THE RESPONSIBILITY OF MOTHERHOOD.  SECOND PAPER

What I always wish to impress upon the readers who are kind enough to be interested in the articles which I write is to keep the end aimed at in view.  So in this second paper upon the responsibility of motherhood, I must begin by reiterating this necessity.

No mother has a right to drift and trust to chance for the welfare of her children, and however they develop, for good or ill, she must in greater or lesser degree be held responsible.

The period when animals cease all interest in and care for their offspring only commences when these latter can safely be left to look after themselves; and so it should be with human beings.  But, judging the ages relatively of animals and mankind, numbers of human mothers entirely neglect their progeny long before they have come even to the fledgling stage!  How often in society one sees women of forty-five and younger with daughters of fifteen to twenty, about whose real characters and souls they know nothing!  They have always been too busy with their own personal interest to give the time and sympathy required for a real mother’s understanding of her children.  Servants and governesses have been the directors through the most critical period of the girls’ lives, and it is merely a piece of luck if they have imbibed no ill from them.

There are numbers of worthy and innocent women married to men whose characters have certain forcible and unpleasant traits, which are more than likely to be reproduced in their children, but from the limited education these good creatures have received, and the absence of all habit of personal analysation of cause and effect, they never realise that it is their bounden duty to be on the lookout for the first signs of the hereditary traits appearing, and the necessity for using special care and influence to counteract them.

A woman (unless too vain) knows very well her own failings and her own good qualities, and can, if she is wise, suppress or encourage them when they show in her children; but she cannot trace the characteristics of remote ancestors, or even be certain of what her husband has on his side endowed their joint offspring with, so her duty is to be on the watch from the very commencement, and to use her intelligence as she already uses it in every ordinary affair in life.

People of even the most mediocre understanding are quite sensible enough to select the right implements to carry on any work that they have undertaken.  A woman about to sew a fine piece of muslin does not dash haphazard into her work-basket and pick out any needle which comes first, and any thread, coarse or fine, which is handy.  She would know very well that her work would be a sorry affair if she did so, and that, on the contrary, she must choose the exact fineness of both thread and needle to sew this particular bit of stuff satisfactorily, the ones she may have employed an hour before upon firm cloth being of no use for muslin.

She is keeping the end in view.

LOOKING AHEAD

But countless numbers of mothers never understand that any different method is necessary with different children; they just go on in the old way they have been taught when young themselves, if they trouble at all about the matter.

Every woman who has a child ought to ask herself these questions:  Who is responsible for this child being in the world?  Am I and my husband responsible, or is the child responsible itself?  The answers are ridiculously obvious, and, when realised, the remembrance of them should entail grave obligations upon the parents.

The mother should look ahead and try to determine whether or no what seems to be showing as the result of the ideas of up-bringing in the past fifteen years is good or bad.

The main features of that system being the relaxation of all discipline and the cessation of the inculcation of self-control, because the standards suddenly became different.  Formerly, to perform Duty (spelt with a big D!) was the only essential matter in life, and to obtain happiness was merely a thing by the way.  In the past fifteen years the essential goal sought after has been happiness, and duty has been merely the thing by the way.  But a very large number of the mothers of England have not perhaps begun to develop sufficient scope of brain to enable them to judge what will eventually bring happiness; they can only see the immediate moment, and to indulge their children’s every desire seems to be the simplest way.  But they forget that during this short and impressionable stage of life all strength and will-power and self-control ought to be enforced and encouraged, to enable the loved children to withstand hardships and to attract happiness in the long after years.  A mother should ask herself if it is worth while, in securing a joyous and irresponsible childhood and adolescence, to leave her children at the end of them unarmed and at the mercy of every adverse blast.  The great dangers which seem to be resulting from the system of upbringing in the last fifteen years are that at seventeen or eighteen most young people are satiated with pleasure and blase with life, while they have no definite aim or end of achievement in view, and absolutely no sense of duty or responsibility to the community.

THE FIRST OBLIGATION

It would seem to me that a mother’s first obligation is to enforce discipline, and to teach self-control from the earliest infancy with the fondest loving care, and to transmit that sense of responsibility for noble citizenship into her children which should have been her own guiding star.

But, again, to do so she must not employ obsolete methods without taking into account the spirit of the age which has aroused a sense of personal liberty in the youngest child, and makes it refuse to accept rules and regulations on trust.  It must be convinced that they are for its good, or it will only bow to them by fear, learn to deceive, and remain rebellious and determined at the first opportunity to throw off the yoke and go its own way.  I will give a concrete case of what I mean upon this point, to show how even a good woman can misunderstand the real meaning of the responsibility of motherhood, and by her method of upbringing can allow misfortune to fall upon her young family.

Here is a lady of the highest rank, who comes of a steady and worthy stock, and who has been brought up herself strictly and well.  She marries a man of great position, but with rather wild blood in his veins.  She has no modern ideas of only desiring a small family; she wishes to and intends to do her duty to her state, and is by no means set upon personal amusement.

As the years go on she becomes the mother of four boys and two girls.  She engages the best nurses for them, and, later on, the best governesses and tutors.  The children are taught their catechism on Sundays and are drilled as those of their class into having good outward manners and behaviour.  They are given orders without explanations, which they are expected to obey unquestioningly, and they are duly punished when they are disobedient.  They see their parents at stated hours each day, and are seemingly a well-regulated and satisfactory young brood.

The good woman and great lady’s time is naturally much occupied with social duties, and duties to her husband’s tenants, and to various charities and good works in which she is interested.  She fulfils all these admirably, and is generally held in affection and respect.  All the children have been treated exactly the same by her, although she knows that her husband has a dishonourable, gambling, scapegrace brother who has had to be sent to Australia, and that her husband himself has had tastes, the reverse of orthodox where his emotions were concerned, though happily he has not jeopardised the family fortunes as his brother would have done had he been head.  All the children have been so well brought up and instructed in the tenets of the Church that she feels quite placid and sure that she has done all that could be expected of her, and is horribly surprised and distressed when disasters presently occur.  She looks upon them as the will of God and fate, but feels in no way to blame personally.

A HATRED OF PREACHING

It had never struck her intelligence that boys with such heredity in them should have been specially influenced and directed from earliest youth towards ideas of the finest honour and proudest responsibility in keeping unblemished their ancient name; that all the stupidities and follies of gambling should have been pointed out to them; that the certain temptations which are bound to beset the path of those in their position should have been fully explained to them ­all this done in a simple, common-sense fashion which would convince their understanding.  She had never thought that it would be wise to make them clearly comprehend why they should try to resist bad habits and youthful lusts of the flesh ­not so much from the point of view that such things are sins, as because science and experience have shown that the indulgence in them spoils health and brain and pleasure in manhood.  Boys are creatures full of common sense, and their education in public schools broadens and helps their understanding of logical sequences, if only things are explained to them without mystery and too much spiritual emphasis being put upon them.  They so hate being preached at!  No young, growing person in normal animal health and spirits can be guided and coerced to resist the desires of the body solely by religious and moral teaching; he must have some definite reward and gain upon this earth held out to him as well; there must be some tangible reason for abstinence to convince his imagination and strengthen his will.  And the gain he is offered if he resists certain temptations is that he will grow strong and powerful, and the better able, when his judgment is ripe enough to discriminate properly, to enjoy real pleasures later on.  When the adolescent spiritual self begins to rule him, then the moral point can be more forcibly pressed home; but it is quite futile while he is at the growing animal stage.

Our good and highly placed mother of whom we are speaking has never thought of any of these laws of cause and effect, as applied to her own nearest and dearest, although she is accustomed to think out schemes for the betterment and development of her Girls’ Friendly societies, or for furthering her husband’s political interests in the country.

INHERITED CHARACTER

She sees good little well-behaved daughters coming down in “the children’s hour” and receives favourable reports from the governesses, and has no idea, or even any speculation about what strange and new thoughts and emotions may be commencing to germinate in their brains.  Mildred has perhaps inherited her father’s volage nature where the other sex are concerned, and early shows tendencies which ought to be sympathetically checked and directed.  Catherine has got a strong touch of Uncle Billy’s unscrupulousness, and is often deceitful and scheming, with a wonderful aptitude for the nursery dominoes and other games of chance.  But both, taught by Fräulein or Mademoiselle ­and that good old Nurse Timson! ­only show their mother their sweetest side when in her company, and are meek, well-behaved little mice, influenced to be thus not from any moral conviction ­because if that were so they would be good at all times as well ­but swayed by the certain knowledge of personal physical gain if they make a good impression upon mother, and certain punishment and unpleasantness from the governesses if they do not.  All goes along smoothly until the rising sap of nature begins to dominate their lives; then some outward and visible sign of their inherited tendencies begins to show, the force causing its expression being stronger for the time than any other thing.

One of the boys gambles, and goes to the Jews for money.  The eldest son and heir, who has never had the wiles of women revealed and explained to him, or the temptations which are bound to be thrust upon him because of his great position in the world pointed out to him, succumbs to the fascinations and falls into the snares of a cunning chorus girl.  Our good mother and great lady has steadily avoided even admitting that there can be sex questions in life, and has rigorously banished all possible discussion of them as not being a subject which should be talked of in any nice family.  She has never given any especial teaching to arouse pride in his old name in her eldest son, or impressed the great responsibility there is in the worthy guardianship of the fine position God has endowed him with.  He has just been allowed to drift with the rest, and, unwarned and unarmed, has fallen in the first fight with his physical emotions.

INSTINCTS UNCHECKED

A third son is apparently the darling of the gods; he is full of charm.  But, fearing that the gambling propensities of his second brother should come out in him also, his parents keep him with special strictness and very short of money.  The same absence of all explanations of the meaning of things has been his portion as well as that of his brothers and sisters.  He has never been enlightened as to the possible workings of heredity, and shown how that as the vice of gambling is in the blood it will require special will-power to overcome it.  None of these things has been pointed out to him, and so, being restive at restraint and worried for money, he soon slips into easy ways, and often allows women to help him in his difficulties.  Uncle Billy’s instincts and his own father’s have combined in him.  Both could have been checked and diverted into sane channels with loving foresight and knowledge and sympathy.

The fourth son goes early into the Navy, and the discipline and the inheritance of his mother’s more level qualities turn him into a splendid fellow; but this is mere chance, and cannot be counted as accruing from his mother’s care.

Here is a case where every outward circumstance seemed to be propitious, and where both parents were good and respected members of their class and race.  But neither had the intelligence to realise an end, or consciously to keep it in view; they were solely ruled by tradition and what seemed to them ­especially the mother ­to be the proper and well-established religious methods for the bringing up of their children.  So the remorseless laws of cause and effect rolled on their Juggernaut car and crushed the victims.

Now, if this mother had had the end ­that of her children’s happiness and welfare ­really in view, she would have questioned herself as to the best methods of obtaining that end, and would not have been content just to go on with the narrow ideas which had held sway in her own day, and which had perhaps then succeeded very well, because, as I said before, they were aided by the two forces now stultified ­namely, a tremendous discipline and a spirit of the age which brought no suggestion of a struggle for personal liberty to young minds.  Had she thought out all these things, she would have understood the responsibilities of motherhood in their real sense, and not only in the sense which the outward appearance judges good.  She would have poured love and sympathy on each one of her children separately and individually, since she was the half-cause of their coming to earth.  She would have studied each one’s character, and with determined concentration have inculcated the necessary pride in fine actions in them, knowing what their pitfalls would be likely to be.  She would have taught the simple religion of respect for the loan God has made in giving their bodies a soul, and she would have watched for possible signs of ill, and would finally have guided each one through the dangerous age on to the time when every man and woman must answer for himself and herself.

Heredity is sometimes stronger than even the wisest bringing up; but who can say how many families might not have been saved and kept together by a prudent and understanding mother’s love?

There is a story, which exactly illustrates the point of the importance of keeping the end in view, told of the Iron Duke in the Peninsular War.  I cannot remember the exact details, and they are of no consequence.  The point is this:  There was a certain tremendously obstinate Spanish general whom the Duke (then Sir Arthur Wellesley) found very difficult to lead.  The moment had arrived when it was absolutely necessary for success that this general should move his troops to a certain position.  He was a man filled with his own importance, and he refused huffily to do so unless the English chief went down upon his knees to him!

The Iron Duke is reported to have replied to this message in some such words as these:  “Good Lord! the winning of the day is the essential thing, not the resisting of the man’s vanity!  I’ll go down upon my knees with pleasure if that will make him move his troops!” He did, and the Spanish general conceded the request and the day was won.

The great commander and astute Englishman had the end in view, you see, whereas the lesser brain of the Spaniard would have sacrificed the battle for a personal whim, having lost sight, in his vanity, of the importance of the main issue.

How many parents do this day after day and year after year, clinging to obsolete methods, trying to rule by worn-out precepts, all because ­when you come to analyse it ­their own sense of importance really matters to them more than their children’s welfare, and no one has opened their eyes to see themselves and their actions in the true light.

Although the case which I have just given of the seemingly good mother was drawn from the highest class, and so at first sight might not be said to apply to lesser grades, yet I want to show that this is not so, but that the same principle applies to the most modest little family.

Every mother should study how best she can develop and elevate the souls which by her own part-action she has brought into being, and make that aim her first thought ­for surely the satisfaction of the feeling that one has succeeded in training one’s own children to high ideals and the attainment of happiness would be greater in old age than any gratification from the acquirement of social supremacy or realised personal ambitions.

I would implore every mother, of any class, ruthlessly to reject all the rules which she has been taught for the guidance of her family, unless she has proved with common sense that they can be profitably applied to each particular case.  I would ask her to keep to no transmitted axiom, unless it comes up to the requirements of the ever-changing and ever-advancing day.  There is only one unchangeable and immutable command which we should follow, and this is that we should not soil our souls, or render them up to God degraded and smirched when we go hence upon that journey from whence no man returneth.

In summing up both my articles upon the responsibility of motherhood, I find that in this second one I have made two statements which might read as contradictions.  Firstly, I spoke of young people requiring personal gain to be held out to them as a reason for committing, or refraining from committing, certain actions; and then, a paragraph or two afterwards, I gave the illustration of the little girls’ good behaviour to their mother as being only caused by the fact that it was more to their advantage so to behave.  What I meant to show was that while boys are young and full of the rising impulses of nature they very rarely can have acquired sufficient spiritual belief to make them refrain from indulging in certain pleasures ­or what seem pleasures to them ­merely because they have been told these pleasures are wrong.  For instance, on the subject of smoking.  What boy will stop smoking by being told it is wrong and that he is sinning by his disobedience?  But there are many intelligent ones who will not indulge in it if it is explained to them that smoking will stop their growth and make them less likely to succeed in the cricket eleven, or, later, in the college eight.  At that period the mind cannot look into unseen worlds, and is mainly occupied with realities from day to day, and therefore is more likely to be influenced by a simple explanation of what physical harm or what good in the immediate future will be the result of actions.

The little girls’ behaviour to their mother is really an example of this same rule, only the principle for their action was not good, being merely temporary and strictly limited gain, and not that they should, as in the case of the boys, grow into fine, strong and healthy people, more able to enjoy life in the future.

There is another statement which I have constantly made which possibly might be twisted or misunderstood, and that is the one of the importance of the end.  There are people who would turn it into the Jesuitical motto of “The end justifies the means.”  That is not what I wished to convey at all, but that if an end is good ­and the main object, admittedly, is to obtain it ­then there is no use in using methods which once might have accomplished this, but which no longer are practical because of the changed conditions, and if continued in will only lose all possibility of success.

How many fathers and mothers in past days have driven their offspring to disgrace and even death by adhering to harsh, Puritanical systems, out of date even at that time!  And how many more to-day let them slip into the same abysses by their too indulgent rule!

As I have said, over and over again, the proof of any pudding is in the eating of it; so let every mother examine her methods with her children by this standard:  Are the children developing in moral and physical welfare by those which she is using, or are they retrogressing? Is she employing tact to guide their young fierce spirits, or is she trying to crush them by old-fashioned rules?

Questions such as these ought to be honestly asked by each mother of herself, and if the answer proves that retrogression is in progress, then she should not be so incredibly stupid as to continue in her old lines, but should examine herself and see how she can find the right new ones for her particular cases.  La Rochefoucauld was wise when he said that vanity was at the root of most human mistakes.  If a woman is not willing to undertake the true responsibility of motherhood, then she had far better be that sad thing which is a growing quantity in modern civilisation, namely, a childless wife devoted to dogs.  Hundreds of selfish, neurotic females show the utmost unselfish devotion to wretched little pet animals, when the slightest self-denial asked of them for little human atoms is more than they can accord.  What does this mean?  Is it a writing upon the wall?