RADIANT MOTHERHOOD
_BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
SCIENTIFIC.
The Cretaceous Flora, Part I. Illustrated. Published by the
Trustees of the British Museum. 12s. net.
The Cretaceous Flora, Part II. Illustrated. Published by the
Trustees of the British Museum. £1 1s. net.
Ancient Plants. Illustrated. Published by Blackie. 4s. 6d. net.
The Study of Plant Life. 2nd Edition. Illustrated. Published by
Blackie. 3s. 6d. net.
Married Love. 8th Edition. Published by Putnam. 6s. net.
Wise Parenthood. 6th Edition. Published by Putnam. 3s. 6d. net.
A Letter to Working Mothers. Published by the Author. 6d. net.
TRAVEL.
A Journal from Japan. Published by Blackie. 7s. 6d. net.
LITERARY.
Man, Other Poems and a Preface. Published by Heinemann. 3s. 6d. net.
Conquest, a Three-Act Play. Published by French. 1s. net.
Gold in the Wood and The Race. Two Plays. Published by Fifield. 2s.
net.
With Prof J. Sakurai, Plays of old Japan, The Nō. Published by
Heinemann. 5s. net.
The author’s vivid and imaginative sympathy has really enabled her,
in some degree, to communicate the incommunicable.
ATHENÆUM.
Radiant Motherhood
A Book for Those Who
are Creating the Future
By
Marie Carmichael Stopes
Doctor of Science, London; Doctor of Philosophy,
Munich; Fellow of University College, London;
Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
and the Linnean Society, London
LONDON
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS, LTD.
TORONTO
THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY, LIMITED
_First published August 9, 1920_
_Copyright; translations and all other rights
reserved by the Author. Copyright in U.S.A._
_Dedicated to young husbands and all who are creating the future_
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE ix
CHAPTER
I. THE LOVER’S DREAM 1
II. CONCEIVED IN BEAUTY 9
III. THE GATEWAY OF PAIN 18
IV. THE YOUNG MOTHER-TO-BE:
HER AMAZEMENTS 32
V. HER DELIGHTS 39
VI. HER DISTRESSES 44
VII. THE YOUNG FATHER-TO-BE:
HIS AMAZEMENTS 52
VIII. HIS DELIGHTS 58
IX. HIS DISTRESSES 62
X. PHYSICAL DIFFICULTIES OF THE EXPECTANT MOTHER 71
XI. PHYSICAL DIFFICULTIES OF THE EXPECTANT FATHER 93
XII. THE UNION OF THREE 99
XIII. THE PROCESSION OF THE MONTHS 113
XIV. PRENATAL INFLUENCE 130
XV. EVOLVING TYPES OF WOMEN 146
XVI. BIRTH AND BEAUTY 161
XVII. BABY’S RIGHTS 171
XVIII. THE WEAKEST LINK IN THE HUMAN CHAIN 183
XIX. THE COST OF COFFINS 201
XX. THE CREATION OF A NEW AND IRRADIATED RACE 208
APPENDICES
A. PHYSICAL SIGNS OF COMING MOTHERHOOD 229
B. ON BIRTH 231
C. SUGGESTIONS FOR CALCULATING THE DATE OF ANTICIPATED BIRTH 233
PREFACE
This book is written for the same young people who inspired _Married
Love_. Many of my readers have asked me to write such a book as this,
and I sincerely hope that it will not disappoint them. Many, many
people have contributed facts which have helped me to write it. The
book, however, is pre-eminently the work of my baby son and his father,
whose beautiful spirits have been, and will be, through all eternity
united with me in a burning desire to bring light into dark places.
M. C. S.
Radiant Motherhood
CHAPTER I
The Lover’s Dream
So every spirit, as it is most pure,
And hath in it the more of heauenly light,
So it the fairer bodie doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairely dight,
With chearefull grace and amiable sight.
For of the soule the bodie forme doth take:
For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make.
SPENCER: _An Hymne in honour of Beautie_.
Every lover desires a child. Those who imagine the contrary, and
maintain that love is purely selfish, know only of the lesser types
of love. The supreme love of true mates always carries with it the
yearning to perpetuate the exquisite quality of its own being, and to
record, through the glory of its mutual creation, other lives yet more
beautiful and perfect.
Existence being such a difficult compromise between our dreams and the
material facts of the world, this desire may sometimes be thwarted by
factors outside itself; may even be so suppressed as to be invisible in
the conduct and unsuspected in the wishes of the lover. Yet the desire
to link their lives with the future is deeply woven into the love of
all sound and healthy people who love supremely.
It is commonly said that most women marry for children, and not out of
a personal love, and there is more truth in this saying than is good
for the race. To-day, alas, many women cannot find the perfect and
sensitive mate their hearts desire and they hope in _any_ marriage to
get children which will mitigate the consequent loneliness of their
lives. Sometimes they may, to some extent, succeed, but far less often
than they imagine, for that strange and still but little understood
force “heredity” steps in, and the son of the tolerated father may
grow infinitely more like his physical father than he is like the dear
delight his mother dreamed he might be.
Few girls have not pictured in day dreams the joy of holding in their
arms their own beautiful babies. No man of their acquaintance, however,
may seem fine enough to be their father. Until she has been crushed
by experience, or, unless she listens with absolute belief to the
depressing information of her elders, each girl believes that her own
intense desire for perfection will be the principal factor in creating
the beautiful babies of her dreams. Often it seems as though this power
were granted, for women sometimes bear lovely children by fathers in
whom one may seek in vain for any bodily grace or charm.
The century long working of economic laws based on physical force,
the remnants of which still affect us, has resulted in man generally
having the selective power and tending to choose for his wife the most
beautiful or charming woman that his means allow; hence hitherto on
the whole, the race has been bred from the better and more beautiful
women. This has undoubtedly tended to keep the standard of physical
form from sinking to the utter degradation which we see in the worst of
the slums, and in institutions where live the feeble-minded offspring
of inferior mothers who have wantonly borne children of fathers devoid
of any realization of what they were doing.
From these avenues of shame and misery, however, I must steer my line
of thought, for this book is written pre-eminently for the young, happy
and physically well-conditioned pair who mating beautifully on all the
planes of their existence, are living in married love.
Whether early in the days of their marriage or postponed for some
months or more out of regard for his wife’s body and beauty, the hour
will come when the young husband yearning above her, sees in his wife’s
eyes the reflection of the future, and when their mutual longing
springs up to initiate the chain of lives which shall repeat throughout
the ages the bodily, mental and spiritual beauties of each other, which
each holds so dear. Perhaps in lovers’ talk and exquisite whispers they
have spoken of this great deed on which they are embarking, and each
has voiced that intense yearning which filled them to see another “with
your eyes, your hair, your smile,” living and radiant. The lovers dream
that they will be repeated in others of their own creation, always
young, running through the ages which culminate in the golden glories
of the millenium.
The dream is so wonderful, the thought that it pictures in the mind so
full of vernal beauty, light and vigour that, were facts commensurate
with it, its result should spring all ready formed from between the
lips of those who breathed its possibilities like Minerva from the head
of Jove.
It seems incredible that such splendid dominant designs to fulfil God’s
purpose should be hindered, and made to bend and toil through the hard
material facts of the molecular structure of the world, and that it
is only many months afterwards that the first outward body is given
to this dream, and that then it is in a form not strong and dancing
in lightness and beauty but weak and helpless with many intensely
physical necessities which for months and years will require the utmost
fostering care or it will be destroyed by material effects, hostile
and too strong for it. Yet such is the limitation of our powers of
creation. And underneath the intense passion of love and all its rich
dreams of beauty is the slow building, chemically molecule by molecule,
biologically cell by cell, against obstacles the surmounting of which
seems a superhuman feat.
Lovers who are parents give to each other the supremest material gift
in the world, a material embodiment of celestial dreams which itself
has the further power of vital creation.
In this and all my work, I speak to the normal, healthy and loving in
an endeavour to help them to remain normal, healthy and loving, and
thus to perfect their lives. So in this book I do not intend to deal
with those whose marriages are mistaken ones, or with those who do
not know true love. I write for those who having made a love match
are passing together through the ensuing and surprising years, and
incidentally doing one of the greatest pieces of work which human
beings can do during their progress through this world, and that is
creating the next generation.
In nature, the consummation of the physical act of union between
lovers generally results in the conception of a new life. We share this
physical aspect of mating and the resulting parenthood with most of the
woodland creatures. How far many of the lowlier lives are conscious of
the future results of their mating unions is a problem in elementary
psychology beyond the realm of present knowledge. But that parenthood
is the natural result of their union is to-day known, one must suppose,
by almost all young couples who wed. I am still uncertain how far the
two are _conscious_ of this in the early days of their union, when
every circumstance encourages that supreme self-centredness of happy
youth. Much must depend on the age, and on the previous experience and
education of the two; much also on their relative natures. A profoundly
introspective and thoughtful man and woman are more liable than
others to be speedily aware of the many interwoven strands of their
joint lives, and to live consciously on several planes of existence
simultaneously.
The supreme act of physical union as I have shown in my book, _Married
Love_, consists fundamentally of three essential and widely differing
reactions, having effects in correspondingly different regions. There
is (_a_) the intimately personal effect on the internal secretions and
general vitality of the individual partaking of that sacrament; (_b_)
there is the social effect of the union of the two in a mutual act in
which they must so perfectly blend and harmonize; and (_c_) there is
the racial result which may lead to the procreation of a new life.
In the early days of the honeymoon, personal passion and the
concentrated delight of each in the mate is probably more than
sufficient in all its rich complexity to fill the consciousness of
the two who are thus united in a life-long comradeship to form that
highest unit, the pair. But as education and the conscious control of
our lives grow, the young pair who are so blissfully self-centred as
not to remember or not to be aware of the racial effects of their acts
are probably decreasing in numbers. Among the best of those who marry
to-day, the majority only enter upon parenthood or the possibility of
parenthood when they feel justified in so doing. The young man who
profoundly loves his wife and who considers the future benefit of
their child, protects her from accidental conception or from becoming
a mother at times when the strain upon her would be too great, or when
he is unable to give her and the coming child the necessary care and
support. That myriads of children are born without this consideration
on the part of their parents applies to the commonalty of mankind, but
not to the best.
Often to-day the betrothed young couple will speak openly and
beautifully of the children they hope to have, while others equally
full of the creative dream feel it too tender a subject to put into
words, and may marry without ever having given expression to the
possibility that they will generate through their love yet other
lovers.