I agree with the publishers of Miss Amarylis Pater's book, "The New
Motherhood," that the subject is one which cannot possibly be ignored. I
have not only read the book, but I have discussed it with Mrs. Hogan,
and with my eldest son Harold, who will be seven next June. As a result
I am confronted with certain remarkable differences of opinion.
Twenty years ago, as I plainly recall, the Sacred Function of Motherhood
was not a topic of popular interest. There were a great many mothers
then, of course, and there were unquestionably many more children than
there are to-day. People, as a rule, spoke of their mothers with
fondness, and sometimes even with reverence. The habit had been forming
for several thousand years, in the course of which poets and painters
never grew tired of describing mothers who were engaged in such highly
useful occupations as bending over cradles, watching by sick-beds,
baking, mending, teaching, laughing in play-rooms, weeping at the Cross,
manipulating with equal dexterity the precious vials of love and
sacrifice and the carpet slipper of justice. But though people had thus
got into the way of accepting their mothers as an essential part in the
scheme of things, they rarely thought it necessary to write to the
editor about the Sacred Function of Motherhood. I mean in the
impersonal, scientific sense in which Amarylis Pater uses the phrase.
Life in general was a pitifully unorganised, rule-of-thumb affair in
those days. People fell in love because every one was doing it and
without any expressed intention to advance the purposes of Evolution.
They did not marry because they were anxious to render social service;
but waited only till they had saved up enough to furnish a home. They
bore children without regard to the future of the race. When the child
came it was not a sociological event. The family did not consider the
occurrence sacred, as Miss Vivian Holborn insists on calling it in her
frequent communications to the press. The family contented itself with
wishing the mother well and hoping the baby would not look too much like
its father.
Here I thought it would be well to confirm my own impressions by the
testimony of a competent witness. So I turned and called through the
open door into the dining-room.
"Mrs. Hogan," I said, "what do you think of the Sacred Function of
Motherhood?"
"What do I think of what?" said Mrs. Hogan.
"Of the Sacred Function of Motherhood," I repeated, rather timidly.
She looked at me with a distrustful eye, her broom suspended in midair.
Mrs. Hogan comes in once a week to help out. Distrust is her chronic
attitude toward me. She has all of the busy woman's aversion for a man
about the house while domestic operations are under way. But besides,
she cannot quite understand why a full-grown and able-bodied man should
be lolling at his desk, pen in hand, when he ought to be downtown
working for his family. She is aware, of course, that all the members of
my family are well-nourished, decently dressed, and apparently quite
happy. But that only renders the source of my income all the more
dubious. When any one asks Mrs. Hogan how many children she has, she
stares for some time at the ceiling before replying. From which I gather
that there must be several.
"I refer to the business of being a mother, Mrs. Hogan. Have you never
felt what a sacred thing that is?"
"An' what would there be sacred about the same?" she asked, seeing that
I was quite serious. "Bearin' a child every other year, an' nursin'
them, an' bringin' them through sickness, an' stayin' up nights to sew
an' wash an' darn, an' drivin' them out to school, an' goin' out by the
day's wurrk, where's the time for anythin' sacred to come into the life
of a woman?"
"Just the same it does," I said. "Motherhood, Mrs. Hogan, is so holy a
thing nowadays that a great many women are afraid to touch it,
preferring to write in the magazines about it. Are you aware that when
you married Mr. Hogan you were performing an act of social service?"
"I was not that," said Mrs. Hogan, "I was doin' a service to Jim,
besides plazin' myself. 'Twas himself needed some one to take care of
him."
"But that would mean," I said, "that you were false to your own highest
self. If you had read Miss Pater's book you would know that any marriage
entered into without the sense of social service merely means that a
woman is selling herself to a man for life for the mere price of
maintenance."
"When I married Jim," said Mrs. Hogan, "he was after being out of a job
for six months."
She went back to her work more than ever puzzled why my wife and the
children should look so well taken care of.
In those days--I mean about the time Mrs. Hogan was married to Jim, and
I was at college constructing my world of ideas out of the now forgotten
books which Mr. Gaynor was always quoting--I recall distinctly that the
sacred things were also the secret things. What burned hot in the heart
was allowed to rest deep in the heart. Partly this was because of a
common habit of reticence which we have so fortunately outgrown. But
another reason must have been that life then, as I have said, was
imperfectly organised. To-day we have applied the principle of the
division of labour so that we no longer expect the same person to do the
work of the world and to feel its sacred significance. Thus, to-day
there are women who are mothers and other women who proclaim the sacred
function of motherhood. To-day there are women who bring up their
children, and other women who, at the slightest provocation, thrill to
the clear, immortal soul that looks out of the innocent eyes of
childhood.
At this moment the clear, immortal soul of my boy, Harold, finds
utterance in a succession of blood-curdling howls. He is playing Indians
again. The wailing accompaniment in high falsetto emanates from the
immortal soul of the baby. Those two immortalities are at it again.