The main justification for the subjection of women, which is commonly
advanced, is the alleged advantage to motherhood resultant from her
extreme specialization to the uses of maternity under this condition.
There are two weak points in this position. One is that the advantage to
motherhood cannot be proved: the other, that it is not the uses of
maternity to which she is specialized, but the uses of sex-indulgence.
So far from the economic dependence of women working in the interests of
motherhood, it is the steadily acting cause of a pathological maternity
and a decreasing birth-rate.
In simple early times there was a period when women were economically
profited by child-bearing; when, indeed, that was their sole use, and,
failing it, they were entitled to no respect or profit whatever. Such a
condition tended to increase the quantity of children, if not the
quality. With industrial development and the increasing weight of
economic cares upon the shoulders of the man, children come to be looked
upon as a burden, and are dreaded instead of desired by the hard-worked
father. They subtract from the family income; and the mother, absolutely
dependent upon that income and also overworked in her position of unpaid
house-servant, is not impelled to court maternity by any economic
pressure. In the working classes—to which the great majority of people
belong—the woman is by no means “segregated to the uses of maternity.”
Among the most intelligent and conscientious workingmen to-day there is
a strong feeling against large families, and a consistent effort is made
to prevent them.
Lest this be considered as not bearing directly upon the economic
position of women, but rather on the general status of the working
classes, let us examine the same condition among the wealthy. It is here
that the economic dependence of women is carried to its extreme. The
daughters and wives of the rich fail to perform even the domestic
service expected of the women of poorer families. They are from birth to
death absolutely non-productive in goods or labor of economic value, and
consumers of such goods and labor to an extent limited only by the
purchasing power of their male relatives. In this condition the economic
advantage of the woman, married or unmarried, not merely in food and
clothes, but in such social advantage as she desires, lies in her power
to attract and hold the devotion of men; and this power is not the power
of maternity. On the contrary, maternity, by lowering the personal
charms and occupying the time of the mother, fails to bring her the
pleasure and profit obtainable by the woman who is not a mother. It is
through the sex-relation minus its natural consequence that she profits
most; and, therefore, the force of economic advantage acts against
maternity instead of toward it.
In the last extreme this is clear to all in the full flower of the
sexuo-economic relation,—prostitution, than which nothing runs more
absolutely counter to the improvement of the race through maternity.
Specialization to uses of maternity, as in the queen bee, is one thing.
Specialization to uses of sex without maternity is quite another. Yet
this popular opinion, that we as a race are greatly benefited by having
all our women saved from direct economic activity, and so allowed to
concentrate all their energies on the beautiful work of motherhood,
remains strong among us.
In _The Forum_ for November, 1888, Lester F. Ward published a paper
called “Our Better Halves,” in which was clearly shown the biological
supremacy of the female sex. This naturally aroused much discussion; and
in an answering article, “Woman’s Place in Nature” (_The Forum_, May,
1889), Mr. Grant Allen very thoroughly states the general view on this
subject. He says of woman: “I believe it to be true that she is very
much less the race than man; that she is, indeed, not even half the race
at present, but rather a part of it told specially off for the
continuance of the species, just as truly as drones or male spiders are
parts of their species told off for the performance of male-functions,
or as ‘rotund’ honey ants are individual insects told off to act as
living honey jars to the community. She is the sex sacrificed to
reproductive necessities.”
Since biological facts point to the very gradual introduction and
development of the male organism solely as a reproductive necessity, and
since women are sacrificed not to reproductive necessities, but to a
most unnecessary and injurious degree of sex-indulgence under economic
necessity, such a statement as Mr. Grant Allen’s has elements of humor.
The opinion is held, however, not only by the special students of
biology and sociology, but by the general public, and demands most
careful attention. Those holding such a view may admit the
over-development of sex consequent upon the economic relation between
men and women, and the train of evils, individual and social, following
that over-development. They may even admit, further, something of the
alleged injury to economic evolution. But they will claim in answer that
these morbid conditions are essential to human progress, and that the
good to humanity through the segregation of the female to the uses of
maternity overbalances the evil, great as this is; also, conversely,
that the gain to the individual and to society to be obtained by the
economic freedom of the female would be more than offset by the loss to
the race caused by the removal of our highly specialized motherhood.
To meet this, it is necessary to show that our highly specialized
motherhood is not so advantageous as believed; that it is below rather
than above the efficacy of motherhood in other species; that its
deficiency is due to the sexuo-economic relation; that the restoration
of economic freedom to the female will improve motherhood; and, finally,
to indicate in some sort the lines of social and individual development
along which this improvement may be “practically” manifested.
In approaching this subject, we need something of special mental
preparation. We need to realize that our ideas upon this theme are
peculiarly colored by prejudice, that in no other field of thought are
we so blinded by our emotions. We have felt more on this subject than on
any other, and thought less. We have also felt much on the relation of
the sexes; but it has been made a subject of study, of comparison, of
speculation. There are differences of feeling on the sex question, but
as to motherhood none. Here and there, to be sure, some isolated
philosopher, a Plato, a Rousseau, dares advance some thought on this
ground; but, on the whole, no theme of commensurate importance has been
so little studied. More sacred than religion, more binding than the law,
more habitual than methods of eating, we are each and all born into the
accepted idea of motherhood and trained in it; and in maturity we hand
it down unquestioningly. A man may question the purposes and methods of
his God with less danger of outcry against him than if he dare to
question the purposes and methods of his mother. This matriolatry is a
sentiment so deep-seated, wide-spread, and long-established as to be
dominant in every class of minds. It is so associated with our religious
instincts, on the one hand, and our sex-instincts, on the other, both of
which we have long been forbidden to discuss,—the one being too holy and
the other too unholy,—that it is well-nigh impossible to think clearly
and dispassionately on the subject. It is easy to understand why we are
so triple-plated with prejudice in the case.
The instinct that draws the child to its mother is exactly as old as the
instinct that draws the mother to her child; and that dates back to the
period when the young first needed care,—among the later reptiles,
perhaps. This tie has lasted unbroken through the whole line of
progression, and is stronger with us than with any other creature,
because in our social evolution the parent is of advantage to the child
not only through its entire life, but even after death, by our laws of
inheritance. So early, so radically important, so long accumulated an
animal instinct, added to by social law, is a great force. Besides this,
we must reckon with our long period of ancestor worship. This finally
changed the hideous concepts of early idolaters into the idea of
parental divinity; for, having first made a god of their father, they
then made a father of God, and this deep religious feeling has added
much to the heavy weight of instinct. Parental government, too, absolute
in the patriarchal period, has added further to our devout, blind faith
in parenthood until it is _lèse-majesté_ to question its right
fulfilment. Two most interesting developments are to be noted along this
line. One is that the height of filial devotion was reached in the
patriarchal age; when the father was the sole governor and feeder of the
family, and could slay or sell his child at will; and that this relic of
ancestor worship has steadily declined with the extension of government,
until, in our democracy, with the fullest development of individual
liberty and responsibility, is found the lowest degree of filial
reverence and submission. Its place is taken, to our great gain, by such
familiar, loving intercourse between parent and child as was utterly
incompatible with the grovelling attitude of children in earlier times.
The other is the gradual swing from supreme devotion to the father, “the
author of my being,” as the child used to consider him, to our modern
mother-worship. The dying soldier on the battlefield thinks of his
mother, longs for her, not for his father. The traveller and exile
dreams of his mother’s care, his mother’s doughnuts. The pathos of the
popular tale to-day is in bringing the prodigal back to his mother, not
to his father. If the original prodigal had a mother, she was probably
busy in cooking the fatted calf. If to-day’s prodigal has a father, he
is merely engaged in paying for the veal. Our tenderest love, our
deepest reverence, our fiercest resentment of insult, all centre about
the mother to-day rather than about the father; and this is a strong
proof that the recognition of woman’s real power and place in life grow
upon us just as our minds grow able to perceive it. Nothing can ever
exceed the truth as to the value of the mother. Our instinct is a right
one, as all deep-seated social instincts are; but about it has grown up
a mass of falsehoods and absurdities such as always tend to confuse and
impede the progress of great truths.
As the main agent in reproduction, the mother is most to be venerated on
basic physiological grounds. As the main agent in developing love, the
great human condition, she is the fountain of all our growth. As the
beginner of industry, she is again a source of progress. As the first
and final educator, she outwardly moulds what she has inwardly made;
and, as she is the visible, tangible, lovable, living type of all this,
the being in whose person is expressed the very sum of good to the
individual, it is no wonder that our strongest, deepest, tenderest
feelings cluster about the great word “mother.”
Fully recognizing all this, it yet remains open to us to turn the light
of science and the honest labor of thought upon this phase of human life
as upon any other; to lay aside our feelings, and use our reason; to
discover if even here we are justified in leaving the most important
work of individual life to the methods of primitive instinct. Motherhood
is but a process of life, and open to study as all processes of life are
open. Among unconscious, early forms it fulfils its mission by a simple
instinct. In the consciousness and complexity of human life it demands
far more numerous and varied forces for its right fulfilment. It is with
us a conscious process,—a process rife with consequences for good or
evil. With this voluntary power come new responsibility and a need for
new methods,—a need not merely to consider whether or not we will enter
upon the duties of maternity, but how best we can fulfil them.
Motherhood, like every other natural process, is to be measured by its
results. It is good or evil as it serves its purpose. Human motherhood
must be judged as it serves its purpose to the human race. Primarily,
its purpose is to reproduce the race by reproducing the individual;
secondarily, to improve the race by improving the individual. The mere
office of reproduction is as well performed by the laying of eggs to be
posthumously hatched as by many years of exquisite devotion; but in the
improvement of the species we come to other requirements. The functions
of motherhood have been evolved as naturally as the functions of
nutrition, and each stage of development has brought new duties to the
mother. The mother bird must brood her young, the mother cow must suckle
them, the mother cat must hunt for them; and, in every varied service
which the mother gives, its value is to be measured by its effect upon
the young. To perform that which is most good for the young of the
species is the measure of right motherhood, and that which is most good
for the young is what will help them to a better maturity than that of
their parents. To leave in the world a creature better than its parent,
this is the purpose of right motherhood.
In the human race this purpose is served by two processes: first, by the
simple individual function of reproduction, of which all care and
nursing are but an extension; and, second, by the complex social
function of education. This was primarily a maternal process, and
therefore individual; but it has long since become a racial rather than
an individual function, and bears no relation to sex or other personal
limitation. The young of the human race require for their best
development not only the love and care of the mother, but the care and
instruction of many besides their mother. So largely is this true that
it may be said in extreme terms that it would be better for a child
to-day to be left absolutely without mother or family of any sort, in
the city of Boston, for instance, than to be supplied with a large and
affectionate family and be planted with them in Darkest Africa.
Human functions are race-functions, social functions; and education is
one of them. The duty of the human mother, and the measure of its right
or wrong fulfilment, are to be judged along these two main lines,
reproduction and education. As we have no species above us with which to
compare our motherhood, we must measure by those below us. We must show
improvement upon them in this function which we all hold in common.
Does the human mother succeed better than others of her order, mammalia,
in the reproduction of the species? Does she bring forth and rear her
young more perfectly than lower mothers? They, being less conscious, act
simply under instinct, mating in their season, bringing forth young in
their season, nursing, guarding, defending as best they may; and they
leave in the world behind them creatures as good, or better, than their
mothers. Of wild animals we have few reliable statistics, and of tame
ones it is difficult to detach their natural processes from our
interference therewith. But in both the simple maintenance of species
shows that motherhood at least reproduces fairly well; and in those we
breed for our advantage the wonderful possibilities of race-development
through this process are made apparent. How do we, with the human brain
and the human conscience, rich in the power and wisdom of our dominant
race,—how do we, as mothers, compare with our forerunners?
Human motherhood is more pathological than any other, more morbid,
defective, irregular, diseased. Human childhood is similarly
pathological. We, as animals, are very inferior animals in this
particular. When we take credit to ourselves for the sublime devotion
with which we face “the perils of maternity,” and boast of “going down
to the gates of death” for our children, we should rather take shame to
ourselves for bringing these perils upon both mother and child. The
gates of death? They are the gates of life to the unborn; and there is
no death there save what we, the mothers, by our unnatural lives, have
brought upon our own children. Gates of death, indeed, to the thousands
of babies late-born, prematurely born, misborn, and stillborn for lack
of right motherhood. In the primal physical functions of maternity the
human female cannot show that her supposed specialization to these uses
has improved her fulfilment of them, rather the opposite. The more
freely the human mother mingles in the natural industries of a human
creature, as in the case of the savage woman, the peasant woman, the
working-woman everywhere who is not overworked, the more rightly she
fulfils these functions.
The more absolutely woman is segregated to sex-functions only, cut off
from all economic use and made wholly dependent on the sex-relation as
means of livelihood, the more pathological does her motherhood become.
The over-development of sex caused by her economic dependence on the
male reacts unfavorably upon her essential duties. She is too female for
perfect motherhood! Her excessive specialization in the secondary sexual
characteristics is a detrimental element in heredity. Small, weak, soft,
ill-proportioned women do not tend to produce large, strong, sturdy,
well-made men or women. When Frederic the Great wanted grenadiers of
great size, he married big men to big women,—not to little ones. The
female segregated to the uses of sex alone naturally deteriorates in
racial development, and naturally transmits that deterioration to her
offspring. The human mother, in the processes of reproduction, shows no
gain in efficiency over the lower animals, but rather a loss, and so far
presents no evidence to prove that her specialization to sex is of any
advantage to her young. The mother of a dead baby or the baby of a dead
mother; the sick baby, the crooked baby, the idiot baby; the exhausted,
nervous, prematurely aged mother,—these are not uncommon among us; and
they do not show much progress in our motherhood.
Since we cannot justify the human method of maternity in the physical
processes of reproduction, can we prove its advantages in the other
branch, education? Though the mother be sickly and the child the same,
will not her loving care more than make up for it? Will not the tender
devotion of the mother, and her unflagging attendance upon the child,
render human motherhood sufficiently successful in comparison with that
of other species to justify our peculiar method? We must now show that
our motherhood, in its usually accepted sense, the “care” of the child
(more accurately described as education), is of a superior nature.
Here, again, we lack the benefit of comparison. No other animal species
is required to care for its young so long, to teach it so much. So far
as they have it to do, they do it well. The hen with her brood is an
accepted model of motherhood in this respect. She not only lays eggs and
hatches them, but educates and protects her young so far as it is
necessary. But beyond such simple uses as this we have no standard of
comparison for educative motherhood. We can only study it among
ourselves, comparing the child left motherless with the child mothered,
the child with a mother and nothing else with the child whose mother is
helped by servants and teachers, the child with what we recognize as a
superior mother to the child with an inferior mother. This last
distinction, a comparison between mothers, is of great value. We have
tacitly formulated a certain vague standard of human motherhood, and
loosely apply it, especially in the epithets “natural” and “unnatural”
mother.
But these terms again show how prone we still are to consider the whole
field of maternal action as one of instinct rather than of reason, as a
function rather than a service. We do have a standard, however, loose
and vague as it is; and even by that standard it is painful to see how
many human mothers fail. Ask yourselves honestly how many of the mothers
whose action toward their children confronts you in street and shop and
car and boat, in hotel and boarding-house and neighboring yard,—how many
call forth favorable comment compared with those you judge unfavorably?
Consider not the rosy ideal of motherhood you have in your mind, but the
coarse, hard facts of motherhood as you see them, and hear them, in
daily life.
Motherhood in its fulfilment of educational duty can be measured only by
its effects. If we take for a standard the noble men and women whose
fine physique and character we so fondly attribute to “a devoted
mother,” what are we to say of the motherhood which has filled the world
with the ignoble men and women, of depraved physique and character? If
the good mother makes the good man, how about the bad ones? When we see
great men and women, we give credit to their mothers. When we see
inferior men and women,—and that is a common circumstance,—no one
presumes to question the motherhood which has produced them. When it
comes to congenital criminality, we are beginning to murmur something
about “heredity”; and, to meet gross national ignorance, we do demand a
better system of education. But no one presumes to suggest that the
mothering of mankind could be improved upon; and yet there is where the
responsibility really lies. If our human method of reproduction is
defective, let the mother answer. She is the main factor in
reproduction. If our human method of education is defective, let the
mother answer. She is the main factor in education.
To this it is bitterly objected that such a claim omits the father and
his responsibility. When the mother of the world is in her right place
and doing her full duty, she will have no ground of complaint against
the father. In the first place, she will make better men. In the second,
she will hold herself socially responsible for the choice of a right
father for her children. In the third place, as an economic free agent,
she will do half duty in providing for the child. Men who are not equal
to good fatherhood under such conditions will have no chance to become
fathers, and will die with general pity instead of living with general
condemnation. In his position, doing all the world’s work, all the
father’s, and half the mother’s, man has made better shift to achieve
the impossible than woman has in hers. She has been supposed to have no
work or care on earth save as mother. She has really had the work of the
mother and that of the world’s house service besides. But she has surely
had as much time and strength to give to motherhood as man to
fatherhood; and not until she can show that the children of the world
are as well mothered as they are well fed can she cast on him the blame
for our general deficiency.
There is no personal blame to be laid on either party. The
sexuo-economic relation has its inevitable ill-effects on both
motherhood and fatherhood. But it is to the mother that the appeal must
be made to change this injurious relation. Having the deeper sense of
duty to the young, the larger love, she must come to feel how her false
position hurts her motherhood, and for her children’s sake break away
from it. Of man and his fatherhood she can make what she will.
The duty of the mother is first to produce children as good as or better
than herself; to hand down the constitution and character of those
behind her the better for her stewardship; to build up and improve the
human race through her enormous power as mother; to make better people.
This being done, it is then the duty of the mother, the human mother so
to educate her children as to complete what bearing and nursing have
only begun. She carries the child nine months in her body, two years in
her arms, and as long as she lives in her heart and mind. The education
of the young is a tremendous factor in human reproduction. A right
motherhood should be able to fulfil this great function perfectly. It
should understand with an ever-growing power the best methods of
developing, strengthening, and directing the child’s faculties of body
and mind, so that each generation, reaching maturity, would start clear
of the last, and show a finer, fuller growth, both physically and
mentally, than the preceding. That humanity does slowly improve is not
here denied; but, granting our gradual improvement, is it all that we
could make? And is the gain due to a commensurate improvement in
motherhood?
To both we must say no. When we see how some families improve, while
others deteriorate, and how uncertain and irregular is such improvement
as appears, we know that we could make better progress if all children
had the same rich endowment and wise care that some receive. And, when
we see how much of our improvement is due to gains made in hygienic
knowledge, in public provision for education and sanitary regulation,
none of which has been accomplished by mothers, we are forced to see
that whatever advance the race has made is not exclusively attributable
to motherhood. The human mother does less for her young, both absolutely
and proportionately, than any kind of mother on earth. She does not
obtain food for them, nor covering, nor shelter, nor protection, nor
defence. She does not educate them beyond the personal habits required
in the family circle and in her limited range of social life. The
necessary knowledge of the world, so indispensable to every human being,
she cannot give, because she does not possess it. All this provision and
education are given by other hands and brains than hers. Neither does
the amount of physical care and labor bestowed on the child by its
mother warrant her claims to superiority in motherhood: this is but a
part of our idealism of the subject.
The poor man’s wife has far too much of other work to do to spend all
her time in waiting on her children. The rich man’s wife could do it,
but does not, partly because she hires some one to do it for her, and
partly because she, too, has other duties to occupy her time. Only in
isolated cases do we find a mother deputing all other service to others,
and concentrating her energies on feeding, clothing, washing, dressing,
and, as far as may be, educating her own child. When such cases are
found, it remains to be shown that the child so reared is
proportionately benefited by this unremittent devotion of its mother. On
the contrary, the best service and education a child can receive involve
the accumulated knowledge and exchanged activities of thousands upon
thousands besides his mother,—the fathers of the race.
There does not appear, in the care and education of the child as given
by the mother, any special superiority in human maternity. Measuring
woman first in direct comparison of her reproductive processes with
those of other animals, she does not fulfil this function so easily or
so well as they. Measuring her educative processes by inter-personal
comparison, the few admittedly able mothers with the many painfully
unable ones, she seems more lacking, if possible, than in the other
branch. The gain in human education thus far has not been acquired or
distributed through the mother, but through men and single women; and
there is nothing in the achievements of human motherhood to prove that
it is for the advantage of the race to have women give all their time to
it. Giving all their time to it does not improve it either in quantity
or quality. The woman who works is usually a better reproducer than the
woman who does not. And the woman who does not work is not
proportionately a better educator.
An extra-terrestrial sociologist, studying human life and hearing for
the first time of our so-called “maternal sacrifice” as a means of
benefiting the species, might be touched and impressed by the idea. “How
beautiful!” he would say. “How exquisitely pathetic and tender! One-half
of humanity surrendering all other human interests and activities to
concentrate its time, strength, and devotion upon the functions of
maternity! To bear and rear the majestic race to which they can never
fully belong! To live vicariously forever, through their sons, the
daughters being only another vicarious link! What a supreme and
magnificent martyrdom!” And he would direct his researches toward
discovering what system was used to develope and perfect this sublime
consecration of half the race to the perpetuation of the other half. He
would view with intense and pathetic interest the endless procession of
girls, born human as their brothers were, but marked down at once as
“female—abortive type—only use to produce males.” He would expect to see
this “sex sacrificed to reproductive necessities,” yet gifted with human
consciousness and intelligence, rise grandly to the occasion, and strive
to fit itself in every way for its high office. He would expect to find
society commiserating the sacrifice, and honoring above all the glorious
creature whose life was to be sunk utterly in the lives of others, and
using every force properly to rear and fully to fit these functionaries
for their noble office. Alas for the extra-terrestrial sociologist and
his natural expectations! After exhaustive study, finding nothing of
these things, he would return to Mars or Saturn or wherever he came
from, marvelling within himself at the vastness of the human paradox.
If the position of woman is to be justified by the doctrine of maternal
sacrifice, surely society, or the individual, or both, would make some
preparation for it. No such preparation is made. Society recognizes no
such function. Premiums have been sometimes paid for large numbers of
children, but they were paid to the fathers of them. The elaborate
social machinery which constitutes our universal marriage market has no
department to assist or advance motherhood. On the contrary, it is
directly inimical to it, so that in our society life motherhood means
direct loss, and is avoided by the social devotee. And the individual?
Surely here right provision will be made. Young women, glorying in their
prospective duties, their sacred and inalienable office, their great
sex-martyrdom to race-advantage, will be found solemnly preparing for
this work. What do we find? We find our young women reared in an
attitude which is absolutely unconscious of and often injurious to their
coming motherhood,—an irresponsible, indifferent, ignorant class of
beings, so far as motherhood is concerned. They are fitted to attract
the other sex for economic uses or, at most, for mutual gratification,
but not for motherhood. They are reared in unbroken ignorance of their
supposed principal duties, knowing nothing of these duties till they
enter upon them.
This is as though all men were to be soldiers with the fate of nations
in their hands; and no man told or taught a word of war or military
service until he entered the battlefield!
The education of young women has no department of maternity. It is
considered indelicate to give this consecrated functionary any previous
knowledge of her sacred duties. This most important and wonderful of
human functions is left from age to age in the hands of absolutely
untaught women. It is tacitly supposed to be fulfilled by the mysterious
working of what we call “the divine instinct of maternity.” Maternal
instinct is a very respectable and useful instinct common to most
animals. It is “divine” and “holy” only as all the laws of nature are
divine and holy; and it is such only when it works to the right
fulfilment of its use. If the race-preservative processes are to be held
more sacred than the self-preservative processes, we must admit all the
functions and faculties of reproduction to the same degree of
reverence,—the passion of the male for the female as well as the passion
of the mother for her young. And if, still further, we are to honor the
race-preservative processes most in their highest and latest
development, which is the only comparison to be made on a natural basis,
we should place the great, disinterested, social function of education
far above the second-selfishness of individual maternal functions.
Maternal instinct, merely as an instinct, is unworthy of our
superstitious reverence. It should be measured only as a means to an
end, and valued in proportion to its efficacy.
Among animals, which have but a low degree of intelligence, instinct is
at its height, and works well. Among savages, still incapable of much
intellectual development, instinct holds large place. The mother beast
can and does take all the care of her young by instinct; the mother
savage, nearly all, supplemented by the tribal traditions, the educative
influences of association, and some direct instruction. As humanity
advances, growing more complex and varied, and as human intelligence
advances to keep pace with new functions and new needs, instinct
decreases in value. The human creature prospers and progresses not by
virtue of his animal instinct, but by the wisdom and force of a
cultivated intelligence and will, with which to guide his action and to
control and modify the very instincts which used to govern him.
The human female, denied the enlarged activities which have developed
intelligence in man, denied the education of the will which only comes
by freedom and power, has maintained the rudimentary forces of instinct
to the present day. With her extreme modification to sex, this faculty
of instinct runs mainly along sex-lines, and finds fullest vent in the
processes of maternity, where it has held unbroken sway. So the children
of humanity are born into the arms of an endless succession of untrained
mothers, who bring to the care and teaching of their children neither
education for that wonderful work nor experience therein: they bring
merely the intense accumulated force of a brute instinct,—the blind
devoted passion of the mother for the child. Maternal love is an
enormous force, but force needs direction. Simply to love the child does
not serve him unless specific acts of service express this love. What
these acts of service are and how they are performed make or mar his
life forever.
Observe the futility of unaided maternal love and instinct in the simple
act of feeding the child. Belonging to order mammalia, the human mother
has an instinctive desire to suckle her young. (Some ultra-civilized
have lost even that.) But this instinct has not taught her such habits
of life as insure her ability to fulfil this natural function. Failing
in the natural method, of what further use is instinct in the
nourishment of the child? Can maternal instinct discriminate between
Marrow’s Food and Bridge’s Food, Hayrick’s Food and Pestle’s Food,
Pennywhistle’s Sterilized Milk, and all the other infants’ foods which
are prepared and put upon the market by—men! These are not prepared by
instinct, maternal or paternal, but by chemical analysis and
physiological study; and their effect is observed and the diet varied by
physicians, who do not do their work by instinct, either.
If the bottle-baby survive the loss of mother’s milk, when he comes to
the table, does maternal instinct suffice then to administer a proper
diet for young children? Let the doctor and the undertaker answer. The
wide and varied field of masculine activity in the interests of little
children, from the peculiar human phenomenon of masculine assistance in
parturition (there is one animal, the obstetric frog, where it also
appears) to the manufacture of articles for feeding, clothing,
protecting, amusing, and educating the baby, goes to show the utter
inadequacy of maternal instinct in the human female. Another thing it
shows also,—the criminal failure of that human female to supply by
intelligent effort what instinct can no longer accomplish. For a
reasoning, conscious being deliberately to undertake the responsibility
of maintaining human life without making due preparation for the task is
more than carelessness.
Before a man enters a trade, art, or profession, he studies it. He
qualifies himself for the duties he is to undertake. He would be held a
presuming impostor if he engaged in work he was not fitted to do, and
his failure would mark him instantly with ridicule and reproach. In the
more important professions, especially in those dealing with what we
call “matters of life and death,” the shipmaster or pilot, doctor or
druggist, is required not only to study his business, but to pass an
examination under those who have already become past masters, and obtain
a certificate or a diploma or some credential to show that he is fit to
be intrusted with the direct responsibility for human life.
Women enter a position which gives into their hands direct
responsibility for the life or death of the whole human race with
neither study nor experience, with no shadow of preparation or guarantee
of capability. So far as they give it a thought, they fondly imagine
that this mysterious “maternal instinct” will see them through.
Instruction, if needed, they will pick up when the time comes:
experience they will acquire as the children appear. “I guess I know how
to bring up children!” cried the resentful old lady who was being
advised: “I’ve buried seven!” The record of untrained instinct as a
maternal faculty in the human race is to be read on the rows and rows of
little gravestones which crowd our cemeteries. The experience gained by
practising on the child is frequently buried with it.
No, the maternal sacrifice theory will not bear examination. As a sex
specialized to reproduction, giving up all personal activity, all honest
independence, all useful and progressive economic service for her
glorious consecration to the uses of maternity, the human female has
little to show in the way of results which can justify her position.
Neither the enormous percentage of children lost by death nor the low
average health of those who survive, neither physical nor mental
progress, give any proof of race advantage from the maternal sacrifice.