Baby’s Rights
“The nation that first finds a practical reconciliation between
science and idealism is likely to take the front place among the
peoples of the world.”
DEAN INGE: _Outspoken Essays_.
Baby’s rights are fundamental. They are:
To be wanted.
To be loved before birth as well as after birth.
To be given a body untainted by any heritable disease, uncontaminated
by any of the racial poisons.
To be fed on the food that nature supplies, or, if that fails, the very
nearest substitute that can be discovered.
To have fresh air to breathe; to play in the sunshine with his limbs
free in the air; to crawl about on sweet clean grass.
When he is good, to do what baby wants to do and not what his parents
want; for instance, to sleep most of his time, not to sit up and crow
in response to having his cheeks pinched or his sides tickled.
When he is naughty, to do what his parents want and not what he wants:
to be made to understand the “law of the jungle.” From his earliest
days he must be disciplined in relation to the great physical facts of
existence, to which he will always hereafter have to bow. The sooner he
comprehends this, the better for his future.
Most young mothers, even those who have had the advantage of highly
trained maternity nurses to assist them at first, later require
authoritative advice about how to treat the baby for whom they have
given so much, and to whom they wish to give every possible advantage.
Many books give advice to the young mother and to these she may turn.
I do not wish to duplicate what they say, but advise every one who has
an infant, even if they think they know all about the best method of
bringing it up, to possess a copy of Dr. Truby King’s _Baby and How to
Rear It_ for reference. It is the most practical, sensible and best
illustrated book of its kind.
There is, therefore, on the subject of baby’s material rights not very
much more that I need to say, but there is one elementary right very
generally overlooked, and that is the right to love in anticipation.
Baby’s right to be _wanted_ is an individual right which is of racial
importance. No human being should be brought into the world unless his
parents desire to take on the responsibility of that new life which
must, for so long, be dependent upon them.
Far too many of the present inhabitants of this earth who are _not_
wanted because of their inferiority, were children who came to
reluctant, perhaps horror-stricken, mothers. To this fact, I trace
very largely the mental and physical aberrations which are to-day so
prevalent; to this also I trace the bitterness, the unrest, the spirit
of strife and malignity which seem to be without precedent in the world
at present [see also _The Control of Parenthood_, final section, and,
for the remedy, my book, _Wise Parenthood_, both published by Putnam].
The warped and destructive impulse of revolution which is sweeping over
so many people at present must have its roots in some deep wrong.
Revolution is not a natural activity for human beings. Though the
revolutionary impulse has swept through sections of humanity many times
in its history, it is essentially unnatural, an indication of warping
and poisoning, and a cause of further and perhaps irreparable damage.
Happy people do not indulge in revolution. Happy people with a
deep sense of underlying contentment and satisfaction in life
may yet strive ardently to improve and beautify everything round
them. They strive in the same direction as the main current of
life--that is the growth and unfolding of ever increasing beauty. The
revolutionaries--bitter, soured and profoundly unhappy--pit their
strength against the normal stream of life and destroy, break down and
rob. Too long humanity has had to endure such outbreaks owing to its
general blindness and lack of understanding of their causes.
Until the scientific spirit of profound inquiry into fundamental causes
becomes general even in a small section of the community, superficial
and apparently obvious explanations are accepted to account for results
which really arise from profound and secret springs.
The “divine discontent” which has impelled humanity forward along the
path of constructive progress is a very different thing from the bitter
discontent which leads to revolutionary and destructive outbursts. The
village blacksmith of the well-known song, using his healthy muscles
on hard, useful work which gives him a deep physical satisfaction, may
feel the former and help forward the stream of progress in his village.
The aim of reformers to-day should be to provide for every one neither
ease nor comfort, nor high wages nor short hours, but the deeper
necessities of a full and contented life, bodies able to respond with
satisfaction to the strain of hard work performed under conditions
which satisfy the mind in the most fundamental way of all--the deep,
sub-conscious satisfaction which is given by the sweet smell of earth,
by fresh air and sunshine, and green things around one.
We draw from all these things some subtle ingredient without which
our natures are weakened so that a further strain sends them awry.
To-day we are so deeply involved with the hydra-headed monster of the
revolutionary spirit that there does not seem time to deal with it
radically, to attempt to understand it, and consequently to conquer
it for ever. Even now, when for the first time humanity is on a
large scale beginning to tackle fundamental problems, I have seen no
indication that the source of revolution is being sought for in the
right place.
What is the source of revolution?
The revolutionaries through the ages, feeling themselves jar with their
surroundings, have been ensnared by the nearest obvious things, the
happier surrounding of others. These they have endeavoured to snatch at
and destroy, thinking thereby to improve their own and their comrades’
lot. Their deductions, though profoundly false, have appeared even
obviously right to many.
External grievances are what the revolutionary is out to avenge:
external benefits are what he is out to gain. Generally this is
expressed in terms of higher wages, a share, or all, of the capital of
those supposed to be better off, or the material possessions of others.
These are the things that nearly all strikers and revolutionaries
are upsetting the world to get, thinking--perhaps sincerely--that
these things will give them the happiness for which, consciously or
unconsciously, they yearn. The truth is, however, that it is a much
more intimate thing than money or possessions which they need. They
need new bodies and new hearts.
Most of the revolutionaries I have met are people who have been warped
or stunted in their own personal growth. One sees upon their minds or
bodies the marks and scars of dwarfing, stunting or lack of balance.
They have known wretchedness both in themselves and in their families
far more intimate and penetrating than that of mere poverty.
That, they may answer, is an external grievance which has been imposed
upon them by society. In effect they say: “Society has starved us,
given us bad conditions.” Thus they foster a grievance against
“society” in their minds. One bitter leader said to me:--
I was one of fourteen children, and my mother had only a little
three-roomed cottage near Glasgow. We nearly starved when I was
young. I know what the poor suffer at the hands of society.
But it was not society that put fourteen children into that cottage; it
was the mother herself. Her own ignorance, helpless ignorance perhaps,
was the source of her children’s misery. The most for which society can
be blamed concerning that family is in tolerating such a plague-spot of
ignorance in its midst. Nor is this pestilential ignorance by any means
only confined to the financially poor.
This country, and nearly all the world, has innumerable homes in which
the seed of revolution is sown in myriads of minds from the moment they
are conceived. Revolted, horror-stricken mothers bear children whose
coming birth they fear.
A starved, stunted outlook is stamped upon their brains and bodies
in the most intimate manner before they come into the world, so
oriented towards it that they _must_ run counter to the healthy, happy
constructive stream of human life.
What wonder at the rotten conditions of our population when these are
common experiences of the mothers of our race:--
For fifteen years I was in a very poor state of health owing to
continual pregnancy. As soon as I was over one trouble it was
started all over again.[10]
[10] I refer the reader to that poignant book, _Maternity, Letters from
Working Women_, collected by the Women’s Co-operative Guild. Bell, 1915.
Again:--
During pregnancy I suffered much. When at the end of ten years I
determined that this state of things should not go on any longer.
Again:--
My grandmother had twenty children. Only eight lived to about
fourteen years; only two to a good old age.
Again:--
I cannot tell you all my sufferings during the time of motherhood.
I thought, like hundreds of women to-day, that it was only
natural, and that you had to bear it. I had three children and one
miscarriage in three years.
Need I go on?
There lies the real root of revolution.
The secret revolt and bitterness which permeates every fibre of the
unwillingly pregnant and suffering mothers has been finding its
expression in the lives and deeds of their children. We have been
breeding revolutionaries through the ages and at an increasing rate
since the crowding into cities began, and women were forced to bear
children beyond their strength and desires in increasingly unnatural
conditions.
Also since women have heard rumours that such enslaved motherhood is
not necessary, that the wise know a way of keeping their motherhood
voluntary, the revolt in the mother has become conscious with
consequent injury to the child.
Increasingly, the first of baby’s rights is to be _wanted_.
Concerning baby’s right to be fed on the food that nature supplies, or
if that fails on the very nearest substitute that can be discovered,
there are to-day so many who urge that an infant shall be fed by
its own mother, that it is perhaps needless to repeat arguments so
impressive. Nevertheless, perhaps it is as well to remind young
mothers of two or three of the most vital facts. The first is that
no artificial substitute, however perfectly prepared and chemically
analysed, can possibly give those very subtle constituents which are
found in the mother’s own milk and which vary from individual to
individual. These probably are in the nature of the vitamines now so
well known in fresh food, but they are something more specifically
individual than can be scientifically detected. The fresh milk of its
own mother has a peculiar value to the child which is greater than that
of any foster mother.
For this reason alone, were it the only one, every young mother should
nurse her own baby if possible; but, on the other hand, to-day it
not infrequently happens that the mother may have an apparent flow
of milk, quite sufficient for the infant in quantity, but that milk
may be devoid of the necessary supply of fat or sugars or some other
ingredient for complete nutriment. When this is so, it is often wisest
to allow the mother to nurse the child partly and to supplement its
diet by other milk.
Various schools of doctors and maternity nurses have differed even on
this matter, but it is quite obvious that if the actual food value of
the mother’s milk is below a certain point then the added value of its
individual vitamine-like qualities will not wholly compensate for the
loss of actual nourishment.
Among baby’s rights, I should perhaps also make it clear that there is
his right that he should not be used as a bulwark between his mother
and another baby in a way which is sometimes recommended so that a
mother may go on nursing her infant for a very long time, sometimes
even into its second year, in the hope that this nursing may prevent
her conceiving again. Such a course of action is very harmful both to
the child and to her and should never be followed. Such a practice is,
of course, much less common in this country (except among aliens) than
it is abroad where I have seen healthy children of even three or four
years of age nursing upon their mother’s knees.
In these days, perhaps it is hardly necessary to accentuate baby’s
other rights since the century of the child dawned a generation ago.
To-day it is perhaps almost more important to accentuate the rights
of others who exist in the neighbourhood of a baby. But on the other
hand if one looks penetratingly at the whole problem of character
development, one sees that among baby’s rights is its right to be
trained from the very first so that its life shall be as little
hindered by friction as may be possible: that it should be taught the
elementary rules of conduct and necessary conformity with the hard
material facts of existence from the very first. A wise nurse’s or
mother’s training from the earliest weeks of infancy may make or mar a
future man’s or woman’s chance of getting on in the world and making
a success of their lives, by making or marring the character, the
capacity to obey, the formation of regular and hygienic habits and the
realization of the physical facts of the world.
The ancient Greeks taught their youth to reverence that which was
beneath them, that which was around them, and that which was above
them. In my opinion this right of youth to be placed in its proper
orientation in relation to the world has been neglected of late. We are
suffering from the wayward revolt from an earlier and perhaps harsher
type of mistake, that of too greatly controlling and thwarting the
child’s impulses. We must maintain a just balance and return to the due
mean in which the right of a child, not only to be well born but well
trained, is universally recognized.