In the preceding pages I have endeavored to show what manner of living
favors the transmission of noble and beautiful qualities from mother to
child; what conditions tend to produce unbalanced, vicious, unlovely
character. I have dwelt principally on the moral aspects of maternity,
because that is the side hitherto overlooked. But I can not close
without saying a word respecting the baleful influence of intoxicating
drinks.
Nothing is more certain than that the desire for alcoholic drinks is
inherited, and all degrees of mental dullness and incapacity, from
one grade below the parental endowment, to idiocy, may be distinctly
referred to habits of intoxication.
We have seen that the abnormal sensibility of a pregnant woman insures
large effects (on the child) from small causes. Thus a joy is absorbed
by the young life that the mother outgrows; and depression that was but
temporary with her, leaves its mark on the temperament and disposition
of her offspring.
Thus the habit of taking just a drop to sustain your fainting
spirits during the day, and a glass of something hot at night, added,
most likely, to the father’s moderate drinking, gives the child an
uncontrollable passion for stimulants. Now, the life you live may be
all that is desirable, but if your brain is put under this influence
occasionally, all the good is weakened, vitiated, undermined. Alcohol
breaks down the WILL, and what is a human being without a will? A
vacillating, unreliable creature. It deadens the mental sensibilities
and arouses the passions.
Friends will often advise a pregnant woman to drink beer or spirits,
assuming that nature at such times requires it. Now, nature is equal
to her own emergencies, and pregnancy is not a disease. The brooding
mother needs plenty of sunlight and fresh air, abundant sleep, moderate
exercise, wholesome food, and congenial surroundings. _Let her listen
to no one who prescribes a stimulant which holds disease in itself._
There is such a thing as intemperance in eating, and I would counsel
any woman to demand of herself a perfect self-control at the
table. Nothing less than this, with entire abstinence on her part,
will suffice to neutralize in most cases the desire for liquor,
communicated, in so many cases, by the father; and the firmness
exercised by her in denying the appetite, will give _her child_ the
firmness to resist the temptation to drink. Without this _will_ in the
matter, the inclination would be communicated and not the power to
resist, as, for instance, if she merely abstained because she could not
obtain what she longed for.
The Germans sodden their brains with lager-beer; the English brutify
themselves on gin and porter. We ruin soul, body, and worldly prospects
on adulterated whisky.
Our husbands and fathers license thousands of groggeries, corner
groceries, saloons, that they may be free to indulge out of sight
of home. In this way they prepare places wherein their sons may be
initiated into vice. Thus the crop of drunkards never fails in village,
town, or city, nor the supply of criminals, large and small, made
criminals by these means provided.
The “deficient” child and the predestined drunkard, are cradled as
softly as are the children of temperance. The mother handing her babe
round for the admiration of her neighbors, is shaken by no prevision of
what it will one day become. Her fair, rosy-cheeked boy destined to be
the inmate of an inebriate asylum? She will not believe it. Yet only
obedience to the higher law on her part will have saved him from it.