THE NEW MOTHERHOOD
I have been reading Ellen Key’s “Century of the Child,” reviewed in this number, and am moved to add, in connection with that review, a “brief” for the New Motherhood.
Agreeing with almost all of that noble book and with the spirit of the whole of it, I disagree with its persistence in the demand for primitive motherhood—for the entire devotion of each and every mother to her own children—and disagree on the ground that this method is not the best for child service.
Among animals, where one is as good as another, “the mother”—each one of them—can teach her young all that they need to know. Her love, care and instruction are all-sufficient. In early stages of human life, but slightly differentiated, each mother was still able to give to her children all the advantages then known, and to teach them the few arts and crafts necessary of attainment. Still later, when apprenticeship taught trades, the individual mother was still able to give all the stimulus and instruction needed for early race culture—and did so, cheerfully.
But we have now reached a stage of social development when this grade of nurture is no longer sufficient, and no longer found satisfying either by mother or child. On the one hand, women are differentiating as human beings: they are no longer all one thing—females, mothers, and NOTHING ELSE. They are still females, and will remain so; still mothers, and will remain so: but they are also Persons of widely varying sorts, with interests and capacities which fit them for social service in many lines.
On the other hand, our dawning knowledge of child culture leads us to require a standard of ability in this work based on talent, love, natural inclination, long training and wide experience. It is no longer possible for the average woman, differentiated or undifferentiated, to fulfill the work of right training for babies and little children, unassisted. Moreover, the New Motherhood is belying to-day the dogma of the high cultural value of “the home” as a place of education for young children—an old world assumption which Miss Key accepts without question and intensifies.
The standards of the New Motherhood are these:
First: The fullest development of the woman, in all her powers, that she may be the better qualified for her duties of transmission by inheritance.
Second: The fullest education of the woman in all plain truths concerning her great office, and in her absolute duty of right selection—measuring the man who would marry her by his fitness for fatherhood; and holding him to the highest standards in his duty thereto.
Third: Intelligent recognition that child culture is the greatest of arts, that it requires high specialization and life service, and the glad entrance upon this service of those women naturally fitted for it.
Such standards as these recognize the individual woman’s place as a human being, her economic independence, her special social service; and hold her a far more valuable mother for such development, able to give her children a richer gift by inheritance than the mothers of the past—all too much in femininity and too little in humanity.
A mother who is something more—who is also a social servant—is a nobler being for a child to love and follow than a mother who is nothing more—except a home servant. She is wiser, stronger, happier, jollier, a better comrade, a more satisfying and contented wife; the whole atmosphere around the child at home is improved by a fully human mother.
On the second demand, that of a full conscious knowledge of the primal conditions of her business, the New Motherhood can cleanse the world of most of its diseases, and incidentally of many of its sins. A girl old enough to marry, is old enough to understand thoroughly what lies before her and why.
Especially why. The real cause and purpose of the marriage relation, parentage, she has but the vaguest ideas about—an ignorance not only absurd but really criminal in the light of its consequences. Women should recognize not only the personal joy of motherhood, which they share with so many female creatures, but the social duty of motherhood and its unmeasured powers. By right motherhood they can build the world: by wrong motherhood they keep the world as it is—weak, diseased, wicked.
The average quality of the human stock today is no personal credit to the Old Motherhood, and will be held a social disgrace by the New. But beyond a right motherhood and a right fatherhood comes the whole field of social parentage, one phase of which we call education. The effect of the environment on the child from birth is what demands the attention of the New Motherhood here: How can we provide right conditions for our children from babyhood? That is the education problem. And here arises the insistent question: “Is a small, isolated building, consecrated as a restaurant and dormitory for one family, the best cultural environment for the babyhood of the race?”
To this question the New Motherhood, slowly and timidly, is beginning to answer, “No.” It is becoming more and more visible, in this deeper, higher demand for race improvement, that we might provide better educational conditions for the young of the human species. For the all-engrossing importance of the first years of childhood, it is time that we prepared a place. This is as real a need as the need of a college or school. We need A PLACE FOR BABIES—and our homes arranged in relation to such places.
A specially prepared environment, a special service of those best fitted for the task, the accumulated knowledge which we can never have until such places and such service are given—these are demanded by the New Motherhood.
For each child, the healthy body and mind; the warm, deep love and protecting care of its own personal mother: and for all children, the best provision possible from the united love and wisdom of our social parentage. This is not to love our children less, but more. It is not to rob them of the life-long devotion of one well-meaning average woman, but to give them the immortal, continued devotion of age after age of growing love and wisdom from the best among us who will give successive lives to the service of children because they love them better even than their mothers!
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