PHYSICAL, MENTAL AND MORAL PREPARATION FOR PARENTAGE
=The right of a child to receive good heredity.=--Every child has an
absolute right to be well-born. To receive a good inheritance is worth
infinitely more than to be born in a palace and inherit millions in
money. The prenatal period of a child is more important than any other
period in its earthly life. Parents are responsible to the child, to
society and to God for what they bequeath to the child at birth. The
child well trained till its birth is fully half trained. If the child
inherits a good basis for a strong and healthy body, mind and morals, it
can make a success in life. It is true that some parents prefer leaving
the physical, mental and moral possibilities of their children to
providence or “blind chance,” to practicing a little self-denial. But it
is certainly the desire of all thoughtful parents to have their children
well-born.
=Planning for the initial of a life.=--The initial of every child should
be intelligently planned. Only parents who have their sexual nature
under control, or those who can and will bring it under control, can do
this. This can be done most easily by parents who in their youth were
trained to see that the primary use of the sexual energy and function is
to build up and maintain perfect manhood and womanhood through life and
for procreative purposes in the married life, and not for unrestricted
selfish pleasure.
[Illustration: WELL BORN.--Mark Henry Woodward, age seven months; weight
eighteen pounds; clings on to a horizontal bar for a full minute; food,
breast-fed; health, never sick.]
=Why few children are well-born.=--Where married people have been falsely
educated in the idea that marriage means unrestricted indulgence, and
under this delusion have created unnatural demand, a horde of evils will
follow. If this unfortunate class care only for a selfish pleasure, the
children will follow each other closely and will receive a poor
heredity. If they use preventive means to restrict the size of the
family, the few children born into the homes will be far more
unfortunately born. Excess in the marriage relation impoverishes the
body, mind and soul and unfits for true parentage those who practice
such excess. Every device used to prevent conception or to destroy
unborn life will work untold injury to the parents, and the occasional,
accidental and unwelcome child will receive a most unfortunate heredity.
The mental and moral states, as well as the physical condition, of the
parents, for months before and at the initial moment and during
gestation must necessarily become a part of the child.
Whatever is received into our physical, mental and moral life becomes an
essential part of ourselves and is transmissible to our offspring.
Prospective parents should not at any time engage in anything that would
be undesirable if reproduced in their children.
=Intelligent preparation.=--A knowledge of the laws of heredity will
enable parents largely to overcome in their children any undesirable
qualities possessed by themselves or their parents and to transmit to
their children desirable qualities in a larger degree than that
possessed by themselves.
In planning for a child, the parents should carefully study each other’s
good and bad qualities, weak and strong points, their active and latent
talents with a view to an intelligent cultivation of their good
qualities and the restraining of the bad, strengthening their weak
points and calling into activity every valuable latent capacity. In this
way they may transmit only the best to the child. Both parents should
ardently desire a child. Both should begin the preparation months before
the initial of the new life and both should continue the preparations
until the child is born. While the father’s direct hereditary influence
upon the child ceases with the inception of life, his continued training
will encourage and inspire his wife to continue her training until the
birth of the child.
=Physical preparation.=--Both husband and wife should be in a perfectly
healthy condition while planning for a child. The intelligent stock
breeder appreciates this statement. He knows that the offspring will be
defective if either of the parents is in a low state of vitality.
Systematic treatment and feeding will be followed until the animal is
brought to a normal condition before the initial of reproduction is
allowed. The healthy or unhealthy condition of the blood determines the
health of the body. The blood is the creative source of new life. Every
new life is affected by the physical condition of its parents’ blood. It
is a sin and a crime for parents knowingly to inflict physical weakness
upon their children. Is it not strange that men will take every
precaution to have their stock well-born and yet utterly ignore these
essential precautions in relation to their children? There are some
married people who have physical ailments that render them permanently
unfit for parentage. Such should be wise enough to refrain from becoming
parents.
=An invalid mother.=--When a mere boy I overheard a man say, “This is our
twelfth child in a little over fourteen years and my wife has not been
out of the bed since the birth of the first child.” I think there were
two other children born into this home. Only one of these children lived
to reach middle life. There is not an intelligent stock raiser in the
world that would allow propagation among his swine under these
conditions. This man was not brutal to his family. He was a kind husband
and a loving father, but he was ignorant and thoughtless. He was
controlled by the false teachings of “Physical necessity,” and “the
wife’s body belongs to the husband.” We must recognize that the unborn
have absolute and inalienable rights which we must not violate. No man
has a right to engage in the creative act when he or his wife is in a
physical, mental or moral condition that would, if transmitted, be
undesirable in the possible offspring.
=Morbid conditions transmissible.=--Since incompetency, thievishness,
drunkenness, tuberculosis, venereal poison, idiocy, insanity and
criminal degeneracy may all be transmitted from parents to children,
and to children’s children; young people before marriage should
ascertain whether any of these conditions exist in the families of the
prospective union. The father who spends his time lounging on street
corners and telling questionable anecdotes cannot parent an industrious
child. No thoughtful girl will marry an idle young man.
=The society mother.=--Mothers who lead in the dissipation of modern
social life, such as balls, card parties, theaters, wine suppers, seldom
have children that are well-born either physically, mentally or morally.
Their children are strongly inclined to the same dissipations.
=The need of rest.=--Both parents should be well rested in body for
several days before the initial of a new life takes place. If the
vitality in their blood has been much exhausted by overwork, the
creative cells will be lacking in vitality and the offspring will be
weakened in its constitution.
Thoughtfully decide upon an ideal child in body, mind and character and
try to embody this ideal in your daily life and in this way you will
transmit these ideal conditions to your child.
“_Like begets like_” is an invariable law. At the conception of life an
immortal being is started with a heritage of possibilities obtained from
its parents. It is bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh, mind of
their mind, soul of their soul. It cannot be otherwise than like the
parents were at the time of the conception.
=Practical dietetics.=--The increase in population among the very poor is
far greater than among the more prosperous classes. Their vitality is
often very low, due to lack of proper nourishment. If the charity
workers in our churches would look after this class of prospective
mothers and see that they are supplied during gestation and lactation
with wholesome and nutritious food, they would be engaged in the highest
form of Christian service, and many of these mothers would give to their
country better citizens than those which come from the homes of wealth.
The time will come when the governments will declare for international
peace and will appropriate a few hundred millions each year for the
prospective mothers whose income is not sufficient to meet their needs,
instead of appropriating their surplus funds to old soldiers. It is
important that every mother be supplied during these periods with the
best quality of nutritious food.
=Effects of narcotics.=--If the father is addicted to the use of tobacco
or alcoholic drinks, he should abandon the habit, if for no other
reason, because of its evil effects upon his offspring. One has only to
study the children of a few men who are heavy drinkers or tobacco users
to see the unmistakable effects of the narcotic habits of parents upon
their children. In France there are annually twenty thousand more deaths
than births. Eminent French doctors attribute part of this to the
inveterate tobacco users. They claim that this class of men are often
sterile, or their children die prematurely.
=Suppressing evil tendencies.=--“Like begets like.” Parents cannot
transmit to their children what they themselves do not possess in a
latent or active state. By awakening a slumbering talent and exercising
it with zeal it may be reproduced in an intensified form in the child.
By refraining from a bad habit, or ceasing to use an undesirable trait
and by cultivating a mental opposition to it, the parents may be able to
prevent, partly or wholly, its reappearance in the child. This law will
apply to any case where tobacco or whisky habit, dishonesty, bad temper,
idleness, licentiousness or any other bad trait has existed in the
parents or their immediate ancestors.
=Effects of culture.=--Prospective parents should read the best
literature, attend lecture courses, outline a course of study and follow
it, and try to think beyond their usual meditations. Their affection for
each other should be strong and pure. In relation to society, they
should pay especial attention to honesty, charity, friendliness and
love. Their æsthetic natures should be developed by the study and
admiration of nature and art. Bible reading, singing and prayer, good
works and spiritual devotion should form a part of their daily
programme. It will do no good to practice these things in a half-hearted
way. They must be made a part of our life if they are to influence
favorably the future child.
=Primal purpose of marriage.=--The primary purpose of marriage is
parentage. No greater early obligation rests upon married people than
grows out of the function of parentage. No greater early honor, reward,
or happiness comes to the married than when this God-honored duty is
faithfully performed. No greater service can be rendered our children,
society and God, than when we parent children whose bodies are sound and
healthy, minds vigorous and bright, dispositions sweet, lives grand,
noble and Christlike.