first fifteen months of war![3] And the evil does not end

here, for the bad conditions which kill these babies act also in maiming

and disabling, or at least in lowering the health standard, of many of

the children who live, and thus add to the number of those who die in

the early years of childhood, or survive only with enfeebled bodies and

defective minds. And, further, no account is taken here of the lives that

are lost before birth takes place: I mean the still births and abortions,

the ante-natal deaths of which no record is kept. Our tendency is to

assume that life begins at the birth, whereas the life of each child

starts at the moment of its conception. Thus the birth rate is really the

survival from the conception rate. And the destruction of life before

birth from adverse ante-natal conditions is probably larger than the

death rate in the first post-natal year.

You will see that the problem is sufficiently grave. And this

unnecessary waste—for it is unnecessary—is going on every year, and will

go on until we begin to feel it strongly enough to take action to prevent

it. It can be prevented. The chief causes of infant mortality are briefly

two—

(1) Poor physique of the mother or inheritable disease in one or other

parent, causing premature births with weakened constitutions and

congenital defects in the children.

(2) Ignorance of mothers in appropriate infant care and low standard of

home life; bad feeding and insanitary conditions are accountable for the

greater number of child deaths.

We find the infantile death rate is much higher in urban communities than

it is in rural England. It is well to give a table to show this—

ANNUAL RATES PER ANNUAL RATES

1000 LIVING PER 1000 BIRTHS

Diarrhœa

and Infant

Birth Rate. Death Rate. Enteritis Mortality

(under two Rate.

years).

England and Wales 23.8 13.7 20.4 105

97 great towns (including

London) 25.0 15.0 26.1 114

145 smaller towns 23.9 13.1 19.8 104

England and Wales less

the 242 towns 22.2 12.4 12.6 93

London 24.3 14.4 27.6 104

Consider the reason for this difference in the death rates—114 deaths per

1000 in the great towns, 104 in the smaller towns, and 93 in the country

districts. Does not this prove that children are killed by the conditions

into which they are born. It is obvious that urbanisation, with all

that it means of unhealthy living, with factory work and the employment

of women, exerts a profound effect on the lives and health of little

children.

A portion of infant and child mortality represents, I well know, the

removal from life of diseased children who ought never to have been

born, and would not have been born under different sexual conditions,

for this, above all, is a question of instructed motherhood. I am not

forgetting this side of the problem. But these children, doomed to death

from the time they are conceived, represent a fraction only of our infant

mortality. The vast majority of babies are born healthy; it is we who

kill them. Though the fact of the falling birth rate is being shouted

aloud with an ever-increasing fear and insistence, the plain, simple fact

is neglected; it is absurd to go on having more babies if we can’t first

care enough to keep alive the babies that we have. There are still too

many births for our civilisation to look after; we are still unfit to be

trusted with a rising birth rate.[4]

Let us consider now how our neglect acts on the children who fight

through the first years of infancy. I can take a few facts only chosen

almost at hazard from the mass of similar evidence in the Educational

Report. In London, out of 294,000 children medically examined, 101,000 or

nearly half, were found to be in need of treatment. In England and Wales

391,352 children of school age were medically attended. A summary of the

returns shows a wide prevalence of verminous uncleanness, the percentage

being 18.1 per cent. for the heads and 11.8 per cent. for the bodies

of the children. Again the figures show unclean conditions to be most

prevalent in the towns, in some instances the percentage rising as high

as thirty unclean children out of each hundred children examined. I ask

you to think what this implies.

The nutrition of the children is equally bad, the different counties

varying in percentage between five and twenty. Stockton-on-Tees has the

unenviable distinction of standing the highest—thirty out of each hundred

of its children showing signs of malnutrition. The same Report shows the

fatal prevalence among the children of rickets, eye disease, discharging

ears, and diseases of the throat and nose.[5] The proportion of defective

teeth is higher than any malady and often exceeds seventy and eighty per

cent. of the school entrants.

We should note that insufficient or unsuitable food is the chief cause

of malnutrition and illness in children, and investigations seem to show

that wrong feeding is the more prevalent. Thus Dr. Gould, writing of

the children he examined in Bolton, says, “it is obvious that defective

nutrition is due to dietetic ignorance on the parents’ part or to

parental neglect.” Dr. Macdonald of Northampton, reporting on 448 cases

examined in 1914, corroborates this view, stating in the course of his

report of adenoidal children, “Many are suffering, not from insufficiency

of food (that, I think, far from common in Northampton), but from bad

food and badly prepared food.” Again, Dr. Orr of Shrewsbury writes, “The

subject of unsuitable food is a very important one. The women of the

working classes often show a surprising ignorance of the proper methods

of cooking for family requirements, a want of knowledge of the value

and suitability of food stuffs, and too often a general incompetence

respecting household management.”[6] I may add as corroboration an

instance from my own knowledge; one that would be comic, if it were not

so piteous. A party of poor workings girls were invited to a meal; they

were asked what they would like to have to eat. They answered, “Bread and

pickles,” and added, “Pickles are so sustaining!”

Who can doubt the greatness of the evil that is going on? I could add

many more facts at least equally impressive with the few that I have

given, all witnessing to weakness in the constitution of our children,

to disease and dirt, and every other painful result of ignorance and

neglect. And does not all this speak of unfit motherhood; of women

ill-trained as women and incapacitated for their supreme duty? There is

failure somewhere. We have to find out where that failure is.

For I wish to make it very clear that I am not blaming the individual

mother. What I do blame are the conditions of our civilisation that have

called her into being. I have before me the admirable but infinitely

distressing book, _Maternity: Letters from Working Women_. They are the

outcome of an inquiry into the condition of working-class motherhood made

by the Women’s Co-operative Guild. Nothing that I can say, or that any

other writer could say, can have the reality and the bitter vividness

of these letters written by the women themselves. I am able to quote

only scattered sentences taken from a few letters just as they come and

without special selection.

(1) MOTHER INJURED IN GIRLHOOD

“_Through being left without a mother when a baby—father was a very

large farmer and girls were expected to do men’s work—I, at the age of

sixteen, lifted weights that deformed the pelvis bones, therefore making

confinement a very difficult case. I have five fine healthy girls, but

the boys have all had to have the skull-bones taken away to get them past

the pelvis.… I wish more could be done to train growing girls to be more

careful._”

(2) A WAGE-EARNING MOTHER

“_I myself had some very hard times, as I had to go out to work in the

mill. I was a weaver and we had a lot of lifting to do. My first baby

was born before its time, from me lifting my piece off the loom onto my

shoulder.… If I had been able to take care of myself I should not have

had to suffer as I did for seven weeks before the baby was born, and for

three months after, and then there was the baby suffering as well, as he

was a weak little thing for a long time, and cost pounds that could have

been saved had I been able to stay at home and look after myself._”

(3) A MOTHER’S INJURY TO HER DAUGHTERS

“_I am very pleased to say that, having one of the best of husbands,

I suffered nothing during pregnancy, only ailments of my own caused

through my mother having to work in the brickyard during her pregnancy

with me. That, I am sorry to say, is the cause of my own and my sister’s

illness … and that thing will go on until women give up hard work during

pregnancy._”

(4) WORKED TOO HARD AS A GIRL

“_My third child was born nine years after the second.… She lived six

hours, and was convulsed from birth. The doctor’s opinion was that I had

worked too hard as a girl lifting heavy weights, therefore weakening the

whole system._”

(5) THE RESULTS OF POVERTY

“_I think a great deal of suffering is caused to the mother and child

during pregnancy by lack of nourishment and rest, combined with bad

housing arrangements. The majority of working women before marriage

have been used to standing a great deal at their work, bringing about

much suffering which does not tell seriously until after marriage,

particularly during pregnancy.… I believe that bad housing arrangements

have a very bad effect on mothers during pregnancy. I know of streets of

houses where there are large factories built, taking the whole of the

daylight away from the kitchen, where the woman spends the best part of

her life. On the top of this you get the continual grinding of machinery.

The mother wonders what she has to live for; if there is another baby

coming she hopes it will be dead when it is born. The result is she

begins to take drugs.… All this tells on the woman, physically and

mentally; can you wonder at women turning to drink?_”

(6) ANOTHER CASE OF POVERTY AND OVERWORK

“_The first part of my life I spent in a screw factory from six in the

morning till five at night, and after tea used to do my washing and

cleaning. I only left two weeks and three weeks before my first children

were born. After that I took in lodgers and washing, and always worked

up till an hour or so before baby was born. The results were that three

of my girls suffer with their insides. None are able to have a baby. One

dear boy was born ruptured on account of my previous hard work._”

(7) THE EVIL OF SEXUAL IGNORANCE

“_Judging from my own experience, a fair amount of knowledge at the

commencement of pregnancy would do a lot of good. One may have a good

mother who would be willing to give information, but to people like

myself your mother is the last person you would talk to about yourself or

your state.… I have learnt the most useful things since my children grew

up. The idea that you impress the child all through with your habits and

ways, or that its health is to a great extent hindered or helped by your

own well-being, was quite unknown to me._”

(8) ANOTHER CASE

“_When I was married, I had to leave my own town to go out into the

world, as it were, and when I had to have my first baby, I knew

absolutely nothing, not even how they were born. I had many a time

thought how cruel (not wilfully, perhaps) my mother was not to tell me

all about the subject when I left home.… When my baby was born I had been

in my labour for thirty-six hours, and did not know what was the matter

with me.… It was only a seven-months baby, and I feel quite sure if I had

been told anything about pregnancy it would not have happened. I carried

a heavy piece of oilcloth, which brought on labour.… I knew very little

about feeding children, when they cried I gave them the breast. If I had

known then what I know now my children would have been living. I was

ignorant, and had to suffer severely for it, for it nearly cost me my

life, and also those of my children. I very often ponder over this part

of my life. I must not say anything about my mother now, because she is

dead, but I cannot help thinking what might have been if she had told

me._”

(9) HEALTHY MOTHERHOOD, GIVEN AS A CONTRAST

“_Although I have had eight children and one miscarriage, I am afraid my

experience would not help you in the least, as I am supposed to be one of

those women who can stand anything. During my pregnancy, I have always

been able to do my own work._

“_With the boys labour has only lasted twenty minutes, girls a little

longer. I have never needed a doctor’s help, and it has always been over

before he came.… My idea is that everything depends on how a woman lives,

and how healthy she was born. I had the advantage of never having to

work before I was married and never have wanted for money, so when the

struggle came I had a strong constitution to battle with it all._”

(10) ANOTHER FORTUNATE CASE

“_I must be one of the fortunate ones. I have always had fairly good

health during pregnancy and good times at confinements and getting up.… I

owe my good health to being well nourished and looked after by my mother

when I was a growing girl. I think if all young girls of to-day are

properly cared for, it will make all the difference to the mothers of the

future, and save much suffering during pregnancy and after._”

I should like to quote further from these letters, which have filled me

with a passion of protest and pity. But why should I go on bringing

fresh arguments to prove what already is sufficiently clear?

Give but a moment’s attention to the facts that stand out in these eight

summarised cases, and at once you will grasp what is wrong. These mothers

have not been equal to their task of child-bearing; we have demanded from

them too much. We have permitted the weakening of their constitutions

from girlhood with unsuitable and too heavy work, and we have allowed

them to grow up and marry sexually ignorant. What wonder that so many

have failed in their supreme work of motherhood. The women bitterly feel

this failure; many of them are convinced of the evils that have resulted

to themselves and their children from their own overstrain through work

and their ignorance of sexual hygiene and mother-craft.

Take now a few briefly summarised results of all these three hundred and

forty-eight examined cases of motherhood. We find the following figures:

Total number of live births, 1,396, 80 still-births and 218 miscarriages.

These figures speak for themselves. It is probable all miscarriages are

not given, but even those that are stated show a pre-natal death rate of

21.3 per 100 deaths. And we have no record of abortions, which, without

doubt, are very numerous. According to some medical authorities the

frequency of abortion “is believed to be about 20 to 25 per cent. of all

pregnancies.” Consider the following facts: two of these women each had

ten miscarriages; one woman had eight miscarriages and no living child,

while a second woman, after suffering seven miscarriages, consoled her

motherhood by adopting an orphan boy; another woman gave birth to five

dead children; the record of still another woman is three still-births

and four miscarriages. The last of these mothers writes: “I had to

work very hard to do everything for my little family, and after that I

never had any more children to live. I either miscarried or they were

still-born.”

The post-natal deaths are also numerous. Of the three hundred and

forty-eight mothers, eighty-six (or 24.7 per cent.) lost children in the

first year of life. The total number of deaths rises to 122, or 8.7 per

100 live births, and it should be noted that 50 per cent., or one half of

these deaths, occurred during the first month of infantile life or were

due to wrong birth conditions when death was after the first month.

It seems useless to comment further upon these facts; the figures speak

with sufficient clearness for themselves. I would ask you, however, to

remember them; I would ask you to try to understand all that they mean of

our deplorable neglect of motherhood.

For long we have been persistently assuming that the characteristics

of the child at birth are genetic or hereditary and therefore can be

but slightly affected by a favourable or an adverse nurture. This is

a monstrous error. Very few indeed are the defects and the diseases

that are inevitable and part of the birth-inheritance, rather they are

traceable directly to malnutrition or poison in the mother, and by this

means the fresh life is weakened or infected before it is born. So much

the greater is the importance of ante-natal nurture. The child can be

saved only through the mother. Inferior mothers must result in inferior

children. And what we need now for the future maintenance and welfare

of our race in adequate numbers and quality, is a speedy and practical

recognition of the truth that nothing will avail us if we so educate,

train, and work our women that as mothers they fail in their creative

hour.

Let us now consider briefly how these matters stand in our land at the

present time, and let us examine them in the light of these facts we have

established of an over-burdened and, therefore, unfit motherhood. And the

first thing we find is that the special conditions brought about by the

Great War have greatly increased the problem we have to solve. I have

already referred to the Report issued by the Health of Munition Workers

Committee on “Employment of Women” and “Hours of Work.” They give summary

accounts of the conditions of women’s labour and what is actually going

on. I confess that what is stated has filled me with the gravest fears. I

will give a few of the facts as they are set down.

“_The engagement of women in the manufacture of munitions

presents many features of outstanding interest. Probably the

most striking is the universal character of their response to

the country’s call for help; but of equal social and industrial

significance is the extension of the employment of married

women, the extension of the employment of young girls and the

revival of the employment of women at night._”

With regard to the class of women employed we learn—

“_The munition workers of to-day include dressmakers, laundry

workers, shop assistants, university and art students, women

and girls of every social grade and of no previous wage-earning

experience, also, in large numbers, wives and widows of

soldiers, many married women who had retired altogether from

industrial life, and many again who had never entered it. In

the character of the response lies largely the secret of its

industrial success, which is remarkable. The fact that women

and girls of all types and ages have pressed and are pressing

into industry shows a spirit of patriotism which is as finely

maintained as it was quickly shown._”

The prodigious efforts of war are employing energies that have never been

employed before. And there is something fine in the obdurate courage

and determination of women to go through with their work. The spirit of

woman does not easily resist. Ah! there is the danger. It is so difficult

to induce any woman to recognise the limits of her physical powers. I

am certain, too, that this danger of reckless overstrain is greater in

England than in many other lands where women are working, for here custom

and our habits of curious prudery force a woman to treat her sexual life

as if it did not exist. This is the deep root of the danger. Thus, just

as I should expect, the report goes on—

“_Conditions of work are accepted without question and without

complaint which, immediately detrimental to output, would,

if continued, be ultimately disastrous to health. It is for

the nation to safeguard the devotion of its workers by its

foresight and watchfulness, lest irreparable harm be done to

body and mind both in this generation and in the next._”

The necessity of war has revived, after almost a century of disuse,

the night employment of women in factories.[7] The report shows the

deterioration in the health and energy of the women, due partly to

overstrain from want of sleep and proper rest, but also to the difficulty

the workers find in eating at night. We read—

“_In one factory visited at night the manager stated that

fatigue prevented many of the women making the effort to go

from there to the mess room, though in itself the room was

attractive. In another, visited also by night, several women

were lying, during the meal hour, beside their piles of

heaped-up work; while others, later, were asleep beside their

machines, facts which bear additional witness to the relative

failure of these hours. A few women of rare physique withstand

the strain sufficiently to maintain a reasonable output, but

the flagging effort of the majority is not only unproductive

at the moment, it has its influence also upon the subsequent

output, which suffers as in a vicious circle._”

The report shows plainly the destruction that is taking place in the home

life of the workers. It states—

“_While the urgent necessity for women’s work remains, and

while the mother’s time and the time of the elder girls is

largely given to the making of munitions, the home and the

younger children must inevitably suffer. Where home conditions

are bad, as they frequently are, where a long working day is

aggravated by long hours of travelling, and where, in addition,

housing accommodation is inadequate, family life is defaced

beyond recognition._”

Again, take this passage—

“_Often, far from offering a rest from the fatigue of the

day, the home conditions offer but fresh aggravation. A day

begun at 4 or even 3.30 a.m., for work at 6 a.m., followed by

fourteen[8] hours in the factory and another two or two and a

half hours on the journey back, may end at 10 or 10.30 p.m., in

a home or lodging where the prevailing degree of overcrowding

precludes all possibility of comfortable rest. Beds are never

empty and rooms are never aired, for in a badly crowded

district the beds, like the occupants, are organised in day and

night shifts. In such conditions of confusion, pressure and

overcrowding, home life can have no existence._”

The overstrain of the women is increased by their difficulty in obtaining

living accommodation near to the factories.

“_It is far from uncommon now to find some two or three hours

spent on the journey each way, generally under the fatiguing

conditions of an overcrowded tram or train, often with long

waits and a severe struggle before even standing room can

be obtained. The superintendent of a factory situated in a

congested district stated that the women constantly arrive with

their clothes torn in the struggle for a train, the satchel

in which they bring their tea being sometimes torn away. The

workers were of an exceptionally refined type, to whom such

rough handling should be altogether unfamiliar, but they bore

these conditions with cheerful resolution._”

What are the results going to be? Women have no right to bear such

conditions with cheerful resolution. And it is just this acceptance

of so many things that never ought to be accepted that fills me with

apprehension. You see, I believe there is a much deeper cause than the

urgencies of the war which is causing women to spend their strength in

industrial work. Did I not think this, there would be little need for me

to write.

I know that women’s labour at the present crisis is a matter of

necessity. How the work is to be done with the least possible injury to

the workers is the question of the present. For it is equally momentous

to the future that the standard of health and well-being of the country

should be maintained. The problem is, how much work and of what kind can

women do combined with perfect health. The health we must have, for it is

requisite for the life of the race.

No doubt Nature is prodigal in her gifts of energy to women and provides

enough for high-pressure work. But what we forget is this: the total

amount of energy is strictly limited, and if women use up in work the

energy that ought to be stored for child-bearing, they are preparing the

way for an enfeebled race. Thus the problem of women’s labour will not

be solved until her work no more unfits her to be a mother than man’s

work unfits him to be a father. Woman sows in her flesh for the race, and

because the demands of sex are stronger upon her she has to store more

for the future than the man; she cannot expend so much in work in the

present.

I have tried now to show in this and the preceding chapter the present

and urgent need of an inquiry into the conditions of motherhood. The

facts we have considered give, I feel, sufficient proof of our immense

failure. Our attempt must be to bring order where we have had confusion.

We have got to end this disastrous squandering of women’s energies; a

bankrupt expenditure which must result in wholesale waste in health and

the lives of little children.

And I do not allude here only to the obvious immediate remedies. These

will have to be made. The efforts for reducing infantile mortality must

be such as will have lasting and substantial effect. Feeble tinkerings

with such a question are the deepest foolishness. England can be

indifferent to the health and well-being of women no longer, for she

cannot afford to lose children by tens of thousands and to let the

survivors be maimed and weakened by the million.

This, however, is not all; no legislation or social reconstruction—not

any outward change, can accomplish alone what needs to be done. I am

very certain of this. The wretched confusion and failure in efficient

motherhood, which repeats itself everywhere, again and again, and in

all classes of women, must be due to something more than industrialism

and the hideous, ugly pressure of work for women, now so startlingly

increased by the urgencies of war; it must be due to something stronger

and more fundamental, to some inward cause. We must, I think, look

to find some general and essential failure in women themselves—some

unsoundness in their desires and their ideals, and in the principles they

have set down for the conduct of their lives.

We have got to find what this failure is.

NOTE.—The Annual Report for 1915 of the Chief Medical Officer

of the Board of Education has been issued since this chapter

was written. The conditions have not materially changed since

the previous year. Ten per cent. of all the children attending

the Elementary Schools suffer from malnutrition, due largely to

unsuitable and insufficient food. There is still a large amount

of uncleanliness—the returns show about 16 per cent. of the

children have dirty heads, and 15 per cent. dirty bodies.

A further evil has arisen from the greatly increased employment

of children of school age; during one year 45,000 children have

left school before the usual age, and 15,000 are temporarily

employed in agriculture. In addition, more children are working

as “half-timers” and as workers out of school hours. This

wasteful employment of the young life of the future must, as

the Report states, lead to physical and mental deterioration.

PART II

THE MATERNAL INSTINCT IN THE MAKING

“But what is the use of this history, what is the use of all this minute

research? I well know that it will not produce a fall in the price of

paper, a rise in that of crates of rotten cabbages, or other serious

events of that kind, which cause fleets to be manned and set people face

to face intent on one another’s extermination. The insect does not aim at

so much glory. It confines itself to showing us life in the inexhaustible

variety of its manifestations; it helps us to decipher in some small

measure the obscurest book of all—the book of ourselves.”—HENRI FABRE.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER III

INSECT PARENTHOOD

The necessity of beginning the investigation of motherhood

before human parenthood—The instinct not fixed but dependent

on circumstances and the conditions of life—Experiments in

family life—Bewildering diversity in strength of parental

instinct—Numerous cases of insect home makers—Domestic economy

of bees and ants—Does the word “instinct” explain—Parental

devotion of the scarabee beetles—Fabre’s account—Important to

note (1) connection between form of union or marriage of the

sexes and parental devotion, (2) connection between degree of

intelligence in the parent and amount of care devoted to the

young.

CHAPTER III

INSECT PARENTHOOD

“There can be few people alive who have not remarked on

occasion that men are the creatures of circumstances. But it

is one thing to state a belief of this sort in some incidental

application, and quite another to realise it completely.”—H. G.

WELLS.

This statement of Mr. Wells that I have placed at the head of the chapter

will explain the reason why I find it necessary to go back to the grey

primeval dawn of life to start my inquiry into motherhood. I want to

establish that the instinct of caring for the young is not fixed, that it

does not always develop in the same way or in the same parent, but rather

that it is a quality, fluid and of indeterminate possibilities, that can

be set and shaped by the conditions of life as wax is shaped by a mould.

And I know no other way to make this clear. The few scattered facts that

I have been able to gather together tell the miracles of the parental

instinct. They must, I think, teach us humility. Let us throw aside the

garments of conceit and false learning, and recognise that in reality we

know almost nothing about anything, if things are probed to the bottom.

* * * * *

In the widest treatment of the maternal instinct it will not suffice to

narrow our attention to the function of human motherhood, or to take up

our study of the conditions relating to the mother and the child as we

find them amongst us to-day. Were I to do this and to attempt at once

to bring forward my own views, with the reforms that I wish for in this

matter, my work would be as a building without a firm foundation, more or

less uncertain, and for this reason valueless.

To get a proper grip of all that is here concerned we must understand

that the maternal instinct is the deepest and strongest instinct in

woman. It is in the emotions and actions either directly arising from

or connected with motherhood that we find the real difference between

the sexes. In its essence the parental instinct belongs to woman alone.

The male may be infected with its energy—we witness this among birds,

as well as in humbler animals, where the duties of caring for offspring

are shared and, in some cases, carried out by the male alone; but man

possesses, as yet, its faint analogy only. It is the most primary of all

women’s qualities.[9]

Now, why is this? Why is woman’s being so much more strongly infected

with motherhood than the man’s with fatherhood?

It is a question not so readily to be answered as it might appear. If we

find the explanation in the intimate connection between the mother and

the child we have not, I think, exhausted the matter. We must not forget

that other questions remain behind unanswered, all centring round the one

question to which an adequate answer is so difficult to find: How has

this arisen? The fact has to be explained that the sharp separation in

the parental impulse and the parental duties, so strong amongst us, has

not always existed; that there are many examples in the history of life

which show an exactly opposite condition.

To find the clue it will thus be necessary to turn our attention to the

earlier stages of life where, in particular among insects, reptiles,

fishes, and birds, we find the widest possible range of difference in

the expression of the parental instinct and the most varied relations

existing between parents and offspring. Here indeed, among these

pre-human parents, we can study the maternal instinct in the making.

There are many new and strange facts for us to learn.

I know well the dangers of such an inquiry. To many, who will allow its

interest, it will yet appear as being profitless. There is perhaps some

justification for this view. Certainly any attempt to establish the

conditions of human motherhood from examples in natural history must

be far from conclusive. All comparisons of our own habits and impulses

with their earlier expression as we see them in the animals are somewhat

unsatisfactory. The lines on which human motherhood has developed and

the conditions which have so largely helped to shape its expression,

differ vastly from many of the other needs and circumstances which govern

the activities of parents in the lower forms of life. Chief among these

differences is the more complex character of the human brain, which is

correlated with the far greater length of time that the human infant is

dependent on its mother.

Yet, allowing for all this difference, I believe that there is much

for us to learn from the life-histories of these pre-human parents. At

least we find wonderful agreement prevailing between the conduct which

we think reason dictates to us and that which we hold instinct dictates

to the animals. And the question will be forced upon us: How far back in

the record of life did the fierce mother-instinct exist? We shall find

many unheeded examples, alike of its operation and of its failure to

operate, which, if we consider them, in the light they may possibly cast

forward on our own problems, will not fail to bring us to some unexpected

conclusions. Life is full of surprises, and this matter of the care of

the young affords not the least of them. Nowhere are the links between

the present and the past more fascinatingly represented.

I am far indeed from being able to explain many facts I have come to

know. I have been puzzled often, and the suggestions I offer I know may

be wrong. The early stages in the growth of parental care, even among the

animals whose habits are known to us, are often enshrouded in mystery,

baffling the penetration of the most patient and careful inquirers.

Nevertheless, during recent years a host of facts have been gathered

together which throw much new light not only on the theme of pre-human

parenthood, but also on the probable action of the parental instinct as

it has slowly developed through the ages.

But apart from such more speculative considerations there are yet other

aspects to be considered, such as the effect of the environment, the

conditions of the home, and the type of union between the male and the

female, all of which have their influence on the duration and kind of

care shown by animal parents to their offspring. Some explanation must

be sought for the almost bewildering diversity which we find in this

relationship; for while the young of some animals (and often among

low types where least we should expect it) are jealously guarded and

cared for by at least one of the parents, in others there is no trace

of such sacrifice and solicitude, and the young are thrown on to the

world, orphaned before they are born, and left to live or die as chance

decrees. Why is this? Why is the parental instinct so actively strong in

some cases, so absent in others? Can we, indeed, hope to find the answer?

If we can do this, we shall learn much to surprise and also to instruct

us.

In the higher types of animals, with the longer period of infancy, some

amount of care for the young is always shown by the mother. All the

mammals, without exception, nurse their offspring for a longer or shorter

period. Among the birds the young in many species are tended by both

parents, and we find many beautiful examples of parental fosterage and

protection. But we find also species, like the cuckoos, which thrust

the parental duties on to others; and there are others, such as the

megapodes, where the mother trusts the incubation of her eggs to natural

agencies, and after placing them in a position to get the heat generated

by decaying vegetation or that derived from hot springs, leaves them, and

exhibits no apparent care for the future welfare of the family.

Here is something to give us food for thought. And the same surprises

meet us as we descend the scale of life. The reptiles show little or

no parental care, but strangely enough the toads and frogs, and many

fishes, furnish us with examples of remarkable forethought, or apparent

forethought, for their offspring; and, let it be noted, this solicitude

is in most cases shown by the father and not by the mother. Even more

remarkable are the insects, among whom, though still lower in the scale,

we find the most wonderful cases of parental sacrifice to be met with

anywhere in life. Some of these little creatures, indeed, seem to be

endowed with a devotion to their young so insistent, that their lives

can be described only as a passion of sacrifice. In truth they live but

to give life and die. And accompanying this parental sacrifice, first

in supplying food for embryonic development, and also, in some cases,

affording fosterage and protection during the early stages of growth,

we meet the most varied and wonderful behaviour which seems to prove an

intelligence that thinks and plans; and, whatever explanation we try to

find for these acts of devotion, we still are far from understanding

them. Life has its secrets, and we shall probably fail to penetrate these

mysteries. All that is possible to us is to inquire humbly that we may

learn a few truths.

But for the sake of clearness, let me cease from generalising and direct

our attention to certain definite examples. I will select first the model

household of the _Minotaurus Typhæus_ in the order _Coleoptera_—

“The female digs a large burrow which is often more than a

yard and a half deep and which consists of spiral staircases,

landings, passages and numerous chambers. The male loads the

earth on the three-pronged fork that surmounts his head and

carries it to the entrance of the conjugal dwelling. Next he

goes into the fields in search of harmless droppings left by

the sheep, he takes these down to the first storey of the

crypt and, with the aid of his trident begins to reduce them

to flour, while the mother, right at the bottom, collects and

kneads it into huge cylindrical loaves, which will presently

become food for the little ones. For three months, until the

provisions are deemed sufficient, the unfortunate husband,

without taking any nourishment of any kind, exhausts himself in

this gigantic work. At last, his task is accomplished. Feeling

his end is at hand, so as not to encumber the house with his

wretched remains, he spends his last strength in leaving

the burrow, drags himself laboriously along and, lonely and

resigned, knowing that he is henceforth good for nothing, goes

and dies far away amid the stones.”[10]

Here we have exactly the kind of example we are in search of, and the

most important thing to observe is the co-operation of the father with

the mother in the work of providing for the family: such male devotion is

undoubtedly exceptional.

Some measure of parental solicitude is almost universally common, and

even among the lowliest creatures we find convincing proof of this.

Among the species of limited resources, where the least care is bestowed

and the young are left to look after themselves, the eggs are placed

by the mother in a suitable environment so that the young can be sure

of a sufficiency of food until they can feed themselves. The numerous

caterpillars offer a well-known illustration of this primitive care,

where it is common for the eggs to be attached to the food-plant by means

of some adhesive covering. More striking is the case of certain weevils,

which, in order to endow their young with a suitable home, possess the

art of rolling a leaf in which the eggs are laid, thus forming a nursery,

which serves as board and lodging in one.

Fabre, in a wonderful account of the most skilful of these workers, the

Poplar weevil, states that not far from the scroll, made and laboriously

rolled by the mother, we almost always find the male. But do not make

a mistake. The weevil father is not moved by devotion to the family

interests as was the father in the last case we examined. No, rather

he is filled with the egoistic desire of the male. But I must give the

history as Fabre relates it, fearing to spoil his beautiful account by my

own halting description—

“What is he doing there, the idler? Is he watching the work as

a mere inquisitive onlooker? From time to time I see him take

his stand behind the manufacturer, in the groove of the fold,

hang on to a cylinder and join for a little in the work. This

is a means of declaring his flame and urging his merits. After

several refusals and notwithstanding advances made by a brief

collaboration at the scroll, the impatient one is accepted.

For ten minutes the rolling is suspended. The male still looks

on. Sooner or later a new visit is paid to the worker by the

dawdler, who, under pretence of assisting, plants his claws for

a moment into the rolling piece, plucks up courage and renews

his exploits with the same vigour as though nothing had yet

happened. And this is repeated four or five times during the

making of a single cigar.”

Here, it may be remarked in passing, we seem to see the first faint

expression of the father’s interest in the family, which, if I may

hazard a guess, may have started in this way as a means of gaining his

desire with the female. The correctness of this surmise will receive

considerable confirmation as we proceed with our inquiry. And if

analogies with animal conduct were not so apt to be misleading, I would

venture to suggest the persistence of the same egoistic factor among many

human fathers. But for the present I must leave this question.

From the very beginning of life parental sacrifice is more common in the

mother; it is in exceptional cases that her devotion is shared by the

father. But such good fathers are of special importance to our inquiry.

Even more interesting are those species among which the father takes

all charge of the young, while the mother spends her time away from the

family. Nor is this departure from what we may call the normal order of

the family so surprising as at first sight it may seem, if we can account

for the necessity under which probably it arose and seek to explain it.

The welfare of the young is a matter of vital urgency; instinct dictates

to the animals what reason dictates to us. Nature, as if to show

her resourcefulness, her love of successful experiments, is always

discovering contrary ways of attaining the same end. And what I wish to

make clear is this: when, for some reason that we do not know, the family

cares are neglected by the mothers, the work of tending and feeding the

young is undertaken by the fathers. I shall have much more to say on

this question at a later stage, and I ask you to keep it persistently in

the focus of your attention. I desire to emphasise it at once. Whatever

groups of animals we survey, we shall find examples of this replacement

of the mother by the father, new aspects of the family, which may afford

us a better grip of some problems that at present elude us.

The reality of the mother’s regard for the young is proved among many

insects by the building of a nest to safeguard the family. The Anthidium,

or tailor-bee, and the Chalicodoma, a species of wild bee, afford

illustrations of this maternal forethought. In the former case the eggs,

when laid, are placed in the ground, protected in cotton-felt satchels

made by the mother from fibre which she scratches with her mandibles from

the cobwebby stalks of the yellow centaury; the Chalicodoma works with

cement and gravel carefully selected from some ruined building, and with

such difficult material she fashions her nursery. Even more remarkable is

the home of the Magachilles, or leaf-cutting bee. The mother bee, using

her mandibles as scissors, cuts pieces from the leaves of the trees,

wherewith she forms thimble-shaped wallets to contain the honey and eggs;

the larger oval pieces which she cuts make the sides and the floor, and

the round pieces the lid or door. These leaf-formed thimbles are placed

in a row, one on top of the other, sometimes as many as a dozen being

used. The cylinder thus formed is fitted into the deserted home of some

other insect, such as the tunnels of fat earth-worms, the apartments

bored in the trunks of trees by the larvæ of the Capricorn beetles, or,

failing these, a reed stump or crevice in the wall is selected. But the

choice of the home is always carefully made, it would seem, according

to the tastes of the mothers. This structure, in part made and in part

borrowed, forms the leaf-cutter’s nest.[11]

Numerous cases of home-making might be recorded, and the difficulty rests

in the selection. Many spiders and the book scorpion carry their eggs in

a silken bag attached to the under surface of the body. There is a case

recorded that shows heroic devotion on the part of one spider mother.

She was placed (in order that her behaviour might be watched) in the pit

of an ant-lion. At once the enemy seized the eggs and tore them from her

charge. Then the mother, though she was driven out of the pit, returned

and chose to be dragged in and buried alive rather than desert her

charge.[12]

A regular process of incubation is practised by the mother earwig, and

the young, when hatched, keep close to her for protection. Special food

for the young is prepared by many mothers, as, for instance, among the

_apidæ_, who prepare a disgorged food in the form of a sweet milk juice.

The _Hymenoptera_ mothers, upon whom the cares of motherhood devolve in

their fulness, provide board and lodging for their family. Stores of

insects are caught and preserved in the nursery larder, being cunningly

paralysed so that live food may be ready when needed by the children.

These clever mothers, as Fabre has shown us, become masters of a host of

arts for the benefit of a family which their faceted eyes will never see.

Of the domestic economy of the bees and ants whole volumes might be,

and have been, written. The habits of the termites, the so-called

white ants, are less widely known, although they show one of the most

remarkable developments of the family that I have met. Each colony is

really a patriarchal family, in which the members, all the descendants of

a single pair, live in a community, and work in different ways. All the

individuals are at first true males and females. Some of these develop

slowly, but grow up perfect insects able to form new families. But the

workers and the soldiers have to pass a period of youthful servitude in

the community. These develop quickly, and grow up blind and wingless, and

their reproductive organs remain in a condition of arrested development.

Some of these are workers, and carry out the duties of the community;

others at the same time develop jaws and heads of enormous size. It is

their duty to defend the colony. And from this has come about the strange

condition of their being so altered and trained for their special work

that they cannot pass on to the normal life and normal duties of perfect

individuals.

Among the bees and some social wasps there is a further step, and only

females are selected to do household work, and modified so that they

lose the ordinary personal instincts and devote themselves entirely to

working for the community, while the males develop only the instincts and

capacities of sex. In some species of wasps, however, the males do some

work, chiefly domestic, for which they are fed by their foraging sisters.

In the communities of ants, as in the termites, there are individuals

modified to serve as workers and as soldiers; but here again they are all

arrested females, and the males are used only for the purpose of sex. The

colonies of ants last much longer than those of the bees and wasps, which

are annual, and this has given the possibility of the elaboration of a

very complex and extraordinary community.[13]

We are always being surprised by new experiments in family life which

show the ready adaptation of habits to special circumstances. A bald

statement of these facts seems to tell very little. I leave untouched a

whole series of devices and wonderful behaviour—so much that I should

like to record. In all these cases we see the maternal instinct in

the making. But so varied and so fitting to the needed purpose are

the actions of these lowly parents that much which they do gives an

impression of the inexplicable—even the magical.

It is common to explain everything by the word “instinct.” But does

this explanation take us very far? An elaborate instinctive capacity

is probably the result of adding on one contrivance after another to

a simpler common habit. And this is surely the same as saying that

these little creatures have the power of learning through experience.

A beginning of the instinct of caring for the young is exhibited when

the mother insect chooses a favourable food position wherein to lay the

eggs. Nor is it difficult to imagine how this maternal forethought may

have grown out of an earlier habit, for it is but a step, though a great

one, from collecting food for self—an instinct that may be traced back

and back—to the habit of providing and collecting food for others. Then,

this instinct of caring for the future being strongly fixed, it, in some

cases and under certain favourable conditions, leads on and on to the

specialised maternity and climax of parental sacrifice and devotion, such

as may be illustrated by the admirable scarabees, or dung-beetles, of the

Mediterranean region and elsewhere.

I have given one case of perfect parents, the _Minotaurus Typhæus_; but

I wish to review such conduct more fully. The family qualities of the

dung-beetles are so devoted and so striking, they will repay our study.

The late M. Fabre describes in his inimitable way the nursery which makes

the centre and life of the scarabees’ home. These dung-workers edify us

with their morals. Both sexes co-operate in making the burrows which

serve as a larder for food and a nursery for the young. They are cavities

dug in soft earth, usually in sand, shallow in form, about the size of

one’s fist, and communicating with the outside by a short channel just

large enough for the passage of the balls of dung-food. Both parents

work with equal zeal to found a household. “The father is the purveyor

of victuals and the person entrusted with the carrying away of rubbish.

Alone, at different hours of the day he flings out of doors the earth

thrown up by the mother’s excavations; alone he explores the vicinity of

the home at night in quest of the pellets whereof his sons’ loaves shall

be kneaded.

“A most careful choice of material is undertaken, and often the devoted

husband and father is compelled to search long and far for pellets

freshly dropped, for whereas coarse bread crammed with bits of hay is

good enough for his own and his wife’s food, he is always more careful

where the children are concerned. Legful by legful, with slow and most

patient labour, the material is heaped up and rolled into a ball. Then

the food-ball has to be carried to the burrow; no easy task. Even then

the father’s labours are not ended; on reaching the burrow, it is his

work to shred the dung-food into flour, which he pours down to the mother

for her to knead into the children’s bread. Finally, when the last task

is accomplished, the dung-father goes out alone to die. He has gallantly

performed his duty as a paterfamilias; he has spent himself without stint

to secure the prosperity of his kith and kin.”

The devotion of the dung-father is equalled by that of the dung-mother.

More skilled than her spouse in domestic matters, she is occupied always

in the home, where she works in the lower floor of the burrow, which she

has prepared for the nursery. Here she kneads and forms the cylindrical

loaves in which the eggs are placed. In some cases she does more, and we

find several species of the dung-mothers anticipating the suckling of

the young, the supreme expression of maternal solicitude. These mothers

chew the dung-food, and out of it prepare a frothy pap or cream, with

which they cover the walls of the nest to form a special first meal for

the emerging grub. Throughout her working life the dung-mother never

leaves the home. It should be noted that her family is always a very

small one: does this, perhaps, explain the parental devotion? From the

first fortnight in May, when the eggs are laid, the mother mounts guard

over her children. Never does she eat herself, as she will not touch the

food prepared and needed for them. She watches through the long months

until the coming of the autumn rains in September. Then, when the day

of release comes at last, she returns to the surface, accompanied by her

family. At once her children leave her; unmindful of her devotion, they

go off to find food and begin life for themselves. Thereupon, having

nothing left to do, she dies, and ends her sacrifice.[14]

Before I leave this fascinating record of the dung-beetle parents, space

must be found wherein to note further certain of their characteristics

and habits, which are of special interest to my inquiry as they would

appear to be directly connected with the highly developed family

qualities of these insects. Fabre tells us that there is no outward

difference between the two sexes among the dung-beetles. I call attention

to this fact, which I am not able to explain. The scarabees are among the

most beautiful of all insects, and the female and male share the same

glory. It is my belief that the secondary sexual characters are directly

dependent on the occupational activities of the species, as also on the

form of union or marriage which pertains and the strength of the parental

emotions. Thus, when the male and the female are equally devoted to each

other and to the family and its care, many cases among these pre-human

parents seem to prove that such devotion and occupational union tends

to lessen the ornamental sexual differences in the secondary physical

characters. This is a question of profound interest, and demands more

attention than it has yet received.

The second fact is of even greater importance to us. The form of union or

marriage common among the dung-beetles would appear to be an unusually

strict monogamy. These insects, as we have seen, associate in couples,

and there is strong evidence that the male remains faithful to his

spouse. Such admirable conduct is the more remarkable when we remember

that the mother is held in the nursery by her duties during the greater

period of the marriage; and meantime the father has to wander far in

search of food, making frequent excursions outside the home, but he

resists the temptations to which these outings are likely to lead, and

always he returns to the home, where he wears himself out for his family.

To test the strength of this conjugal fidelity Fabre made an experiment

with the dung-beetles of whose habits I have before spoken, the

_Minotaurus Typhæus_. He placed two couples of these beetles in an

enclosed space, marking one of the couples. He allowed them to begin

the making of their burrows or homes, then he separated the couples

and destroyed the half-made burrows. Once, twice, and a third time he

did this, causing confusion among these peaceful workers. But on each

occasion the couples came together in the same order; the right male and

female knew each other, and, taking little notice of the tumult, each

time again they began their work of home-making.

Five more times Fabre separated them and broke up their homes. The result

I will give in Fabre’s own beautiful words—

“Things are now spoilt, sometimes each of the four that are

experimented on settles apart, sometimes the same burrow

contains the two males or the two females, sometimes the same

crypt the two sexes, but differently associated from what

they were at first. I have abused my powers of repetition.

Henceforth disorder reigns. My daily shufflings have

demoralised the burrowers, a crumbling home always requiring

to be begun afresh has put an end to lawful associations.

Respectable married life becomes impossible from the moment

when the house falls in from day to day.”

I have now said enough, I think, to show that at many different levels

in the insect kingdom the parental instinct is already developed.

Pre-eminent in virtue is the behaviour of the dung-beetle parents. And

this is all the more interesting as it proves how closely related good

parenthood is with the conditions of the home and the form of marriage.

A few more words may here be added to what has been said already

concerning the influence of intelligence on instinct. It is a difficult

question, but, speaking roughly, intelligence may be said to act in two

opposite ways; that is, it may aid both in the making and the unmaking of

instincts.[15] Thus the dung-beetles frequently change their conduct, and

they do this by modifying their instincts through intelligent adaptation.

It is scarcely too much to say that with them intelligence reaches its

highest form of originality. Why is this? Fabre gives us the answer.

“The more the maternal instinct asserts itself, the higher does instinct

ascend.”

It would be better probably if the word instinct were used in a more

restricted sense: it should not be regarded as being able to explain

everything. This mysterious impulse is held to direct all pre-human

parents in their conduct to their young. Very well; but what of the

directing force behind? The evidence is strong that even the lowliest

creatures have their own problems, and are able to solve them. Can we

explain otherwise the wide difference in conduct between parent and

parent? Do we know what it is that gives a special direction to the

instinctive activities in the accomplishment of a design greater than any

of these parents know? We cannot answer fully. But instinct has its twin

brother in intelligence, and, acting together, they are the guardians of

life.

When real things are so wonderful, what can we do but note them and

try to understand? Not elsewhere in the insect world do we meet with a

devotion more complete than that of both the dung-parents; not elsewhere

do we find a finer development of intelligence. These two things are

related and closely dependent, the one upon the other. It is this fact

that now I am seeking to establish. Sacrifice in the parent does not lead

to limitation, but to expansion.

At this early stage of life the care of the young is as a rule very

slight, and often is confined, as I have shown, to the laying of the

eggs in a favourable position, where the grub can find food. “The higher

inspirations of the intellect are banished among these insects.” I quote

again from Fabre, whose opinion on this question so strongly confirms

all that I wish to make clear. He asserts further: “The mother neglects

the gentle cares of the cradle, and the prerogatives of the intellect,

the best of all, diminish and disappear, so true is it that for animals,

even as for ourselves, the family is the source of perfection.” And

again: “Placed in charge of the duration of the species, which is of more

serious interest than the preservation of individuals, maternity awakens

a marvellous foresight in the drowsiest intelligence.… The more maternity

asserts itself, the higher does instinct ascend.”

We cannot get away from this; it is one of the unalterable laws of life.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER IV

PARENTHOOD AMONG THE REPTILES AND FISHES

A CHAPTER ON GOOD FATHERS

The parental impulse not always fixed in the mother—Among

reptiles and fishes, such care as is afforded by parents is

given most frequently by the father—Suggested reason for

this—Primitive hatching nurseries—Parental care among frogs

and toads—Many examples of exemplary fathers—The devotion

of the male stickleback—The unnatural conduct of the female

stickleback—The emotions of the fish—Fish fathers who guard

the nest—Perpetual variety in the actions of even the lowliest

parents—Summary—No continuous line of development of instinct

in scale of animals—Much baffles our explanations—Suggestions

important to my inquiry—Reversal of sex labours—Is it due to

failure on the part of the mother—Devoted parents are of high

intelligence.

CHAPTER IV

PARENTHOOD AMONG REPTILES AND FISHES

A CHAPTER ON GOOD FATHERS

“Nature is a riddle without a definite solution to satisfy

man’s curiosity.”—MAURICE MAETERLINCK.

In this chapter I shall consider certain examples, which I think are

important to establish what we have learnt in our examination of the

insects, that the parental impulse was not always fixed in the mother.

Among the reptiles and fishes the reverse is true, and what care is

afforded to the young is given most frequently by the father.[16]

The bond between the mother and her young is directly dependent on their

helplessness and the duration of time during which they require her care

and attention. Young reptiles are from birth independent, and, as a

consequence, there has been no stimulus to develop maternal solicitude.

Between mother and offspring there are no ties of affection save in one

or two exceptional cases.

Young alligators, for example, are guarded by their mothers and owe

more to her than they can ever know. She prepares a hatching nursery by

scraping together a large mound of leaves, twigs, and fine earth, and

upon this mound the eggs are placed about eight inches from the surface.

Then the mother digs a hole in the river bank, close by, and here she

waits and watches to protect her children.

A more advanced form of nursery building is practised by the tortoise,

who prepares a sort of nest with considerable care, which she afterwards

cunningly conceals. But when once the eggs are safe she shows no further

interest in the safety of the nest.[17]

Most snakes bury their eggs and then leave them. But a more enduring

maternal interest is felt by the mother python; she coils her body

around her future family and jealously guards them during the period of

incubation, refusing all food and never leaving her duty.

A similar guardianship is shown to young crocodiles by their mothers. The

home is prepared by digging a deep hole in the sand in which the eggs

are placed, and during the period of incubation each mother sleeps in

guard above her family. The naturalist Voeltzkow, to prove the reality

of one mother crocodile’s solicitude, built a fence around the nest just

before the hatching time. Each night on her return, the mother broke down

the fence, though each time it was made stronger than the last. Finally

the nest was found to be deserted, and then it was discovered that this

intelligent and persecuted mother had dug a hole beneath the fence and

thence had led her brood away to safety.

It is impossible to admire sufficiently such a case as this one, where we

see so clearly the driving power of maternal solicitude in quickening the

intelligence of even the lowliest mothers. Such cases are, however, few

in number out of the 2,600 species of reptiles of whom the majority are

unnatural parents.

But again surprises await us. Many frogs and toads, both the mothers

and the fathers, show a really marked development of the familial

instincts.[18] An illustration of this care is furnished by a large

tree-frog (_Hyla faber_) of Brazil, commonly known as the _Ferreiro_,

“the smith,” from its strange voice resembling the mallet of a smith,

slowly and regularly striking on a metal plate. This frog prepares a

nursery in the shallow waters of the ponds, where a basin-shaped hollow

is dug in the mud. The building is done by the mother, the material

removed being used to form a wall, circular in shape, which is carried

up to the surface of the water. In this cavity the eggs are placed,

protected against the attacks of aquatic insects and fishes. A Japanese

tree frog (_Rhacophorus schlegelii_) builds a similar nest, but here

the mother lines the walls of her nursery with a secretion, a kind of

milk food, from her own body, which by rapid movements of her feet is

worked into a froth, and in the midst of this foamy mass the eggs are

laid. More remarkable is the nursery building of the “Wollunnkukk” frog

(_Phyllomedusa hypochondrialis_) of Paraguay, whose habits were noted

by Dr. Budgett during the exploration of the Paraguayan Chaco. “Whilst

sitting near the water’s edge he saw a female carrying a male upon her

back. At last she climbed up the stem of a plant, reached out and caught

hold of an overhanging leaf and climbed on to it. Both then caught hold

of its edges and held them together; and into the funnel thus formed

the female poured her eggs, the male fertilising them as they passed.

The jelly surrounding the eggs served as a cement to hold the edges of

the leaves together. Then, moving up a little further, the process was

repeated until the leaf was full, and about a hundred eggs had been

enclosed.”[19]

A similar leaf nest is made by a Brazilian frog, known as Ihering’s

frog (_P. Iheringí_), while a home of more elaborate construction, in

which several leaves are used, is prepared by Savage’s leaf-frog (_P.

Sauvagii_).

It should be noted that in these cases the care of the parents is

confined to the providing of a nursery; when once this is done the young

are abandoned. But many frogs and toads do much more than this, and one

or other parents, most often the father, guard their offspring with

jealous care. A Papuan frog-father, for instance, takes up the duties of

a nurse; and when the eggs are laid, he sits upon them, holding the mass

with both hands. And this vigil he keeps during the whole time while the

young are undergoing growth, passing through the larval and tadpole stage.

We must own that such a father acts with singular devotion. It should be

noted that seventeen eggs only are laid by the mother, a much smaller

number than is common among the species where neither parent affords any

kind of guardianship. This is what we should expect. Nature has different

ways of gaining the same end. Life must be carried on, that is all that

matters—an incessant renewal, an undying fresh beginning and unfolding

of life. But a species is maintained sometimes by the prodigality of

production and sometimes by the expenditure of care and sacrifice on the

part of the parents. And here we find again a lesson waiting for us to

learn. For it is hardly necessary to point out that the same facts are

true of human births; just as the family is unregulated or considered,

do we find waste and many births with parental neglect in the first case

and restricted births with parental devotion in the second. There seem to

be no problems of the family that these pre-human parents have not had to

face and solve.

But to return.

“The celebrated Midwife toad (_Alytes obstetricans_) gives us a further

delightful example of the father nursing the young. The mother-toad lays

her eggs attached to one another by threads so that they form a long

chain. The father-toad then twines this chaplet of his wife’s eggs round

and round his thighs. He has the strange appearance, it has been said,

of a gentleman of the court of the time of James I, arrayed in puffed

breeches. His devotion is very complete. After having encumbered himself

with the coming family, he retreats to a hole in the ground. Here he

stays with admirable patience by day, stealing forth at night to feed,

and to bathe his egg-burdened legs in dew or, when possible, in water.

When his period of service is past and the young are ready for quitting

the eggs, he seeks the water. Here before long the young burst forth and

swim away, whereupon the father, now free from his family duties, makes

himself tidy (cleans himself of the remains of the eggs) and resumes his

normal appearance.”

With some frogs, as, for example, in certain S. American and African

species, the parents take up the burden of caring for the young only

after they have reached the tadpole stage. The German naturalist Brauer

recently found in the Seychelles islands a small frog (_Arthroleptis

Seychellensis_) undertaking the guardianship of the young family. An

adult frog (it is not stated whether it was the father or the mother)

was carrying nine tadpoles on its back, to which they were attached by

a sucker on the belly. Unfortunately, little is known of the habits of

these frogs. It is believed that the eggs are laid in some shallow pool,

and that later one or other parent returns to the nursery to take up the

care of the young tadpoles.

A further remarkable case of care exercised by the father is that of

Darwin’s frog, the _Rhinoderma darwini_, where the eggs are guarded in a

great pouch under the throat, and opening by two slits into the mouth.

During the courtship this pouch is used as a voice organ to charm the

female, with sharp ringing notes like a bell. But the love-calls end with

the birth of the family. There is now serious work to be accomplished.

The father takes his wife’s eggs into his pouch, which now enlarges and

extends backwards under the belly to the groin, and upwards on each side

almost to the backbone. In the warm chamber thus formed, the tadpoles

live until they become young frogs. They then make their way up through

the doorways into their father’s mouth, and from that living nursery they

swim out into the wide world.

Well, what can we say of this case? We have heard of some animal fathers

eating their progeny, but here the father’s mouth is turned into the

hatching nursery. Did I not tell you we should find very much to astonish

us?

I could give many more examples of reptile parents whose family habits

are more or less singular. There are the little-known “Cœcilians,”[20]

the strange, snakelike amphibians of S.E. Asia and Ceylon; where the

mother, with her limbless body, yet contrives to dig a nursery for her

eggs, which she jealously guards. I should like to write of the families

of the newts and salamanders, among whom the young are never completely

abandoned, and whose parental habits present many features of interest.

But to tell their life stories with all the vivid facts would take more

space than I can allow to this one chapter of my book; and to give a bald

record of their habits would afford little interest. I must, however,

recount two instances of marked solicitude for the family, shown in each

case by a different parent. Take the case of a mother’s care first. A

captive mother-salamander, of the species known as _Oregon plethodon_,

was placed with her eggs in a jar. She at once took possession of them,

forming a loop around them with her tail. But, displeased with this

unfamiliar house, she moved the eggs repeatedly from place to place till

at length she was satisfied, and all the time using her tail for the

work of transportation as a kind of maternal arm. In the second case

the father most faithfully guards the eggs. A giant salamander in the

Zoological Gardens of Amsterdam kept watch over a clump of his wife’s

eggs for a period of ten weeks. This careful father was seen every now

and then to crawl among the eggs and lift them up, apparently for the

purpose of aerating them.

From the foregoing examples it may, I think, be taken as established that

among the reptiles there are many exemplary fathers. If the question is

asked as to why in some species the care of the young is undertaken by

the father and in others by the mother, I can only answer that I do not

know. It would seem almost that at this early stage of life Nature was

making experiments as to which was the better parent. I would suggest

that possibly such a reversal of the family duties was started by chance,

possibly by the loss of the mother, or even by a specially energetic

father, and on being found successful the arrangement was continued and

became fixed as a habit. I have not sufficient knowledge to know if

this is possible. At any rate, it appears to be plain that, where for

any reason the family duties are neglected by the mother, and where the

maintenance of the species demands protection being given to the young,

the father steps in to take the place of the mother; and by his care and

devotion he becomes a truly constituent part—a working member—of the

family group. I would ask you to keep this fixed in your attention, as I

shall have to refer again and again to this fact that is here suggested.

What obtains among reptiles with regard to the father’s care for the

young is even more frequent among fish-fathers. The common stickleback of

our ponds and streams affords an admirable illustration of intelligent

and devoted fatherhood. In this species the rôle of the two sexes is

completely reversed; when once the eggs are deposited by the mother, the

whole task of guarding them is undertaken by the father. His labours

begin with the construction of a nest. This is formed of bits of weed,

of fibre and dirt, collected with much care, the whole being held

together by a cement produced by the clever father out of a secretion

from his kidneys. Having prepared the nursery, the stickleback sets out

to find a wife heavy with eggs. His love choice apparently is decided

by the capability of his spouse for her maternal function. By means of

much persuasion and passionate courtship he woos her and induces her to

deposit her burden of eggs in his nest.

I must wait to impress upon you the wonder of this fact. These

love-antics of the stickleback, which are unique among fishes, would

seem not to be exercised for the gratification of male desire, but for

the purpose of inducing the female to lay her eggs,—to do her part in

giving him offspring. Vainly do I ask myself the reason of this quite

unusual sexual altruism. This is very extraordinary. The father woos

the reluctant mother with passionate dances and his glad excitement

is apparently intense. At this season the stickleback is transformed

and glows with brilliant colours, his scales make silver look dim, his

throat glows with flaming vermilion, he literally puts on a wedding

garment of love.[21] And did I not fear being tedious by again waiting

to point a moral, I should ask attention to this further proof given by

the stickleback’s love joys to the truth which stands out in these life

histories of pre-human parents. I mean this: the parent—the mother or the

father—lives in the offspring. You will see how deep is the truth here.

The parent is, after all, only the transitory custodian of the undying

gift of life.

The conduct of the mother stickleback is in sharp contrast with the

devotion of the stickleback father. At once, having rid herself of her

eggs, her desire would seem to be to escape any further responsibilities.

She forces her way out of the nest by wriggling through the wall opposite

the entrance. True, by doing this she renders a service to the nursery,

as she thereby furnishes a channel through which a continuous supply

of fresh, cool water can be driven, thus keeping the eggs bathed. This

is the only work the stickleback mother does for the family. The male,

after the first laying, may persuade her to add still further to the

deposit of eggs. Sometimes, wearied with her one effort, she refuses.

Thus forced, the stickleback seeks a second wife, driven into polygamous

conduct through his desire for offspring. I know of no other case that

is parallel with this. And the stickleback’s action has often been

misrepresented. He is instanced as a polygamist; such is the fate that

ever awaits self-sacrifice!

When the nest is full the father stickleback mounts guard over the

entrance of the nursery for nearly a month, and he watches by day and by

night, defending his precious charge against all comers.

And here another curious fact must be noted: the most dangerous

assailants to the safety of the nursery are his own wives; these

unnatural mothers would, if they were permitted, devour every single

egg. Is it this conduct of the female sticklebacks that explains the

devotion of the male? Again I do not know. Certain it is, however, that

the safety and care of the young is the stickleback father’s constant

occupation—the duty to which he sacrifices his life. From time to time he

changes the position of the eggs; he is a master in sanitation and keeps

them constantly bathed with fresh water. This he does by driving a stream

through the nest by means of a fanning motion of his breast, fins and

tail. Through all the hatching period he works with unceasing care.

When at length the fry are born, the father’s vigilance is even further

taxed. The children, vigorous and venturesome, have to be watched by day

and by night and protected. Around and across and in every direction

the father, as guardsman, continually swims. He drives off all comers

with splendid courage. On one occasion a stickleback father was watched

while his nest was attacked by two tench and a golden carp; he seized

their fins and struck with all his might at their heads and eyes. Truly

the stickleback’s care of his children is extraordinary. His vigilant

eye is everywhere. If any members of the young brood stray too far from

the nest for safety, he immediately swims after them, seizes them in his

mouth, and brings them back to the safe playwater in the vicinity of the

nursery. This continuous watchfulness lasts for about six days after the

hatching.[22]

Well, what do you think now of the common view of the parental instinct

being stronger always in the mother than in the father? Have we not been

taking too much for granted and accepting theory for truth? In the light

of our knowledge gained from these examples of the father’s extreme

devotion, it seems impossible to refrain from thinking that the most

intelligent and fit parent is the one who cares for the young. No doubt

it is difficult, or even impossible, to decide the circumstances that

have contributed to this strange result of the father taking the mother’s

place in the family. We do not know whether these acts of his sacrifice

to the children’s welfare imply the presence of the mind element—that

is, whether they can be regarded as conscious as distinguished from

unconscious adaptation, but this is altogether a separate matter and has

nothing to do with the question we are considering.

Fish display, according to Romanes,[23] emotions of fear, pugnacity,

social, sexual and parental feelings, anger, jealousy, play and

curiosity. Such emotions, he states, correspond with those that are

distinctive of the psychology of a child of about four months.

In many diverse species there is clear evidence of some form of parental

solicitude. The spotted goby, or pole-wing, for instance, a fish which

is found in the Thames, is a nest-builder. An old cockle-shell is

skilfully utilised to form the nursery. The shell is placed with its

cavity turned downwards, beneath it the soil is removed and then the

earth-walls are cemented together with a secretion from the skin of the

parents. Access to the nest is gained by a cylindrical tunnel, and the

whole nursery is covered and concealed by loose sand. Again it is the

father who mounts guard over the eggs; his vigil lasts for about nine

days.[24]

There are many instances of nursery building undertaken by fish parents.

Agassiz[25] records a case in which an elaborate nest formed of knotted

weeds is made by a certain fish, known as _Chironectes_. This rocking

fish-cradle is carried by both parents and is a kind of arbour, affording

protection and afterwards food for its living freight.[26] A remarkable

nest is built by the American bow-fin (_Amia calva_), found in the

eastern states of North America. Both the mother and the father work

together to construct the nursery, which is formed by a large circular

area cleared among the weedy shallows; these intelligent parents actually

bite through the stems of all the plants that they cannot break or push

aside. In the pool that is thus made the eggs are placed by the mother

and fertilised by the father; the young develop with remarkable rapidity

and hatch out in about eight days from time of laying. The family is

then jealously guarded by the father, who herds the children—often

numbering as many as a thousand individuals[27]—by circling around and

above them in untiring watchfulness. Another remarkable nest is that of

the eel-like _gymnarchus_ of the Nile; a huge floating nursery is made

of grasses, measuring some two feet long and a foot broad. Within this

nest some thousand eggs are laid, and as soon as they are deposited by

the mother, the father mounts guard, defending them, and afterwards the

young, with great ferocity.

Some fishes’ nests, like those made by the frogs, are constructed of

foam. M. Carbonnier gives the case of a Chinese butterfly fish in his

private aquarium in Paris. The male fish constructed a large nest of

froth, fifteen to eighteen centimetres horizontal diameter and ten to

twelve centimetres high: this he did by a curious sucking and expelling

air which formed the mucus in his mouth into a white foam. When the nest

was thus prepared the female was induced to enter. I do not know whether

the father’s duty was continued after this point.[28]

Even where no nest is made, the eggs and young are sometimes guarded by

one or other of the parents, but generally the father. Schneider saw

several fishes at the Naples Aquarium protecting their eggs; in one

case the male mounted guard over a rock where the eggs were deposited,

and swam with open mouth against all intruders. Again, the butter-fish

(_Pholis_) of our coasts lays a mass of eggs, and around this future

family the father coils his body, just as does the python among the

reptiles. Some fishes, as for instance the cat-fishes (_siluridae_), have

the curious habit of carrying the eggs in their mouth.

A further interesting case of paternal solicitude is furnished by

the male fish of the common lump-sucker. The eggs are deposited in

large clumps, and the father’s first care is to secure their proper

oxygenation. This he does by pressing his head into the centre of each

clump, an action which not only prevents the eggs from being too closely

crowded, but serves also to press the spawn firmly into the crevices

of the rock on which it is always laid. As soon as this is done this

fish-father mounts guard over his family. All would-be enemies, such as

star-fish and crabs, who make ceaseless efforts to rob the nursery, are

driven off. The work of oxygenation is still carried on, and streams of

fresh water, so necessary for the young lives, are driven by the careful

father into the masses of the eggs. When the young appear new family

duties await him, for the fry at once attach themselves to his body and

are carried about by him.[29]

There are other instances where the young are attached to the body of the

parent. Sometimes it is the mother who gives this protection, and bears

her eggs attached to the under surface of her body. The lophobranchiate

fish incubate their eggs in pouches in the same way as some frogs, and

they show elaborate parental feelings. When the young are hatched out,

one or other parent, usually the father, carefully guards them, and the

pouch then serves as a place of shelter or retreat from danger.

Dr. Reinhold Hensel states of a little-known Brazilian fish (_Geophagus

scymnophilus_) that one of the parents—he does not say which—keeps

careful guard over the family, which numbers from twenty to thirty. At

a distance he watches his children. When alarmed for their safety, he

takes a swift swim towards them, and they, as if at his word of command,

collect around his mouth. Suddenly, if the cause of alarm is not removed,

the mouth is opened, and the whole family is engulfed. In an adult which

was captured while thus laden, the young were seen to be crowded together

in the mouth with their heads towards the gills. Here the family is safe,

and when the cause for alarm is passed, the youngsters are probably

suddenly expelled from their living cavern. Another extraordinary case

is recorded by M. Carbonnier, which certainly appears to show anxiety on

the part of fish-fathers to have offspring. The males of the grotesque

telescope-fish (a variety of _Carassius auratus_) have the curious habit

of acting as accoucheurs to the females. On one occasion three males were

watched pursuing one mother heavy with spawn. They rolled her like a ball

upon the ground for a distance of several metres, and this process they

continued, without rest or relaxation, for two days. Then the exhausted

mother, who had been unable to recover her equilibrium for a moment, at

last evacuated her eggs.

There is perpetual variety in the actions of even the lowliest parents.

I might add many further examples more or less extraordinary, of the

habits of fish and reptile mothers or fathers; but, even did the limit

of my space permit this, it is not, I think, necessary: I have proved

the existence low down in the scale of life of marked solicitude for the

young, and shown that such care and sacrifice is shown frequently by the

father.

Let me summarise now what we have learnt in this and the preceding

chapter, so as to establish the lessons that seem to me may be taken from

these pre-human parents. The diversity in the expression of the parental

instincts must first be grasped. There is no fixed order, nor does there

seem to be any continuity of development in this matter of care for the

young. We have to give up quite the evolutionary idea of a certain and

uninterrupted progress. Throughout our inquiry we have been met with

surprises. These things baffle our attempts to find an explanation.

What is it that decides and develops the strong instinct of parenthood?

A parent in a species that is lower in the scale will often have more

parental feeling than a parent in a higher species. Why, for instance,

is the stickleback such a devoted father; more self-sacrificing than any

other fish-father? and why is the stickleback mother without regard for

her children? Why among the dung-beetles is the same parental sacrifice

shown by both parents? Again, why is a nursery made in some cases

and not in others? why are the young guarded sometimes by the mother

and sometimes by the father? We may say that all this wide diversity

in habits has arisen through adaptation; the circumstances that have

conditioned the life of the species have been different, and this has

necessarily caused variety in their behaviour. This is, of course, true,

but does it really teach us very much? No sooner do we begin to apply

our reasons to any particular case of family behaviour than we find

ourselves at a loss. Our reasoning suddenly breaks down, either because

our knowledge is incomplete, or because one set of facts we possess seem

to be contradicted by other facts of which we are equally sure.

Let us at once acknowledge our ignorance; there is much that cannot be

explained.

If, however, we speculate at all on the matter, certain general ideas may

be suggested. We are led to the view that when the father undertakes the

care of the young, this reversal in the family duties must be primarily

due to some failure on the part of the mother in performing the work in

the nursery and home which customarily is hers. It is as if the father

steps into her place in order that the species may escape the nemesis of

elimination. The facts we have learnt are of no little importance. They

tend to minimise, in the beginning of the family at least, the importance

of the mother in relation to the young as compared with the importance of

the father. It is this that I wish to establish.

And what we have learnt suggests the further interdependence, that

does seem to exist among all species, between intelligence and good

parenthood. Fabre, out of his wisdom and as a result of his great

knowledge, says that the duties of caring for the young are the supreme

inspirers of the intellect. Wherever we find devoted parents there also

do we find lofty instincts. This is the second idea I ask you to accept.

I think that we have proved its truth.

I may not stay here to point out the immense importance of these

suggestions to the inquiry we are making as to the action of the maternal

instinct, nor shall I pause to indicate the lessons that seem to me to

await us from the curious transformation found in so many species in

the duties of the two sexes. These considerations must wait until we

know more. We have, I trust, extended somewhat, as well as rendered

more exact, our knowledge on this complex and difficult question of

motherhood. In the next two chapters I shall endeavour to extend it

still further by a brief consideration of certain striking habits I have

met with of parenthood among the birds and higher animals.

I am well aware that there are many people who cannot bring themselves

to believe in, or even listen without impatience to, any comparison

between the conduct of animals and that which prevails among ourselves.

It is absurd, they will say, to try to explain the conditions of human

parenthood by references to animal parents. I have no hope of convincing,

nor do I much desire to convince, those who thus object. I would merely

advise them to leave out this section of my book altogether.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER V

PARENTHOOD AMONG BIRDS

WITH FURTHER EXAMPLES OF GOOD FATHERS

Recapitulation of facts established—Reversal of sex

attributes—Courting females and nursing males among certain

birds—Attempt at explanation—Are sex-hunger and parental

affection in conflict—A high standard of family life among

birds—Few birds who are bad fathers—Examples of varying

division of family work—A few birds who are bad parents—Where

the mother takes sole charge of the eggs the father as a

rule takes little interest in the family—The polygamous

gallinaceous birds—Conduct affected by habits of the home—The

Adélie penguins—Their co-operative child-rearing—The great

emperor penguin—Scrimmage of childless mothers and fathers for

possession of chickens.

CHAPTER V

PARENTHOOD AMONG BIRDS

WITH FURTHER EXAMPLES OF GOOD FATHERS

“Prais’d be the fathomless universe,

For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious.”

WALT WHITMAN.

Two things I have been anxious to bring out prominently in the foregoing

chapters: that parental behaviour among the insects, reptiles and fishes

presents us with a bewildering diversity of aspects—in particular, that

the instinct of caring for the young is not fixed in the mother, but may

be transferred from her to the father; and further, that all parental

sacrifice, though often unconsciously expended to maintain the well-being

of the family, is of direct benefit to the parent who bestows it, and is

the surest means of developing and brightening such a parent’s individual

intelligence.

Now, I wish to elaborate and establish these two propositions with

further examples in order that they may be laid hold of and firmly

grasped as indubitable facts; and then we may come to see and understand

the significance to ourselves of these unusually devoted fathers, which

are found, and that not infrequently, among all classes of pre-human

parents.

The varied behaviour of bird-parents—more especially of the

males—furnishes just the kind of evidence we need. There are several

cases known, and I believe there must be others as yet unrecorded,

wherein the conduct and, indeed, the whole character of the two sexes is

reversed. Here the females, driven it would seem by a fierce sex-hunger,

do the courting and fight one another as rivals for the males, while the

males undertake all the family duties of incubation and brooding and the

feeding of the young.

The phalaropes, both the grey and the red-necked species, which are found

in Scotland and Ireland, afford a striking example of these unsexed

females. Among these birds the rôle of the sexes is reversed. The duties

of incubation and rearing the young are conducted entirely by the male,

and in correlation with this habit, the female does all the courting. She

is stronger and more pugnacious than the male, and is also brighter in

plumage. This is really very remarkable. What has acted in bringing about

this reversal in the secondary sexual characters? Can the male nature be

transferred to the female? These are difficult questions. In colour the

phalaropes are a pale olive very thickly spotted and streaked with black.

The male is the psychical mother, the female takes no notice of the nest

after laying the eggs. Frequently at the beginning of the breeding season

she is accompanied by more than one male, so that it is evident polyandry

is practised.[30]

The same unusual family conditions prevail with the rhea and the emu,

and also among the painted snipes, cassowaries, tinamous, and some of

the button-quails.[31] There are probably instances of other birds, but

I do not know of details of their habits; Wallace[32] also mentions

several species in different parts of the world, among whom all care

of the young falls entirely upon the father. In all these bird families

exactly opposite conditions prevail to what we are accustomed. It

should be specially noted that these unnatural (I use the word simply

to mean unusual) mothers are larger and more vividly coloured than the

hard-worked fathers; in all such cases polyandry is practised.

Why is this?

The only attempt at an explanation that I have been able to discover is

given by Mr. Pycraft in his fascinating book, _The Courtship of Animals_.

He says—[33]

“The solution of this problem probably lies with the

physiologist. We now know that the problem of sex does not

rest merely in the complete development of the primary sexual

organs; we know that fertile unions do not depend merely on the

act of pairing, but on the functional activity of the ancillary

glands. And it may well be that some change in the character

of the secretions has not only affected the numerical values

of the sexes, but reversed the normal rôle of coloration and

behaviour.”

Mr. Pycraft does not consider that the polyandrous habits of these birds

are due primarily to a preponderance of the females in the species over

the males, but holds that this condition must rather be regarded as

having arisen from a transference to the females, or development in them,

of increased sexual hunger, which intensity of passion would tend to

lead to an exhaustion of the males. This is exceedingly interesting. Mr.

Pycraft continues—

“Neither polygamy nor polyandry among the lower animals, at any

rate, has been brought about or is maintained by the excessive

death rate due to combats for the possession of mates, but

must be explained as demonstrating inherent changes in the

germ-plasm, disturbing the relative proportions of the sexes

and correlated with a profound transformation, not only in

the behaviour of the sexes during the period of reproductive

activity, but also in their physical characteristics.”

If I understand this aright, the conclusion seems forced upon us that

parental conduct is directly dependent on the action of the sexual

appetite: that it may be modified, and in some cases profoundly changed,

by any variation in this appetite’s strength and expression. This is of

profound interest, and such a view, if established, might explain a great

deal.[34] But can it be accepted? To say that such changes are due to

the action of the “hormones,” or secretions of the sexual glands, does

not help us very much. What we want to know is what induces the changes.

There is much that cannot yet be explained. If I may venture to speculate

on so difficult a question, it would seem that when the intensity of

sex-hunger becomes for any reason stronger in the females than in the

males, the result may be a diminishing of the instincts of motherhood.

It is as if the egotistic desires of sex were in opposition to the

racial duties. This would explain the female phalaropes, whose maternal

instincts are completely atrophied. Does it not suggest also a possible

explanation of some failures in human motherhood? This opens up questions

that reach very far. I am tempted to wait to enlarge on the immense

significance of these unnatural bird-mothers in the analogy their conduct

bears to one of the most difficult cases of human motherhood—the strongly

sexual woman who bears children but is quite unfit and without any desire

to rear them. I shall have more to say in the later part of my inquiry

about such women, who are driven by passion to be mothers without having

any instinct for motherhood.

But now a return must be made to the birds’ nurseries. It is a matter

of common knowledge that birds display a marvellous solicitude for the

welfare of the young, and their family life presents a beautiful and

high standard of conduct.[35] There are very few examples of birds who

are bad fathers. Often the male rivals the female in love for the young;

he is in constant attendance in the vicinity of the nest; he guards,

feeds, and sings to the female, and often shares with her the duty of

incubation. The cock ostrich, for example, watches by night over the hole

in which the eggs have been buried, and the hen takes this duty by day.

The screamer birds, again, work in shifts of two or three hours each.

When they bred in the London Zoological Gardens, it was noticed that the

cock-bird acted as timekeeper, and at the end of a watch used to come and

push the female off the nest.[36] These examples are delightful. It would

seem almost that the males, when infected with paternal passion, were

more ardent and regular in the performance of nursery duties than the

mother.

Among many birds it is usual for all family work to be performed quite

irrespective of sex, and the parent who is free takes the task of feeding

the one who is occupied with the nest.[37] The male hornbill is a family

despot; during the breeding season he walls up his spouse within the

trunk of a tree. He feeds her with great care, but he allows her no

liberty. As soon as one family is reared many birds at once burden

themselves with another. The Californian quail affords an example. In

this species the father takes sole charge of the family as soon as the

young birds attain the age of three weeks, when the mother begins the

labours of rearing a second brood. More curious are the habits of the

water hen, among whom the young of the first family assist in the work of

feeding their brothers and sisters of the later broods.[38]

The labour of feeding the young family is a heavy task in which both

parents commonly share. There are no cases of unsuitable feeding of

nestlings by careless or ignorant parents. A regular course of nursery

dietary is practised, in particular with nidicolous species, where the

young are born in a helpless condition; often a special infant food is

prepared by a process of regurgitation, or food partly digested and

thrown up. Thus baby finches are fed on food made of digested insects;

parent parrots also prepare a digested vegetable food; storks break

up worms and frogs and pieces of little fishes and mix it with partly

digested matter and throw it out on the edge of the nest for the family

meals. Young pigeons thrust their beaks into the mouths of their mothers

to absorb the so-called pigeon’s-milk, which is really digested food

mixed with a secretion from the crop; little cormorants thrust their

bills right down the neck of their mother and help themselves to food

out of her stomach. The petrels secrete oil from the fish they eat to

feed the young: this oil is used also as a weapon of defence both by

the parents and the nestlings, who squirt it out from their mouths and

nostrils at any unwelcome intruder on the privacy of the nest.[39]

When the young are fed entirely on insects the work entailed on the

parents is enormous. A pair of blue tit-mice, for example, have been

seen to make no less than four hundred and seventy-five journeys to the

nest during a day’s foraging extending over seventeen hours. Again, the

male of the common dabchick works untiringly, and has been seen to take

as many as forty journeys, with food, in the space of an hour, back to

the nest, where his wife waits with the children, which commonly perch

on her back and are protected by her wings. Small wonder is there that

the labours of both parents are needed to keep the young families from

starvation. In some cases a practical division of work is arranged; and

the father will bring a different kind of food from the mother. With the

stow-chat, for instance, the mother brings small prey, generally spiders,

but sometimes butterflies and moths, while the father selects and carries

large caterpillars. Even where the young are precocious, fairly active

at birth, and soon able to feed themselves, one or both parents for

a considerable time guard, teach and protect them. Great bravery and

intelligence are displayed in the face of any danger, not only will

many parent-birds savagely attack an enemy, but in some cases, as, for

instance, the plover or the partridge, the mother will feign to have a

broken limb or to be lame, to draw off from the young the attention of

the intruder. No parental duty is neglected. Daily lessons are frequently

given to the nurslings on the right kind of food and the best way of

feeding. Thus young birds of prey are instructed, first in the art of

breaking up their food, and later in the best methods of its capture.

Young swallows, again, receive a carefully graduated course of lessons on

the difficult work of catching the insects which form their food, while

they are flying. The parents of the woodcock carry their children to the

feeding ground, to and from the nest, supporting the precious little ones

with their beaks, and pressed close within their feet, which are used as

maternal arms.[40]

A delightful incident was witnessed during the feeding-time of a

red-backed shrike—[41]

“The male had brought to the nest a young bird, and, pulling

off its head, proceeded to ram it down the throat of a very

unfortunate youngster. But the morsel was too big, and had to

be readjusted, not once, but many times; and finally it was

forced home with such success that the wretched bird was in

imminent danger from choking. At this the female, who had been

sitting on the opposite side of the nest, making, apparently,

very sarcastic comments on the awkwardness of her lord, and

males in general, suddenly seized the offending head and,

dragging it forth, proceeded to tear it into small pieces,

giving each of the brood a piece. And during this time the male

looked on in what appeared to be a very subdued fashion.”

Almost all birds take great trouble to ensure the sanitation of the

nursery, and are diligent in their care of the health of the young.

All the excrements are removed from the nest, a task that is rendered

easy, as the droppings of the young are enclosed in a white, film-like

envelope or capsule. A most careful search is made at the bottom of the

nest for these capsules by the parents whenever they come to feed the

young. Do they fail to find the expected capsules, one or other of the

parents after the feeding will tap, tap on the anus of the young birds

as if to remind them of a duty neglected.[42] This is, perhaps, the most

extraordinary example of parental care that I have been able to discover.

One wonders how far this apparent recognition of the necessity of regular

habits and cleanliness is instinctive, or how far we may grant to these

parents some direct realisation of the dangers arising to their children

from neglect and a dirty nursery.

It must not, however, be thought that all birds are good parents. In

some species there would seem to have been a revolt against family ties

and the duty of caring for the young. The common cuckoo and some other

cuckoos are well-known examples. Among them, the mother, as every one

knows, always lays the eggs in the nest of some other birds, and the

young cuckoo, when it is hatched, would seem to have some knowledge of

its precarious position as a stranger. It creeps under the nestlings of

its foster-parents, and, by a violent effort, raises them one by one on

its hollow back and jerks them out of the nest, so securing undivided

attention in its alien nursery. A similar parasitic habit, not yet so

firmly established, is found among the cow-birds of the Argentine. Mr. W.

H. Hudson has seen the mothers trying to build nests and failing to do

this, as if they were struggling to regain a dying instinct. The females

flutter about the mud-nests of the oven-birds, and whenever a chance

presents itself will dart in and lay their eggs. Other cow-birds make no

effort at all in nest-building, and always lay their eggs in the occupied

nests of other birds, and, as their eggs develop very quickly, the

intruders hatch out before the true children of the nursery and rob them

of their parents’ care.

What do we learn from this? That neglect on the part of the mother—any

shuffling out of her duties, thereby placing the care of her children on

the shoulders of other parents, leads to crime and disorder in the social

organisation.

Some birds are content with very little care for home-building ready for

their eggs. Birds belonging to many different species make nurseries

in hollow trees, caves, burrows or natural cavities, sometimes lining

them with leaves and feathers to make them soft, but sometimes even

neglecting this care. The New Zealand kakapo or ground parrot, to take

one instance, hides in any hole it finds and lays its eggs there without

any preparation; the kingfisher, again, digs out a hole in the ground,

or occupies one that it finds. Emus scrape a shallow hole in the ground

and do not cover the eggs. The cassowary scrapes together a rude pile

of leaves and mould on which she lays the eggs. Some of the megapodes

or bush turkeys bury their eggs in the sand, and then take no further

trouble about them, leaving incubation to the chance warmth of the sun.

Others build enormous heaps of decaying leaves, forming a hot-bed from

natural fermentation, by which the chicks are hatched out with no trouble

to the parents. The young of the megapodes are the only living birds that

are hatched out able to fly at once and ready to take care of themselves.

It would appear that neglectful parents foster self-development in the

children.[43]

Where the mother broods alone over the eggs it sometimes happens that the

father-bird takes no interest in the family. The polygamous gallinaceous

birds appear to be without, or to have lost, the paternal instinct.

Peacocks, pheasants, turkey-cocks, and barn-door cocks do practically

nothing for their families, and while the mother-birds’ care in feeding

and guarding the young is untiring, the fathers are running after amorous

adventures. The conduct of the male turkey is even worse, for, prompted

by jealousy, he will often attempt to devour the eggs, and the young

are protected from his attacks only by the mothers uniting together in

troops. Here we see the exact opposite conduct in the two sexes from

that in such a family as the sticklebacks, where good fathers replace

bad mothers. But the same result follows. In either case the neglect

of parental duty by one or other parent is a source of weakness to the

family and increases the risks to which the young are exposed.[44]

I must insist on how strongly conduct is affected by the conditions

of the home; and any change of habits will directly modify parental

behaviour. Thus an animal habitually domestic may easily change under

the pressure of external causes. Thus wild ducks, though good parents

and strictly monogamous, and very highly developed in social qualities

when in the wild state, become indifferent to their offspring and loosely

polygamous under domestication.[45] Civilisation, in this case, depraves

the birds as often it does men. But the examples of bad parents among

birds are few in number.

I will end this chapter by relating, with as much detail as is possible,

the curious family history of the Adélie penguins;[46] as these birds

have developed some interesting and startling experiments in nursery care

and parenthood. The penguins live in large social colonies. It should

be noted first that the death rate among the young birds is enormously

high, as happens invariably where the single family is replaced by great

breeding colonies.

Yet the penguins are self-sacrificing parents. Year by year in the month

of October they return to the same breeding-ground, having travelled many

hundreds of difficult miles, and urged by a mysterious nostalgia that

their children may be born in the same home. The first duty is to take

possession of one of the old stone nests, or to scoop out a new hollow in

the ground. Here the hens sit by the future home, and wait for proposals

from the cocks. The advance is made by what appears to be a symbolic

action and the cock places a stone at the hen’s feet. But often the hen

answers never a word. Bloody duels are fought between rival suitors to

arouse her passion and prove the vigour of her mate.

Both birds work at the home-making, repairing an old nest or forming a

new one, which is made of rounded stones. The cock collects these, and it

is interesting to note what would seem to be an æsthetic taste in these

bird-builders; certain painted pebbles, provided by the explorers for the

use of the birds, were in great demand, the colour red being preferred to

green.

During the first days of wedded life the conflicts between the cocks

continue, and the chosen cock maintains his rights by driving off all

interlopers; but later, when the pair settle down to the serious duties

of the family, they live in peace and are perfectly faithful to each

other. Not until the eggs have been laid does either parent go to feed;

the shortest period of total abstinence from food being about eighteen

days and the longest about twenty-eight days—a fine example of parental

sacrifice. Then one of the birds marches off to the water for a holiday,

which may last from seven to ten days, after which it comes back to give

the other bird its turn. When the young penguins are hatched the parents

share in the work of feeding and guarding them, and relieve each other

at frequent intervals. The bird who goes to feed always returns heavily

burdened with provisions, and its always quaint shape becomes grotesque,

when so laden with crustaceans that it has to lean backwards to keep its

balance. Sometimes a bird will try to carry too much, with the result

that it tumbles over and loses the entire load. The young chicks feed in

the same way as the young cormorants, by thrusting their heads into the

parent’s gullet.

Though both birds work together and with the same zeal, it must be noted

that the mother’s guard over the young is more strict than is that of

the father. When the mother is sitting, nothing, not even a wrangle with

her next-door neighbour, will induce her to move from her post. Whatever

happens, there she stays until her turn for relaxation comes. But the

cocks are more easily led astray. Their combativeness causes them to

forget family affairs. Often much harm is done by these quarrels in the

crowded rookery, which occur frequently and in spite of the protests of

anxious neighbouring parents, who are seen trying to make peace.

The most curious habit of these delightful birds has still to be

recorded. They have developed a taste for games, such as leaping, diving

and boarding the ice-floes. These amusements are indulged in by the

adults, who band themselves in large companies, and play occupies much

of their time. To gain the necessary freedom for this fun from their

homes, and without leaving the chicks to perish, a most instructive

device has been evolved by the penguin parents. The birds with young

families “pool their offspring” in groups, which are left in charge of

a few conscientious birds, both cocks and hens, who act as nurses; they

ward off the attacks of the sukas, and keep, or try to keep, the chicks

from wandering. The holidaying parents bring food at intervals—when their

consciences smite them—and they remain faithful to their own crêches.

This is, I think, the earliest example of what must be regarded as a

premeditated experiment in co-operative child-rearing. For the parents it

doubtless has many advantages. These remarkable birds certainly appear

to find a quite unusual joy in life: we read of the ecstatic attitudes

they will frequently assume and the weird “chant de satisfaction” which

they utter during play when all is well with their world. Yet the fact,

already noted, must not be overlooked that the death rate in the rookery

is enormously high; indeed, a frightful mortality often overtakes the

young chicks when left by their parents. The children pay for the escape

on the part of the parents from the sacrifice parenthood must entail.

I have a further case to record of a different experiment in co-operative

parenthood, in this case necessitated through the severities of the

struggle of life. In the same antarctic regions where the Adélie penguins

make their home there dwells another penguin, the great emperor penguin.

This bird has a sad history; never, during the whole course of its life,

does it touch dry land; the vast ice-fields form its only home, and it

has to brave the perils of the open water in its search for food. Under

such circumstances the struggle for life is severe, and the parent-birds

have the greatest difficulty to rear the young. In these ice-nurseries,

incubation in the usual manner in a nest is impossible; a new and curious

method is adopted. Each mother lays but a single egg, which is placed for

warmth and safety in a “brood-spot” situated at the back of the feet,

where it is covered by the overlapping feathers of the abdomen. Even this

care is not rewarded always, and many of the eggs perish.

Owing to the difficult incubation, a large percentage of brooding birds

are left without eggs and young. And the curious thing is that this loss

seems to increase the desire for offspring, until the parental instinct

becomes a tormenting passion. This is what happens. Each childless bird

strives to adopt a child from the more fortunate parents; and this leads

to a competition in parenthood, which of its kind is without parallel.

Not only the duty of incubation, but afterwards caring for the young

chicks, is carried out not by one bird only, but by a dozen or more,

which stand patiently round for a chance to seize either a chicken or an

egg. Nor is it, as might be expected, the mothers alone who are seized by

the passion of thwarted maternity; the fathers help their childless wives

in their efforts to steal offspring. Every bird, male as well as female,

has developed the “brood-spot,” and has the same bare patch of skin at

the lower part of the abdomen against which the egg, when possessed, is

pressed for warmth.

“What we actually saw, again and again,” states Dr. Wilson,

“was the wild dash made by a dozen adults, each weighing

anything up to ninety pounds, to take possession of any chicken

that happened to find itself deserted on the ice. It can be

compared to nothing better than a football scrimmage, in which

the first bird to seize the chicken is hustled and worried on

all sides by the others while it rapidly tries to push the

infant between its legs with the help of its pointed beak,

shrugging up the loose skin of the abdomen the while to cover

it.… The chicks are fully alive to the inconvenience of being

fought for by so many clumsy nurses, and I have seen them

not only make the best use of their legs in avoiding so much

attention, but remain to starve and freeze in preference to

being nursed. Undoubtedly, I think that of the 77 per cent.

that die before they shed their down, quite half are killed by

kindness.”

It is from such an example as this that we may come to realise the

extraordinary power of parent-hunger. Consider these penguin mothers and

fathers clamouring and fighting for the possession of a child. With them

the parental instinct has gained fierce strength from being thwarted. Is

there not here yet another lesson for us to learn?

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER VI

PARENTHOOD AMONG THE HIGHER ANIMALS

THE FIXING OF THE PARENTAL INSTINCT IN THE MOTHER

Retrogression in fatherhood—Among mammals no examples of

devoted fathers—Egoistic desires increase in the males and

interest in the family decreases—Probable reason—Method of

birth and circumstances of life of infant mammals force

mothers to monopolise nutrition and care of young—Parenthood

more automatic—The father pushed out of his earlier position

of service to the family—Instead of a working partner with

the mother he becomes a member apart—His character appears

to change—He becomes masterful, pugnacious and jealous—This

general among mammals—Number of young among mammals usually

reduced—Varied forms of sexual association practised by

different species—Polygamy frequent—The matriarchal family—The

clue we are seeking—The egoism of the males acts for the

advantage of the females—The maternal instinct fixed in the

mothers—Self-sacrifice becomes once and for ever the supreme

joy and privilege of the female—Objections that may be

raised—Resumé—General conclusions to be drawn from pre-human

parenthood.

CHAPTER VI

PARENTHOOD AMONG THE HIGHER ANIMALS

THE FIXING OF THE PARENTAL INSTINCT IN THE MOTHER

“The universe throbs with restless change. Everything that we

know is becoming rather than being.”—P. CHALMERS MITCHELL

One of the difficulties that has met me in my studies of the family among

the animals is that, as we ascend the scale of life, there is a moral

retrogression in fatherhood—at least, that is how it appears to me. There

are, as far as I have found, no examples among mammals, the highest and

last group of the animal kingdom, of devoted fathers undertaking the sole

charge of the young, and few where the father even shares with the mother

to any extent in the work connected with the upbringing of the family.

The egoistic desires seem to increase in the males, with a corresponding

weakening of their interest in the family and willingness to participate

in its duties. The young are carried by the mother alone, they are

protected chiefly by her; the father takes no part in the nursery cares,

and rarely does he help in providing food for the children. The family is

maternal, the female—the mother—its centre; the male is bound sexually to

the female, but apart from this his connection with the family is slight;

we find him most frequently following personal interests.

In contrast with the conduct of the fathers in the families we have so

far examined among the birds, reptiles, fishes and insects, with whom

the father’s solicitude and sacrifice for the young equals and, in some

cases, rivals that of the mother, this complete paternal indifference is

really very startling. It demands our attention.

What factors have brought about this reversal, which at first sight

appears so strange? Why is it that the parental instinct diminishes

in the father and is now fixed in the mother? It is, however, easy to

understand this change if we consider what now happens, and the changed

conditions under which the young are born. The mammals do not lay eggs

like bird and reptile mothers, but each mother retains the eggs within

her body, and so secures for the young warmth and protection far more

certainly than would be possible in the best-contrived nest or home.[47]

But this has led to changed habits. No nest or brooding-home has to be

made, and the same preparations for the family, which hitherto have

united in work the father with the mother, are unnecessary. Again, food

has not now to the same extent to be collected and stored in readiness

for the future needs of the children. The embryo, living within the body

of its mother, gains the food for its growth directly from her blood.

The connection between mother and child now is closer; her condition

and health become of direct importance for the welfare of the young. At

the same time the importance of the father is sharply lessened. This is

plain. The early stages of mother-care, instead of being conscious and

external acts regulated by special circumstances and often modified to

meet different needs, now become part of the unconscious functions of the

body of the mother—the child is an extension of herself. The advantage

to the offspring of this change from external to internal protection

is great, in the added safety thereby gained from fixed functions over

the habits that might be slurred over, bungled or forgotten. I think,

however, that there is a corresponding loss—that parenthood becomes more

possibly irresponsible and, at the same time, individualism becomes

stronger. Birth, with narrowed opportunity for intelligent adaptation, is

more of an unconsidered incident; I mean that before it occurs it demands

much less from the parents in sacrifice and in work. This is certainly

the case with the father, whose part in gaining offspring is reduced to a

single momentary act, and one, moreover, that is prompted by the fiercest

egoistic desire.

But I think, too, there is a deterioration, though much less in degree,

in the quality of motherhood. The preparation made for the birth of her

children by the mammal mother is very slight, indeed, in many cases the

mother appears to be unaware of the approaching event until the actual

birth begins. Here is an account of a langur monkey, whose first baby

was born in the London Zoological Gardens, at which event the mother

seemed to be utterly surprised. The birth took place at night, and the

mother, from the marks in the cage, must have dragged up and down the

new, astonishing object. But by the morning she had grown accustomed to

the baby, and held it pressed closely to her breast, from time to time

thrusting the head outwards and eagerly looking at it. For several weeks

the baby never left her, and she showed endless curiosity and pleasure in

it, ceaselessly examining it, turning it over, stroking it and keeping

it clean with her hands. She was jealous of visitors, and when they came

near to the cage she would turn round so as to hide the baby from them.

The father, in case of accidents, had been taken away and put in the

adjoining cage, which was shut off by a piece of canvas. He made a hole

in this, and from time to time, especially when the mother or baby made

any noise, he would raise the torn flap and peep through.[48]

It must be remembered that among the mammals it is the rule for the young

to be suckled by the mother, a mode of feeding already foreshadowed by

many bird parents and some insects. But with them the special nursery

food is prepared from their own food by incessant work, undertaken, as

a rule, by both parents. The act of suckling, on the other hand, occurs

without conscious work, and is a function in which the father has no

concern whatever.

I have no facts to trace the steps whereby this function of maternal

feeding was developed and established, but I would suggest that, apart

from the advantage to the young of a special diet, the immense labour

entailed on the parents in obtaining food—the foraging over wide areas

and the carrying of the provisions back to the nursery—made it a question

of economy; and that the mother, as more usually being with the young,

was the parent who came without conscious effort to prepare for them in

her body this early nourishment.

It is plain that the bond between the mother and offspring would be

greatly strengthened; they would be dependent upon her alone, and drawing

life from her body, she would become increasingly conscious of them

during a much longer period. The emotional quality of affection really

develops now. The suckling is a continuation of the organic relation

by which the child is born of the mother’s body; now the child exists

through her, and becomes, so to speak, a habit which grows up out of her

own individuality. I lay stress upon this fact: the maternal feeding is

the beginning of a new period in the growth of motherhood, and is the

foundation of the indestructible bond between mother and child.

We see, then, the reasons for the curious and sudden deterioration in

fatherhood; the father has, as it were, been pushed out of his earlier

position of service. Now that there is no nursery to be built, and the

mother is the sole feeder of the young during their period of greatest

helplessness, the father loses his interest in the family. Our interests

and our habits are fixed by whatever occupies our attention. Freed from

the first and most important care of the young, the male is severed from

the family and its duties, and his attention, thus set free, turns in

new directions and centres upon himself. In this connection we have, I

would suggest, an explanation of the greater variability of the male as

well as of his more violent passions. Instead of a working partner with

the mother, sharing in her sacrifice for the welfare of the family, he

is a member apart; he grows larger than the female, becomes masterful,

pugnacious, jealous of her and of the young: a fighting, egoistic

specialisation. He is still attached to the female, but he seeks her

to satisfy his sexual needs, he less frequently remains with her as a

domestic partner, relieving her in connection with the rearing of the

young.[49]

This is the general condition among the mammals. It is the rule that

the young are tended by the mother during the period of their youth. At

birth they are usually helpless, and often are born before the eyelids

have opened and while the body is yet naked, or but scantily clothed.

But there are degrees of helplessness, determined, it would seem, by the

conditions of the environment and habits of the parents. The maternal

care is greater or less in accordance with the needs of the young. The

period of youth is much longer, and increases as we ascend in the scale

of life. The great apes, for instance—the gorilla, the orang and the

chimpanzee—take from eight to twelve years to grow up, while baboons

and common monkeys take from three to eight years, and the little South

American monkeys and lemurs two to three years.[50] In connection with

this longer childhood we find an increased mental growth; the years

of youth are the time in which the brain cells increase in size and

co-ordinate with the rest of the body. And the longer the period of youth

the more perfect is the brain. Thus the helplessness of the young stands

in direct relation to the increased vitality shown by the adults. It is

also the strongest factor in developing and fixing the maternal instincts.

The young do not leave their mother until they are well ready to start

life on their own account; then they are thrown into the world. Till

then they are cared for. Freed of any duty of finding food, and very

seldom having to defend themselves, they have time to experiment and

learn from experience. The instincts in this way become educated, their

rigidity is destroyed, and more and more they are controlled by memory

and experience—the stored-up results of experiment. The purpose of youth

is to give time for this.

The number of the young is now very greatly reduced, and the small

families are protected by the mothers, in some cases assisted by the

fathers. The maintenance of the species by the production of enormous

families has ceased. Some of the small rodents, it is true, breed several

times in the course of the year, and there are other fecund mammals, such

as pigs, which give birth to many young in one litter. But these are rare

exceptions. The usual number of young is two or three at a birth, and the

higher in the scale of mammalian life the smaller is the family.[51]

There is a fact that must be noted here. A curious perverted instinct is

not uncommon among mammal mothers, though rare with the monkeys. In the

first day or two after birth a mother will kill and eat her young. I had

a bitch who once did this: the first time she had a family she ate all

her puppies in the first night; afterwards (I mean when for a second time

she had puppies) she was a good and fond mother. I think this habit of

maternal infanticide must be connected with that change, of which I have

spoken, whereby the early stages of brood-care are carried on without the

direct consciousness of the mother. The children do not enter into her

experience because she has not had to work for them. She eats them as she

would eat any other helpless thing. In a carnivorous mother especially

this habit is not surprising; it happens almost always with young and

inexperienced mothers. And I think it shows that maternal care is not so

instinctive as we are led to believe, but is the result of, and directly

dependent upon habit and the attention being fixed on the family.

In all the carnivores the young are born helpless, usually blind, though

new-born lions can see; they remain with their mother for a period

varying from a few weeks with the smaller creatures to even more than

a year. Sometimes the father stays loosely attached to the family. The

large predaceous creatures cover great distances in search of prey.

There is, however, a stationary home lair in a well-concealed place,

to which the mother always returns with food. She takes scrupulous

care to keep the nursery clean, and she carefully looks to the needs

of her young family, licking them with her tongue, until they are old

enough to perform their own toilet or lick and clean each other. Before

they are weaned they are allowed to scrape off fragments of flesh from

the mother’s food, so that they may become accustomed to their future

food. At the same time they are taught the elements of stalking, in

play-lessons with the mother’s tail and paws. Later they are taken out by

the mother, sometimes by both parents, on foraging expeditions. Family

parties of lions, for instance, often have been seen by African hunters.

The fathers do little for the young families. Sometimes they afford

protection in fighting and driving off enemies; it is important, however,

to note that this service to the family seems to be prompted by jealousy

and aggression, and must be considered as an expression of the egoistic

instincts rather than connected with parental solicitude.

Among the mammals polygamy is frequent, and there are cases of the most

brutal promiscuity, where the males and females unite and separate at

chance meetings, without any care for the family arising in the mind of

the male. Polygamous unions are especially common among species with

sociable habits who live in hordes. Sociability probably arises through

individual weakness. Animals that are badly armed for fierce combats,

and that have, besides, difficulty in obtaining food are glad to live

in association. Thus the ruminants live in hordes or polygamous groups,

composed of females and young subject to a male who protects them,

expelling his rivals, and being a veritable chief of a band.[52]

The conditions of the nursery and early life of the young are changed

necessarily by these different habits. In the first place, the ruminants

are wanderers, and travel long distances in search of food and water.

Thus there is no permanent home and no nursery, and the mothers make no

preparation beforehand for the young. They retire for a few minutes to a

thicket, where they drop the calves or lambs. Families are small, and one

is the usual number at a birth. The young are not born helpless, as is

the case among the young carnivores where there is a settled nursery, but

are clothed, have their eyes open, and their senses are very alert. In a

very short time, almost as soon as their mother has licked them clean,

they are ready to follow her; and they join the herd, if the animals are

gregarious. The mothers show marked affection to the young, but it would

seem to be the business of the young one rather to follow and stick to

the mother than for the mother, as amongst the carnivores, to take the

lead in the affections. There is no real training of the young by the

mother. Sometimes, if there is a herd, the males will combine to defend

the group of the females and their young; but more frequently there is a

family party, consisting of one or possibly two males, with their several

wives and children.[53]

Many different animals live in this manner in familial groups. The

moufflons of Europe and of the Atlas, for instance, form polygamous

social groups in the breeding season.[54] Among the walrus, the male,

who is of a very jealous temperament, collects around him from thirty to

forty females, making altogether a polygamous family sometimes amounting

to a hundred and twenty individuals.[55] Again, the male of the Asiatic

antelope is inordinately polygamous; he expels all his rivals, and forms

a harem numbering sometimes a hundred females. It should be noted that

polygamic régime does not appear to lessen the affectionate sentiment in

the females towards their tyrant lord. There are many examples of the

most oppressed females being faithful wives. And so much is this so that

the conclusion is almost forced upon us that the female animal likes

servitude.[56]

There is a wide range in the form of sexual association practised by

different species. The carnivorous animals, as a rule, live in couples;

this is done, for example, by bears, weasels and whales. But this is

not an absolute rule, for the South African lion is a polygamist, and

is usually accompanied by four or five females.[57] Sometimes species

that are very nearly allied have different conjugal customs; thus the

white-cheeked peccary lives in social groups, while the white-ringed

peccary lives in couples.[58]

Permanent unions are formed, especially among the anthropoid apes.

Thus strictly monogamous marriages are frequent among gorillas and

orang-utans, and any approach to loose behaviour on the part of the

wife is severely punished by the husband.[59] The ouanderoo (_Macaque

silenus_) of India has only one female, and is faithful to her till

death.[60]

But polygamy is frequent. Savage tells us that the _Gorilla guia_, for

instance, forms small hordes, consisting of a single adult male, who is

the despotic master of many females and a certain number of the young.

We find both the matrichate and the patrichate family; but whatever

the form of sexual relationship practised, the father has always much

less affection for the young than the mother. Among the mammals this is

universal.

The females among the mammals being smaller and less powerful than the

males, no sexual association comparable to polyandry is possible. Yet in

justice it must be noted that the desire for sexual variety is not always

confined to the males. A female will sometimes take advantage of the

moment when the attention of her lord and master is entirely absorbed by

the anxiety of a fight to run off with a young male. Even among species

noted for their conjugal fidelity this will happen. The male animal has

no monopoly in sexual sins.[61]

The polygamous families of monkeys are always subject to patriarchal

rule. The father is the tyrant of the band—an egoist, who spends his time

in fighting and in love adventures. Any protection he gives to his wives

is in his own interest and to keep them bound to himself. He neither

makes the home nor feeds the young. Often he is a disturber of the family

peace. He will, on occasion, show jealousy of his own sons, whom he

expels from the band as soon as they are old enough to give him trouble;

his daughters, in some cases, he adds to his harem.

Even in monogamous species, where the male keeps with the female, he does

so more as chief than as father. He takes little interest in the nursery.

At times he is much inclined to commit infanticide and to destroy the

offspring which, by absorbing the attention of his partner, thwart his

amours. Thus among the large felines the mother often is obliged to hide

her young ones from the male when he stays with her, in order to prevent

his devouring them.[62]

Again, among the even-toed ungulates (pigs, peccaries and hippopotami)

we find marked maternal affection and care. Little pigs are feeble at

birth, and are sedulously guarded by their mother. A hippopotamus baby

(the family usually consists of one only) stays with its mother for a

long time, probably several years, and when the mother goes to and fro

to the water to feed, the little one rides on her back. The fathers take

no notice at all of the young. The odd-toed ungulates (horses, asses and

zebras, and the tapirs and rhinoceroses) live in herds. The young are

active soon after birth and able to follow their mothers, who have great

affection for them. The males will protect the females and young when

the herd is attacked if a fight is unavoidable, but they prefer to seek

safety in flight. The fathers do not appear to have any affection for the

young.[63]

Among the numerous classes of rodents, where the young are born naked,

blind and helpless, the whole duty of their upbringing is undertaken

by the mother. “I do not know of any instance,” states Mr. P. Chalmers

Mitchell, “in which the male takes care of the young; generally they

either neglect them altogether, or attack them and persecute them.”

From such pictures as these the position of the father in the family

will readily be seen. No longer bound by domestic ties to the young,

he knows no duty to the family except the rule of jealous ownership.

How complete is the change in the family organisation. How sharp is the

contrast between these indifferent males, jealous and fighting, and the

devoted fathers among the birds, fishes, reptiles and insects, uniting

with the mothers as working partners in the home-making, food-providing,

and all the care of the young. The father is now alone—separated from

the family, banded with other males. And do you not see how this change,

and the indifference of the males to any interests but their own, have

forced the mothers into closer union with the family? The male strength,

the gorgeous display of sex-charms, the fierce fighting for prey and

for love, are now markedly developed. But this polygamous jealousy and

egoism acts really for the advantage of the females. It is the egoistic

male conduct that forces altruism upon them. I attach great importance to

this. I maintain that the forcing out of the father from his service and

earlier important position of a worker in the circle of the family served

as a means to the end of deepening and fixing the maternal instinct in

the mothers. What was lost for fatherhood was gained for motherhood.

Self-sacrifice became once and for ever the supreme joy and privilege of

the female.

We have found the clue we were seeking.

* * * * *

Further than this I must not go. The first part of my inquiry has come

to an end. There is little more that I need to say. It may seem to the

reader that the animal family, in a book written to establish the duties

and rights of human motherhood, has received too much attention. To those

who hold this view I can say only that I do not agree with them. In

forethought and sacrifice for the well-being of the young—the devotion

of the father as well as of the mother—these pre-human parents do not

yield precedence to many human families. They deserve our attentive

study. But I have no hope, nor much desire, to convince those of an

opposite opinion, who hold that we are so much higher and different from

the animals that we can learn nothing from them. To all such I would

recommend again that they leave this section of my book unread.

There is, however, another objection that may be raised. It may be

thought that too much stress has been laid on the father and his

connection with the family, that my choice of illustrations has been

biased, and cases taken in which the father’s devotion is unusually

prominent. This I have done. And I have done it of fixed purpose. In the

first place, I desired to prove the error in the common opinion that the

parental instinct has at all times been the endowment of the female,

stronger in her than in the male. I wanted it to be known that in the

beginning of the family the father was as true a parent as the mother,

his devotion sometimes being greater than hers. Then, secondly, I hoped,

by means of the insight that the many and great changes in the past

conditions of the family afford us, to establish the close connection

which does at all times exist between parental devotion and the duties

performed in feeding and caring for the young. The parent who sacrifices

most is the parent who loves most. Some of the suggestions I have made

may be more or less open to question, but not a few, I think, are true in

the light of the facts that cannot be questioned. I am fully aware of the

omissions and inadequacy of my summary; probably I have made mistakes. I

think this could not have been prevented. Much ground had to be covered.

The illustrations I have been able to give of each stage in the history

of parenthood are few, compared with the rich number that might be

studied. I have made no attempt at completeness, nor have I tried to set

up any exact order of behaviour. Life is too full of surprises for such

arbitrary theories. I have, however, tried to make clear certain ideas

that have forced themselves very strongly upon my attention during my own

studies.

We have seen the maternal instinct in the making, and we have come to

understand the strong force of this impulse, which finds its expression

in so many diverse ways. There is much that we cannot understand. But

this is largely because we know so little. We have, I hope, gained

a clearer view; we have learnt many things that may cast forward

suggestions for the solving of our own sexual, domestic and social

relationships. The facts which I have recorded are, I trust, sufficient

for this purpose: I hold that the following general conclusions may be

drawn from them—

Regarding the care of the young as the moving force in developing the

intelligence of the parents, I have accepted the truth, which it is the

chief purpose of my book to make plain, that the individual exists for

the race. Other personal things may be important, they may be profoundly

important, but they are not primary—not one with the forces that do not

change. The individual is primarily the host and servant of the seed of

life. Birth is the essential fact underlying all experience.

From this service to the future arises the family and the home. And with

the appearance of the family, new habits are necessarily formed, and

these act in developing the higher sides of mental and emotional life.

Co-operation, friendship and love which is not sexual attraction find

their first beginnings in the limiting by the parents of their desire

to look after themselves, to satisfy their own appetites and provide

for their own needs. The mere toleration of the young is the start in a

new life. There follows a mutual joining in work with the necessity and

opportunity of modifying instinct by practice. In this way a direct push

forward is given for the development of intelligent conduct. An immense

advance, then, is gained from the association of the young with the old

in the family tie.

In the cases we have examined, we have seen that the same end is not

gained always in the same way. Nature has no fixed rule for the family.

The contrasts and paradoxes of animal family life are numerous. We have

watched the development of the parental intelligence in many family

groups; we have seen that there is no fixed order in the relations which

exist between parents and offspring. All arrangements are good on the one

condition that they succeed in serving the family and preserving its life.

To produce large families, making little provision for them, is a

wasteful and improvident way of maintaining life. This spendthrift

fashion of reproduction was the early method. To limit the number of

the family and to cherish and protect the young, not throwing them upon

the world until they are well fitted to make a brave fight against its

dangers, is the later, wiser and safer way. We have noted devices of this

kind in each group of the animal kingdom, but parental care becomes more

and more complete as the scale of life is ascended. Not only are the

numbers in the family reduced, but the period of youth becomes longer.

The protected young are permitted a longer time in which they have the

opportunity of learning to live.

The importance of the form of union or marriage between the parents and

of the kind of home must be considered. We have found that polygamous

fathers and polyandrous mothers care little for the young. The withdrawal

of the interest and care of either parent is a source of weakness which

can be compensated only by an added devotion on the part of the remaining

parent.

We have noted the withdrawal of the father from active work for the

family. This came with the greater importance of the mother, which

itself was not the result of any conscious act. It was a necessary step,

following the change from external to internal protection, whereby the

young are retained within the body of the mother. Animal parents do not

teach us that mothers are always more devoted and self-sacrificing than

fathers. Sometimes, indeed, the contrary would appear to be true. Even

the mother’s instinct to protect and serve the young, which seems to

increase as we ascend the scale towards human parentage, must, I think,

be regarded as an extended egoism. Formed in her body and fed from her

sustenance, the young are a part of her individuality, and her solicitude

for them is but a wider caring for herself.

There are many surprises in animal parenthood. The conduct of the parents

may vary within very wide limits, and all kinds of devices are employed

by different parents to ensure the well-being of the family. Solicitude

and sacrifice for the young are common, but indifference also occurs; and

there are unnatural parents of both sexes who shirk family duties. We

have found, indeed, the suggestion of all the virtues of human parents

as well as many of their sins, every form of devotion and intelligent

parenthood as well as examples of folly and neglect.

We have observed the greatest difference in particular in the conduct

of the father as regards his participation in the work of building the

home and in feeding and rearing the young. Thereby we have learnt that a

psychic metamorphosis of the male may occur, causing him to fulfil the

duties of the mother, and that accompanying this is an alteration in the

character of the female which completely transforms her sexual nature.

An attempt was made to solve this riddle of sex. It seems probable that

changes in function, by which is meant changes in the form of union and

conditions of the family—as when one sex, for some reason or other,

performs the duties usually undertaken by the other sex—may profoundly

alter the sexual nature of the individual and modify the differences

which tend to thrust the sexes apart. We cannot know with any certainty.

Yet I can see no other interpretation of these curious instances of

sexual transformation, and, if I mistake not, it may be possible in this

way to cast a light on one of the most difficult problems with which we

are faced to-day.

I have asserted again and again that the strength of the parental

instinct is dependent directly on the opportunities for its expression;

which is to say that the parent who tends and feeds the young is the

parent who loves the young. We may go further than this. There is no

such thing as instinctive motherhood. The emotional quality of affection

comes later than the birth of offspring, and is not dependent on any

instinctive feeling in the mother. It is the consequence and not the

cause of parental care. So true it is that sacrifice and forgetfulness of

self is the basis of affection.

The most important result that we have gained from our inquiry is a

knowledge of the close connection which exists between the care of the

young and the character and conduct of the parents. You will see what

this implies. The essential fact for the male and the female—for the

mother and also for the father—is a development of responsibility in

fulfilling duties to the family. Neither sex can keep a position apart

from parenthood. Just in so far as the mother and the father attain

to consciousness and intelligent sacrifice in their relation to their

offspring do they attain individual intelligence, development and joy.

To me, at least, this is the truth that stands out as the lesson to be

learnt from these pre-human parents.

PART III

THE PRIMITIVE FAMILY

“Round the fundamental facts of parenthood and the dependence of

the breeding mother woman has built up the tissue of customs and

conventions called ‘home,’ which expanded in ever widening circles became

society.”—E. COLQUHOUN.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER VII

THE MOTHER IN THE PRIMITIVE FAMILY

The importance of the customs of primitive peoples—Such

knowledge necessary to an understanding of our present

family system and form of marriage—My earlier book, _The Age

of Mother-Power_—This work a necessary part of my present

inquiry—Re-statement of my own views—An attempt to group the

matter to be considered—The early period in which man developed

from his ape-like ancestors—Parenthood more fixed, fewer

experiments—The probable conditions of the primordial human

family—Customs of brute male-ownership—This the pre-matriarchal

stage of the family—Progress—The second stage—The growth

of the communal clan—The increasing influence of the

women—Reasons why this view may be accepted—Mother-descent and

mother-rights—The importance of this early matriarchate—The

maternal form of marriage—Visiting husbands—Communal dwelling

houses—Contrast between the customs of the patriarchal

individual family and the maternal communal clan—The power of

the wife and the mother—The alien position of the husband and

father—The assertion of the male force in the person of the

woman’s brother—The communal clan a transitional stage—The

re-establishment of the individual patriarchal family—The

fixing of paternity and the rise of the father’s power—Lessons

to be learnt from this past history of the family.

CHAPTER VII

THE MOTHER IN THE PRIMITIVE FAMILY

(_A chapter which may be omitted by the reader who has no interest in the

customs of primitive peoples._)

“The clan exists on account of the struggle for existence,

the family seeks for the enjoyment of that which they have

obtained.”—STARCKE.

And now having finished my preliminary study of the maternal instinct in

the making, having given examples of its varied manifestations in the

animal kingdom, and made clear certain general ideas on parenthood and

the family, I may hope to go on to consider human mothers and fathers

with a surer knowledge and less misunderstanding. The fitting method of

inquiry, and the one I should like to employ would be to begin with the

lowest forms of the human family. I myself am always greatly attracted

by the customs of primitive peoples, for I was born amongst them. I hold

that some knowledge of the family and the domestic and social conditions

still to be found among uncivilised races, in all parts of the world,

is essential to a complete understanding of our own social and sexual

problems.

In an earlier work, _The Age of Mother-Power_,[64] I have given my views

on the past history of the family. I have attempted to establish the

existence of a Mother-age civilisation, the so-called Matriarchate,

described in detail the privileged position of the mother, and noted,

with many examples, the family conditions, sex-customs and forms of

marriage among primitive peoples. That book should form the historical

section of this present work. It is, indeed, a necessary part of my

inquiry. I am convinced that the only way to estimate the value of our

present family system is to examine the history of that system in the

past. We find suggestions of primitive customs in many directions; they

are shadowed in certain of our marriage rites and direct many of our

sex habits; they have left unmistakable traces on our literature, in

our language and in our laws; indeed we may find their influence almost

everywhere, if we know what to look for and how to interpret the signs.

The close connection which links the present with the past cannot easily

be neglected. We often say: This or that custom belongs to the present

era: yet nine times out of ten the thing we believe to be new is in

reality as old as the history of mankind. Often what we think is a step

forward is not so at all; we are going back to a custom and practices

long discarded. We are less inventive and more bound than we know. No

period stands alone, and the present in every age is merely the shifting

ground at which the past and the future meet.

I would therefore ask all those among my readers who care to follow in

detail the history of the family through the long, early, upward stages

of its growth, at this point to leave this work in order to read _The Age

of Mother-Power_, therein to learn what I hold to have been the family

conditions in the period known as the Mother-age. But as such a course

may be impossible, or be disliked, by the reader, I will now for our

present guidance re-state very briefly the main conclusions arrived at by

that investigation.

And first it should be noted that the history of human parenthood from

its earliest known appearance shows an orderly progress from the start

to the end. There is no difficulty even in fixing the beginning. Man,

the gorilla, the orang and the chimpanzee had a common ancestor, and for

this reason the parental stages of the great apes and of man have an

almost startling resemblance. Professor Metchnikoff was so impressed by

this likeness that he has suggested that the human race may have taken

its origin from the precocious birth of an ape. We thus find no gap that

has to be filled: we take up our inquiry of the family at the exact place

at which we left it. There are, of course, changes to fit the parents

and the young for their new stage of life; more and more instincts are

modified by experiment and experience. Intelligence grows. New habits

afford possibilities of advance, and suggest the directions in which the

family may move. There are, however, far fewer experiments, less sharp

differences in the conduct of the different parents; the family shows

less flexibility, and the maternal instincts settle down, as it were, to

an average character, with average limitations and an average expression.

Our most primitive ancestors, half-men, half-brutes, lived in small,

solitary, and hostile family groups, composed of an adult male, his wife,

or, if he were powerful, several wives and their children. In such a

group the father is the chief or patriarch as long as he lives, and the

family is held together by their common subjection to him. His interest

in the family is confined to fighting to drive off rivals, and, for this

reason, he drives his sons from the home as soon as they are old enough

to be dangerous to his interests: his daughters he adds to his wives,

unless they are caught and carried off by some other male.

It was doubtless thus, in a family organisation similar to that of the

great monkeys, that man first lived. Here was the most primitive form of

jealous government of the family by the male. Such conduct, prompted by

the egoistic desires of sex, mark the continuation of the degradation

in fatherhood, which we noted as occurring among the mammals as soon as

the father was freed from the duties of providing a home and the first

feeding and tending of the young.

In the primitive families the idea of descent is feeble so that the

groups are small and readily disrupted. But though originally without

explicit consciousness of relationships, the members would be held

together by a _feeling_ of kin. Such feeling would become conscious first

between the mothers and their children, and in this way mother-kin must

have been realised at a very early period. The father’s relationship, on

the other hand, would not be forced into conscious recognition. He would

be a member apart from this natural kinship.

Such were the probable conditions in the primordial human family. The

important thing to note is that in each family group there would be only

one adult polygamous male, with several women of different ages, and the

children of both sexes, all in more or less complete subjection to his

rule.[65]

These customs of brute-male-ownership are still in great measure

preserved among the least-developed races. This may be called the

pre-matriarchal stage of the family, and its existence explains how there

are many rude peoples that exhibit no trace at all of mother-descent. In

the lowest nomad bands of savages of the deserts and forests we still

find these rough paternal groups, who know no social bonds, but are ruled

alone by brute strength and jealous ownership. With them development has

been very slow; they have not yet advanced to the social organisation of

the maternal family clan.

From these first solitary families, grouped submissively around

one tyrant-ruler, we reach a second stage, out of which order and

organisation sprang. In this second stage the family expanded into

the larger group of the communal clan. The change had to come. With

the fierce struggle for existence, the solitary family-group became

impossible, association was the only way to prevent extermination.

How did the change come?

Now, it is part of my conviction that the earliest movements towards

peace and expansion of the family came through the influence of women. I

must state briefly my reasons for this view.

In the first place it certainly would be in the women’s interests to

consolidate the home and the family, and, by means of union, to establish

their own power. What we desire and fix our attention upon, as a rule, is

what we do. In the early groups the mothers with their adult daughters

and the young of both sexes would live on terms of association as

friendly hearthmates. Such is the marked difference in the position of

the two sexes—the solitary jealous unsocial male and the united women.

The strongest factor in this association would arise from the dependence

of the children upon their mothers, a dependence that was of much

longer duration than among the animals on account of the pre-eminent

helplessness of the human child, which entailed a more prolonged infancy.

The women and the children would form the family-group, to which the male

was attached by his sexual needs, but he remained always apart—a kind

of jealous fighting specialist. The temporary hearth-home would be the

shelter of the women. It was under this shelter that children were born

and the group accumulated its members. Whether cave, or hollow tree, or

frail branch shelter, the home must have belonged to the women.

It is clear that under these conditions the female members of the

group-family must necessarily have been attached to the home much more

closely than the man, whose desire lay in the opposite direction, and

whose conduct by constant jealous fights tended to the disruption of the

home. Moreover this home attachment would be present always and acting on

the female members, as the daughters—unless captured by other males—would

remain in the home as additional wives to their father; on the other

hand, it could never arise in the case of the sons, whose fate was to be

driven out from the hearth-home as soon as they were old enough to become

rivals to their father. Such conditions must, as time went on, have

profoundly modified the female outlook, bending the desire of the women

to a steady settled life, conditions under which alone the family could

expand and social organisation develop.

Again, the daily search for the daily food must surely have been

undertaken chiefly by the women. For it is impossible that one man,

however skilful a hunter, could have fed all the female members and

children of the group. Further than this, we may, I think, conceive that

much of his attention and his time would be occupied in fighting his

rivals; also his strength as sole progenitor must have been expended

largely in sex. It is, therefore, probable that the male was dependent on

the food activities of his women.

The mothers, their inventive faculties quickened by the stress of the

needs of their children, would try to convert to their own uses the most

available portion of their own environment. It would be under their

attention that plants were first utilised for food, seeds planted and

nuts and fruit stored, birds would also be snared, fish caught, and

animals tamed for service. Primitive domestic vessels and baskets would

be fashioned and clothes have to be made. All the faculties of the

women, in exercises that would lead to the development of every part of

their bodies and their minds, would be called into play by the work of

satisfying the physical needs of the group.

In all these numerous activities the women of each group would work

together. And through this co-operation must have resulted the assertion

of the women’s power, as the directors and organisers of industrial

occupations.

As the group slowly advanced in progress, such power, increasing, would

raise the mother’s position; the women would establish themselves

permanently as of essential value in the family, not only as the givers

of life, but as the chief providers of the food essential to the

preservation of the life of its members.

And a further result would follow in the treatment by the males of this

new order. The women by obtaining and preparing food would gain an

economic value. Wives would become to the husband a source of riches

indispensable to him, not only on account of his sex needs, but on

account of the more persistent need of food. Thus the more women he

possessed the greater would be his own comfort, and the physical

prosperity of the group.

And again, a further result would follow. The greater the number of

women in the group the stronger would become their power of combination.

I attach great importance to this. Working together for the welfare of

all, the maternal instinct of sacrifice would be greatly strengthened in

the women so that necessarily they would come to consider the collective

interests of the family. Can it be credited that such conditions could

have acted upon the males, whose conduct would still be inspired by

individual appetite and selfish inclination? I maintain such a view to be

impossible.

Another advantage, I think, would arise for the women. From the

circumstances of the family their interest in sex must have been less

acute in consciousness than that of the male. They must have gained

freedom from being less occupied with love, and from being less jealously

interested in the male than he was in them. Doubtless each woman would

be attracted by the male’s courageous action in fighting his rivals

for possession of her, but when the rival was the woman’s own son such

attraction would come into strong conflict with the deeper maternal

instinct. Thus the unceasing sexual preoccupation of the male, with the

emotional dependence it entailed on the females, must, I would suggest,

have given the women an immense advantage. They would come to use their

sex charms as an accessory of success. And if I am right here, the

husband would be in the power of his women, much more surely than they

would be in his power.

From the standpoint of physical strength the male was the master, the

tyrant ruler of the family, who, doubtless, often was brutal enough.

But the women with their children, leading an independent life to some

extent, and with their mental ingenuity developed by the conditions of

their life, would learn, I believe, to outwit their masters by passive

united resistance. The mothers and daughters may even have asserted

their will in rebellion. I picture, indeed, these savage women ever

striving for more privilege, and step by step advancing through peaceful

combination to power.

Such conditions as those I have briefly pictured could not fail to

domesticate the women. They must have acted also in strengthening the

bonds between the mothers and their children and in making more conscious

the strong instinct of maternal sacrifice.

But mark this: I do not wish to set up any claim for, because I do not

believe in, the superiority of one sex over the other sex. Character

is determined by the conditions of living. If, as I conceive, progress

came through the mothers, rather than through the father, it was

because the conditions were really more favourable to them, and drove

them on in the right path. Collective motives were more considered by

women, not at all because of any higher standard of moral virtue, but

because of the peculiar advantages arising to themselves and to their

children—advantages of peaceful family association which could not exist

in a group ruled by individual inclination.

During the development of the family, we may expect to find that the

males will seek to hold their rights, and that the women of the group

will exert their influence more and more in breaking these down; and this

is precisely what we do find. And for this reason the clan system, which

developed from these solitary hostile families, must be considered as a

feminine creation, which had special relation to motherhood.

The sexual egoism by which one male, through his strength and seniority,

held marital rights over all the females of his group had to be struck at

its roots. In other words, the solitary despot had to learn to tolerate

the association of other adult males.

It is impossible for me here to follow step by step the means whereby

this change was brought about. I would, however, assert my strong belief

that it was the mothers, acting in the interests of their children, who

tamed the jealous desires and domesticated the males. The adult sons,

instead of being driven from the home by the father, were permitted

to remain as members of the family group and to bring in young wives

captured from other families. At a later stage, daughters received

husbands, young males from other groups, who came first as temporary

lovers, visiting their brides by night, but afterwards remained with

them as permanent guests in the home of the mother. Under these new

conditions, the marital rights of the male members were restricted and

confined. A system of taboos was established, which, as time advanced,

was greatly strengthened by the use of sacred totem marks, and became of

inexorable strictness.

In this way peace was established, and association between the jealous

fighting males was made possible.

Here, then, are the reasons which led to the formation of the maternal

family and the communal clan. It depended, in the first place, on the

development of mutual aid between mother and offspring, based on the

much closer relationship of the children to their mothers than to the

father. As soon as the women of the family-group by combination were able

to outwit and curb the jealous rule of the father, the matriarchal clan

developed from the primitive patriarchal family.

The contrast between the family and clan seems to me of great importance.

Individual relationships became of less importance; the clan did not

consist of groups of families but of individuals. I have stated that the

sexual relationships between the young people began with the reception

by the daughters of temporary lovers in the clan-home. A connection thus

formed would tend under favourable circumstances to be continued and

would be perpetuated as a marriage. Thus it came to be the custom for

the husband to live temporarily or permanently in the wife’s home and

among her kindred. Here he was compelled to work for the general good;

he was without property or any recognised rights in the clan; he was not

permitted a separate home, and was left with no—or very little—control

over his wife and none over the children of the marriage. He occupied,

indeed, the position of a more or less permanent guest in the maternal

hut or tent.

Under such an organisation the family—the first group of the father,

wives and children—is swallowed up in the larger clan. The male has no

position of mastery over the female. As time goes on, the clan becomes

more and more a free association for mutual protection, ruled over by the

ablest and most capable members. Not only does the father not stand out

as a principal person from the background of the familial clan; he has

not even any recognised domestic rights in connection with his own wife

and children. This restriction of the husband and father was clearly

dependent on the form of marriage.

The later modifications of the communal clan and the social customs that

grew up, in most cases—and always, I believe, in the complete maternal

form—were favourable to the authority of the mothers. Kinship was

reckoned through the mother, the totem name was taken from her, since in

this way alone could the undivided family be maintained. The continuity

of the clan thus depending on the women they were placed in a position of

importance; the mother was at least the nominal head of the household,

shaping the destiny of the clan through the aid of her kindred.

All the members of such a compound family were responsible for the

offences of any individual member; and in the same way the clan exacted

blood vengeance or compensation collectively for any offence committed

against its members. But the men belonged to their own clans, that is,

to the clans of their mothers; they did not belong to and had no rights

in the clan of which their wife and children were members. As husbands

and fathers they were without power. This is very important. The woman’s

closest male relation was not her husband, but her brother, who acted as

father to her children.

A pure type of matriarchal family fully preserved is rare. There are

scattered tribes in different parts of the world where descent is still

reckoned through the mother. Some features favourable to women are

found in one community, some in another. The sexual relationships, in

particular, are interesting. The girl is frequently the wooer of the man,

and in certain cases she or her mother imposes the conditions of the

marriage. After marriage, the free provisions for divorce (often more

favourable to the wife than to the husband) are, perhaps, of even greater

significance.

There are many traces of discipline exercised in the bringing up of

children and more or less systematic training of boys in endurance,

speed, courage, etc. This task falls to the mother’s brother. The

daughters are instructed by the mothers and the matrons of the tribe in

all that concerns their duties as wives and mothers.

The woman is subject to the authority of her eldest brother, and

sometimes as well to that of her other brothers, her uncles and male

relations. But descent being reckoned in the female line, and the

fact that she is the conduit by which property passes to and from the

men, gives the woman a position of very considerable, though varying,

importance.

In all cases the power of the wife is clearly dependent on the maternal

form of marriage. I must insist upon this. Where this custom of the

husband living in the home of the wife was practised for any long period,

the women often established their own claims and all property was held

by them; conditions which, under favourable circumstances, developed

into what may literally be called a matriarchate. Elder women among some

tribes are the heads of kinsfolk, they even have a seat or voice in the

tribal council, and there have been exceptional cases of female tribal

chiefs. Religion is in some periods in the hands of women, and goddesses

are more reverenced than gods. Here is certain proof of the favourable

influence mother-descent may exercise on the authority held by women. In

all circumstances the children’s position was dependent on the mother and

her kindred.

Such a system of inheritance may be briefly summarised as mother-right.

Other forms of marriage are found; indeed, every possible experiment in

family and sexual association has been tried and is still practised among

barbarous races, often with very little reference to those moral ideas to

which we are accustomed. It is, however, very necessary to remember that

monogamy is frequent and indeed usual under the maternal system. When the

husband lives with his wife in a dependent position to her family, he can

do so only in the case of one woman. For this reason polygamy is much

less deeply rooted under the conditions in which the communal life of

the compound family is developed than in the single patriarchal family.

Polygamy is an indication, if not always a proof, of the subordination of

women to the headship of the husband. In the complete maternal family it

is never common and is even prohibited.

It was quite otherwise with polyandry, and though less usual than

monogamy, this form of association is in some cases connected with the

conditions of the maternal clan. I do not believe it can be regarded

as due to a licentious view of the sexual relations, but arose as

an expression of the communism which was characteristic of such an

organisation.

The whole subject of primitive sexual relationships—which, of course,

involves the family, the position of woman and the welfare of the

children—is a very wide and complicated one. If I differ on several

important points from learned authorities, whose knowledge and research

far exceed my own, I do so only after great hesitation, and because I

must. Almost invariably the writers on these questions are men, and

perhaps for this reason the position of women has not received the

attention that it claims. My own studies have convinced me that in the

early beginnings of the human family women exercised a more direct and

stronger influence than is usually believed. This is no fanciful idea of

my own, as I claim to have proved in my earlier book,[66] where it was

possible to bring forward in detail the evidence I have collected on the

subject.

But even in this brief summary enough has been said to give in rough

outline some picture of the family under the conditions of the maternal

communal clan. We have marked the steady strengthening of the tie between

the mother and the child, with the corresponding movement in the opposite

direction in regard to the father’s position in the family. All the

chances for success in parenthood rested with the mother, rather than

with the father. The male was driven out from the holy circle of the

family. This degradation of fatherhood is a fact that must be kept before

our attention.[67]

There is, however, another side to the matter. In the face of what

we have established, it must, I think, be accepted that women held

considerable power in this period of mother-descent and under the

maternal form of marriage. The mother was dominant in the family in

this second stage of its development. This is still denied by some

authorities. There are many facts of the early power of women which the

great world does not know.

How, then, are we to come to a decision? Shall we look back to the

maternal stage as the golden period of the family wherein were realised

conditions of free motherhood, which even to-day have not been

established? It is a question very difficult to answer, and we must not

in any haste rush into mistakes. And unfortunately the limitation of my

space can allow only the briefest consideration of the matter.

We find that the mother-age was a transitional stage in the history

of the growth of society, and we can trace the stages of its gradual

decline. There is nothing to show that the customs of maternal communism,

dependent on descent traced in the female line and the maternal form

of marriage, have ever been permanently maintained in any progressive

society. The enlarged family of the maternal clan is thus proved to have

been a less stable social system than the patriarchal single family which

again succeeded it, or it would not have perished in the struggle with

it. I think this must be accepted.

Within the large and undivided group-family of the clan, the restricted

family became gradually re-established by a reassertion of domestic

interests. In proportion as the family gained in importance (which would

arise as the struggle for existence lessened and the need of association

was less imperative) the interests of the individual members would become

separated from the group to which they belonged. As society advanced and

personal property began to be acquired, each man would aim at gaining a

more exclusive right over his wife and children; he would not willingly

submit to the bondage of the maternal form of marriage.

We find the husband and father moving towards the position of a fully

acknowledged legal parent by a system of buying off his wife and her

children from their clan-group. Then the payment of a bride-price was

claimed from the bridegroom by the bride’s relations, and an act of

purchase was accounted essential before marriage; it was, however,

regarded as a condition, not so much of the marriage itself, but of

the transference of the wife to the home of the husband and of the

children to his kindred. The change was, of course, effected slowly;

often we find the two forms of marriage—the maternal form and the

purchase-marriage—occurring side by side. What, however, is certain is

that the purchase-marriage in the struggle was the one which prevailed.

This reversal in the form of the marriage brought about a corresponding

reversal in the position of the woman in the sexual relationship. This

is so plain. As the patriarchate developed, and men began to gain

individual possession of their children by the purchase of their mothers,

the father became the dominant power in the family. Women no longer are

the transmitters of property and of the family name, but are themselves

property passing from the hands of their kindred to those of a husband.

As purchased wives, they reside in the husband’s house and among his kin,

where they occupy the same position of disadvantage in the family as the

husband and father had done under the maternal marriage. The protection

of her own kindred was the source of the wife’s privileged position. This

now was lost. The change was not brought about without a struggle, and

for long the old customs contended with the new. But step by step the

man became the father-master in the home.

It is, however, very necessary to remember that this reversal in the

marriage custom may well have been brought about as much by the desire of

the women as by the action of the men. I believe that the change to the

individual family must have been regarded favourably by primitive women.

An arrangement which would give a closer relationship in marriage and

the protection of a husband for herself and her children may well have

been preferred by the wife to the position of subjection in which she was

frequently placed to the authority of her brother and her own relatives.

Nor do I think it unlikely that she, quite as strongly as the man,

may have desired to live apart from her mother and her kindred in her

husband’s home. We have to remember that the reassertion of the father

within the family-group was a necessary step, and one that had to be

taken. The mother is bound to the family by her children in a much closer

way than the man ever can be bound. And for this reason any conditions

which separate the father from the home and liberate him from his

responsibilities to his children are certain not to act in the direction

of progress. The male needs to be held to the family. This is a fact much

too often forgotten.

The social clan organised around the mothers carried mankind a long way—a

way the length of which we are only beginning to realise. But it could

not carry mankind forward to the closer family ties and family life from

which so much was afterwards to develop. The clan system was essential to

the conditions of primitive life, owing to the fierce struggle to exist,

and it could then limit and interfere with the family on every side. But

as soon as life was easier, men wanted to establish a home with wife and

children and to enjoy the possession of property. And women wanted this

too. It was not possible for the family to be permanently absorbed. I

must insist upon this again. The individual family—that is, the trinity

composed of father, mother and child—is the older and the more lasting

institution.

I affirm, further, that of the two forms of the family, the individual

limited form is the one that is the more natural and happy. Special

circumstances may make necessary the enlarged social family, but such

conditions are not really a step forward.

With all the evils and restrictions that father-right and the individual

family-group may, throughout the ages, have brought to women, we have

got to remember that the woman owes the individual relationship in

love and the protection of the man for herself and her children to the

patriarchal system. The father’s right in his children (which, unlike

the right of the mother, was not founded upon kinship, but rested on the

quite different and insecure basis of property) had to be re-established.

Without this being done, the family in its fairness and complete

development was impossible. The survival value of the patriarchal family

consists in the additional gain to the children of the father’s to the

mother’s care. I do not think this gain can ever safely be lost.

PART IV

MOTHERHOOD AND THE RELATIONSHIPS OF THE SEXES

“For the great majority of mankind at least it can be held that life

resolves itself quite simply and obviously into three cardinal phases.

There is a period of youth and preparation, a great insurgence of emotion

and enterprise centring about the passion of Love; and a third period in

which, arising amidst the warmth and stir of the second, interweaving

indeed with the second, the care and love of offspring becomes the

central interest in life.… Looking at this with a primary regard to its

broadest aspect, life is seen essentially as a matter of reproduction;

first a growth and training to that end, then commonly mating and actual

physical reproduction, and finally the consummation of these things in

parental nurture and education. Love, Home and Children, these are the

heart-words of life.”—H. G. WELLS.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER VIII

THE FAMILY AND THE HOME

Attacks on the family not likely to destroy it—Dominance of

the male may be changed without altering the fundamental

ideal of the family—Bernard Shaw ignorant of human needs—Two

statements by H. G. Wells—The inhuman ideals of intellectual

reformers—Trained hands to replace mother’s love—Foolish egoism

the basis of the whole argument—The sweated victim of an

industrial age is the ideal emancipated woman—The power of the

mother in non-industrial societies—Modern uncertainty and want

of a fixed standard of conduct—The extension of women’s work

during the war—Is it of benefit to the coming generation—Can

the mother both work outside the home and give sufficient

care to her children—Woman’s subordinate qualities are man’s

dominant qualities—Hence the wastefulness of rivalry in the

same work—Early experiments in communist families—The child’s

need for a home of its own—We must insist on conditions that

will make home life possible—Types of mothers—The personal

rights of the child—The position of the father—The father can

be detached from the family—This harmful—The child’s need for

the care of both its parents—The home exposed to danger—It

awaits a fresh inspiration to turn back and hold the desires of

women.