GENIUS, DOMESTIC AND MATERNAL. II.
Consider the mighty influence of Dr. Arnold, of Emma Willard; and think of that all lost to the world, and concentrated relentlessly on a few little Arnolds and Willards alone!
The children of such genius can healthfully share in its benefits but not healthily monopolize them.
Our appreciation of this study is hampered by the limitation of little exercised minds. Most of us accept things as they are—cannot easily imagine them different, and fear any change as evil.
There was a time when there wasn’t a school or a schoolhouse on earth; people may yet be found who see no need of them. To build places for children to spend part of the day in—away from their mothers—and be cared for by specialists!—Horrible!
The same feeling meets us now when it is suggested that places should be built for the babies to spend part of the day in—away from their mothers—and be cared for by specialists!—Horrible! Up hops in every mind those twin bugaboos, the Infant Hospital and the Orphan Asylum. That is all the average mind can think of as an “institution” for babies.
Think of the kindergarten. Think of the day-nursery. Multiply and magnify these a thousand fold; make them beautiful, comfortable, hygienic, safe and sweet and near—one for every twenty or thirty families perhaps; and put in each, not a casual young kindergarten apprentice or hired nurse; but Genius, Training and Experience. Then you can “teach the mothers,” for at last there can be gathered a body of facts, real knowledge, on the subject of child culture; and it can take its place in modern progress.
Every mother whose baby spent its day hours in such care would take home new knowledge and new standards to aid her there; and the one mother out of twenty or thirty who cared most about it would be in that baby house herself—she is the Genius. Not anybody’s hired “nursemaid,” but a nurse-mother, a teacher-mother, a Human Mother at last.
The same opening confronts us when we squirm so helplessly in what we call “the domestic problem.” That problem is “How can every woman carry on the same trade equally well?”
Answer—She can’t.
All women do not like to “keep house;” and there is no reason why all men, and all children, as well as the women, should suffer in health, comfort and peace of mind under their mal-administration. We need the Expert, the Specialist, the Genius, here too.
Thousands of discontented women are doing very imperfectly what hundreds could do well and enjoy.
Thousands of men are paying unnecessary bills, eating what we may politely call “unnecessary food,” and putting up with the discontented woman. Thousands of children are growing up as best they can under inexpert mothers and inexpert housekeepers. Thousands of unnecessary deaths, invalids, and miserable lives; millions and millions of dollars wasted; and all this for the simple lack of society’s first law—Specialization.
Here are all these unspecialized housekeepers wriggling miserably with their unspecialized servants; and others—the vast majority, remember—”doing their own work” in a crude and ineffectual manner; and there is not even a standard whereby to judge our shortcomings! We have never known anything better, and the average mind cannot imagine anything better than it has ever known.
(When we have expert Childculture, we shall cultivate the imagination!)
“Do you want us to give up our homes?” cries the Average Mind. “Must we live in hotels, eat in restaurants?”
No, dear Average Mind.
Every family should have its own home; and it ought to be a real home, with a real garden. Among the homes and gardens should stand the baby-house with its baby-gardens; and quite apart from these fair homes should stand the Workshops. The Cleaning Establishment, the Laundry—the Cookshop; the Service Bureau; each and all in charge of its Genius—its special person who likes that kind of work and does it well.
The home, quiet, sweet and kitchenless, will be visited by swift skilled cleaners to keep it up to the highest sanitary standards; the dishes will come in filled with fresh, hot food, and go out in the same receptacle, for proper cleansing; the whole labor of “housekeeping” will be removed from the home, and the woman will begin to enjoy it as a man does. The man also will enjoy it more. It will be cleaner, quieter, more sanitary, more beautiful and comfortable, and far less expensive.
And what of the average woman?
She will cease to exist. She will become specialized as every civilized person must be. She will not be a woman less, but a human being more. And in these special lines of genius, domestic and maternal, she will lift the whole world forward with amazing speed. The health, the brain-power, the peace of mind, of all our citizens will be increased by the work of the Mother-Genius and maintained by the Domestic Genius.
Have you never known one of those born mothers, with perhaps some training as a kindergartner added; who loves to be with children and whom children love to be with? She is healthy and happy in her work, and the children she cares for grow up with fewer tears, with better constitutions, with strong young hearts and clear brains to meet life’s problems.
Have you never compared such a mother and such children with those we see commonly about us? The mother, nervous, irritable, unfit for her work and not happy in it; a discontented person, her energies both exhausted and unused. What she wastes in uncongenial effort she might spend joyfully in work she was fit for.
Have you never seen the sullen misery, the horrible impotent rage, the fretful unhappiness of mishandled children? Not orphans; and not “neglected”; not physically starved or beaten; but treated with such brutal clumsiness that their childhood is clouded and their whole lives embittered and weakened by the experience?
Are we so blinded by the beautiful ideal of motherhood as it should be, that we continually overlook the limitations of motherhood as it is?
Again have you not seen the home of homes; where the cleanliness is perfect, the quiet and harmony a joy to the soul; where beauty and peace are linked with economy and wisdom? There are such—but they are not common.
As in the other case, our ideals blind us to the facts. Most homes are sadly imperfect; enjoyed by their inmates because they are used to them—and have known no better. What we have so far failed to see is humanity’s right to the best; in these departments of life, as well as others.
As we live now, the ever-growing weight of our just demands for a higher order of home falling on the ever more inadequate shoulders of the Average Woman, both Motherhood and the home are imperilled. We are horribly frightened when we see our poor Average Woman shrink from maternity, and [illegible] at housework. We preach at her and scold her and flatter her and woo her, and, if we could, we would force her back into her old place, child-bearer and burden-hearer, the helpless servant of the world.
All this terror is wasted. It is not child-bearing—within reason—that the girl of to-day so dreads. It is the life-long task of child-rearing, for which she begins at last to realize she is unfit. An utterly ignorant woman has no such terror, she bears profusely, rears as she can, and buries as she must. Better one well-born and well-trained, than the incapable six survivors of the unnecessary twelve.
It is not home-life that our girls shrink from; men and women alike, we love and need a home; it is the housework, and the house management, which are no more alluring to a rational woman than to a rational man. “I love ocean travel,” says Mrs. Porne, “but that’s no reason I should wish to be either a captain or a stoker!”
Why not respect this new attitude of our women; study it, try to understand it; see if there is not some reason for it—and some way to change conditions.
Suppose a young woman stands, happy and successful, in her chosen profession. Suppose a young man offers her marriage. Suppose that this meant to her all that life held before—plus Love! Plus a Home Together! Plus Children! Children they both would love, both would provide for, both would work for; but to whom neither would be a living sacrifice—and an ineffectual sacrifice at that.
Children are not improved in proportion to their mother’s immolation. The father’s love, the mother’s love, the sheltering care of both, and all due association, they need, but in the detailed services and education of their lives, they need Genius.
And the Home—that should mean to her precisely what it means to him. Peace, comfort, joy and pride; seclusion; mutual companionship; rest, beautiful privacy and rest—not a workshop.
What we need in this matter is not noisy objurgations and adjurations on the part of men; and not the reluctant submission, or angry refusal, of women—forced to take so much needless bitter with life’s sweetest joy; but a rational facing of the question by the women themselves. It is their business—as much so as the most obdurate mossback can protest—but collectively, not individually.
Let them collect then! Let them organize and specialize—the two go together. Let them develop Genius—and use it; heaven knows it is needed!