THE UNWELCOME CHILD.[Footnote: This is the t.i.tle of a pamphlet written by Henry C. Wright. We have taken some extracts from it.]
1. TOO OFTEN THE HUSBAND thinks only of his personal gratification; he insists upon what he calls his rights(?); forces on his wife an _unwelcome child_, and thereby often alienates her affections, if he does not drive her to abortion.
Dr Stockham reports the following case: "A woman once consulted me who was the mother of five children, all born within ten years. These were puny, scrofulous, nervous and irritable. She herself was a fit subject for doctors and drugs. Every organ in her body seemed diseased, and every function perverted. She was dragging out a miserable existence.
Like other physicians, I had prescribed in vain for her many maladies. One day she chanced to inquire how she could safely prevent conception. This led me to ask how great was the danger. She said: "Unless my husband is absent from home, few nights have been exempt since we were married, except it may be three or four immediately after confinement."
""And yet your husband loves you?"
""O, yes, he is kind and provides for his family. Perhaps I might love him but for this. While now--(will G.o.d forgive me?)--_I detest, I loathe him_, and if I knew how to support myself and children, I would leave him."
""Can you talk with him upon this subject?"
""I think I can."
""Then there is hope, for many women cannot do that. Tell him I will give you treatment to improve your health and if he will wait until you can respond, _take time for the act, have it entirely mutual from first to last_, the demand will not come so frequent."
""Do you think so?"
""The experience of many proves the truth of this statement."
"Hopefully she went home, and in six months I had the satisfaction of knowing my patient was restored to health, and a single coition in a month gave the husband more satisfaction than the many had done previously, that the creative power was under control, and that my lady could proudly say "I love," where previously she said "I hate."
"If husbands will listen, a few simple instructions will appeal to their _common sense_, and none can imagine the gain to themselves, to their wives and children, and their children"s children. Then it may not be said of the babes that the "Death borders on their birth, and their cradle stands in the grave.""
2. WIVES! BE FRANK AND TRUE to your husbands on the subject of maternity, and the relation that leads to it. Interchange thoughts and feelings with them as to what nature allows or demands in regard to these. Can maternity be natural when it is undesigned by the father or undesired by the mother? Can a maternity be natural, healthful, enn.o.bling to the mother, to the child, to the father, and to the home, when no loving, tender, anxious forethought presides over thee relation in which it originated?--when the mother"s nature loathed and repelled it, and the father"s only thought was his own selfish gratification; the feelings and conditions of the mother, and the health, character and destiny of the child that may result being ignored by him. Wives! let there be a perfect and loving understanding between you and your husbands on these matters, and great will be your reward.
3. A WOMAN WRITES:--"There are few, vary few, wives and mothers who could not reveal a sad, dark picture in their own experience in their relations to their husbands and their children. Maternity, and the relation in which it originates, are thrust upon them by their husbands, often without regard to their spiritual or physical conditions, and often in contempt of their earnest and urgent entreaties. No joy comes to their heart at the conception and birth of their children, except that which arises from the consciousness that they have survived the sufferings wantonly and selfishly inflicted upon them."
4. HUSBAND, WHEN MATERNITY is imposed on your wife without her consent, and contrary to her appeal, how will her mind necessarily be affected towards her child? It was conceived in dread and in bitterness of spirit. Every stage of its foetal development is watched with feeling of settled repugnance. In every step of its ante-natal progress the child meets only with grief and indignation in the mother. She would crush out its life, if she could. She loathed its conception; she loathed it in every stage of its ante-natal development. Instead of fixing her mind on devising ways and means for the healthful and happy organization and development of her child before it is born, and for its post natal comfort and support, her soul may be intent on its destruction, and her thoughts devise plans to kill it. In this, how often is she aided by others! There are those, and they are called men and women, whose profession is to devise ways to kill children before they are born. Those who do this would not hesitate (but for the consequences) to kill them after they are born, for the state of mind that would justify and instigate _ante-natal_ child-murder would justify and instigate _post-natal_ child-murder. Yet, public sentiment consigns the murderer of post-natal children to the dungeon or the gallows, while the murderers of antenatal children are often allowed to pa.s.s in society as honest and honorable men and women.
5. THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXTRACT from a letter written by one who has proudly and n.o.bly filled the station of a wife and mother, and whose children and grandchildren surround her and crown her life with tenderest love and respect:
"It has often been a matter of wonder to me that men should, so heedlessly, and so injuriously to themselves, their wives and children, and their homes, demand at once, as soon as they get legal possession of their wives, the gratification of a pa.s.sion, which, when indulged merely for the sake of the gratification of the moment, must end in the destruction of all that is beautiful, n.o.ble and divine in man or woman. I have often felt that I would give the world for a friendship with man that should show no impurity in its bearing, and for a conjugal relation that would, at all times, heartily and practically recognize the right of the wife to decide for herself when she should enter into the relation that leads to maternity."
6. TIMELY ADVICE.--Here let me say that on no subject should a man and woman, as they are being attracted into conjugal relations, be more open and truthful with each other than on this. No woman, who would save herself and the man she loves from a desecrated and wretched home, should enter into the physical relations of marriage with a man until she understands what he expects of her as to the function of maternity, and the relation that leads to it. If a woman is made aware that the man who would win her as a wife regards her and the marriage relation only as the means of a legalized gratification of his pa.s.sions, and she sees fit to live with him as a wife, with such a prospect before her, she must take the consequences of a course so degrading and so shameless. If she sees fit to make an offering of her body and soul on the altar of her husband"s sensuality, she must do it; but she has a right to know to what base uses her womanhood is to be put, and it is due to her, as well as to himself, that he should tell beforehand precisely what he wants and expects of her.
Too frequently, man shrinks from all allusion, during courtship, to his expectations in regard to future pa.s.sional relations. He fears to speak of them, lest he should shock and repel the woman he would win as a wife. Being conscious, it may be, of an intention to use power he may acquire over her person for his own gratification, he shuns all interchange of views with her, lest she should divine the hidden sensualism of his soul, and his intention to victimize her person to it the moment he shall get the license. A woman had better die at once than enter into or continue in marriage with a man whose highest conception of the relation is, that it is a means of licensed animal indulgence. In such a relation, body and soul are sacrificed.
7. ONE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTIC of a true and n.o.ble husband is a feeling of manly pride in the physical elements of his manhood. His physical manhood, as well as his soul, is dear to the heart of his wife, because through this he can give the fullest expression of his manly power. How can you, my friend, secure for your person the loving care and respect of your wife? There is but one way: so manifest yourself to her, in the hours of your most endearing intimacies, that all your manly power shall be a.s.sociated only with all that is generous, just and n.o.ble in you, and with purity, freedom and happiness in her. Make her feel that all which const.i.tutes you a man, and qualifies you to be her husband and the father of her children, belongs to her, and is sacredly consecrated to the perfection and happiness of her nature. Do this, and the happiness of your home is made complete Your _body_ will be lovingly and reverently cared for, because the wife of your bosom feels that it is the sacred symbol through which a n.o.ble, manly love is ever speaking to her, to cheer and sustain her.
8. WOMAN IS EVER PROUD, and justly so, of the manly pa.s.sion of her husband, when she knows it is controlled by a love for her, whose manifestations have regard only to her elevation and happiness. The power which, when bent only on selfish indulgence, becomes a source of more shame, degradation, disease and wretchedness, to women and to children than all other things put together, does but enn.o.ble her, add grace and glory to her being, and concentrate and vitalize the love that encircles her as a wife when it is controlled by wisdom and consecrated to her highest growth and happiness, and that of her children. It lends enchantment to her person, and gives a fascination to her smiles, her words and her caresses, which ever breathe of purity and of heaven, and make her all lovely as a wife and mother to her husband and the father of her child. _Manly pa.s.sion is to the conjugal love of the wife like the sun to the rose-bud, that opens its petals, and causes them to give out their sweetest fragrance and to display their most delicate tints; or like the frost, which chills and kills it ere it blossoms in its richness and beauty._
9. A DIADEM OF BEAUTY.--Maternity, when it exists at the call of the wife, and is gratefully received, but binds her heart more tenderly and devotedly to her husband. As the father of her child, he stands before her invested with new beauty and dignity. In receiving from him the germ of a new life, she receives that which she feels is to add new beauty and glory to her as a woman--a new grace and attraction to her as a wife. She loves and honors him, because he has crowned her with the glory of a mother. Maternity, to her, instead of being repulsive, is a diadem of beauty, a crown of rejoicing; and deep, tender, and self-forgetting are her love and reverence for him who has placed it on her brow. How n.o.ble, how august, how beautiful is maternity when thus bestowed and received!
10. CONCLUSION.--Would you, then, secure the love and trust of your wife, and become an object of her ever-growing tenderness and reverence? a.s.sure her, by all your manifestations, and your perfect respect for the functions of her nature, that your pa.s.sion shall be in subjection of her wishes. It is not enough that you have secured in her heart respect for your spiritual and intellectual manhood. To maintain your self-respect in your relations with her, to perfect your growth and happiness as a husband, you must cause your _physical_ nature to be tenderly cherished and reverenced by her in all the sacred intimacies of home. No matter how much she reverences your intellectual or your social power, if by reason of your uncalled-for pa.s.sional manifestations you have made your physical manhood disagreeable, how can you, in her presence, preserve a sense of manly pride and dignity as a husband?
[Ill.u.s.tration]
HEALTH AND DISEASE.
Heredity and the Transmission of Diseases.
1. BAD HABITS.--It is known that the girl who marries the man with bad habits, is, in a measure, responsible for the evil tendencies which these habits have created in the children; and young people are constantly warned of the danger in marrying when they know they come from families troubled with chronic diseases or insanity. To be sure the warnings have had little effect thus far in preventing such marriages, and it is doubtful whether they will, unless the prophecy of an extremist writing for one of our periodicals comes to pa.s.s--that the time is not far distant when such marriages will be a crime punishable by law.
2. TENDENCY IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION.--That there is a tendency in the right direction must be admitted, and is perhaps most clearly shown in some of the articles on prison reform. Many of them strongly urge the necessity of preventive work as the truest economy, and some go so far as to say that if the present human knowledge of the laws of heredity were acted upon for a generation, reformatory measures would be rendered unnecessary.
3. SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES.--The mother who has ruined her health by late hours, highly-spiced food, and general carelessness in regard to hygienic laws, and the father who is the slave of questionable habits, will be very sure to have children either mentally or morally inferior to what they might otherwise have had a right to expect. But the prenatal influences may be such that evils arising from such may be modified to a great degree.
4. FORMATION OF CHARACTER.--I believe that pre-natal influences may do as much in the formation of character as all the education that can come after, and that the mother may, in a measure, "will" what that influence shall be, and that, as knowledge on the subject increases, it will be more and more under their control. In that, as in everything else, things that would be possible with one mother would not be with another, and measures that would be successful with one would produce opposite results from the other.
5. INHERITING DISEASE. Consumption--that dread foe of modern life--is the most frequently encountered of all affections as the result of inherited predispositions. Indeed, some of the most eminent physicians have believed it is never produced in any other way. Heart disease, disease of the throat, excessive obesity, affections of the skin, asthma, disorders of the brain and nervous system, gout, rheumatism and cancer, are all hereditary. A tendency to bleed frequently, profusely and uncontrollably, from trifling wounds, is often met with as a family affection.
6. MENTAL DERANGEMENTS.--Almost all forms of mental derangements are hereditary--one of the parents or near relation being afflicted.
Physical or bodily weakness is often hereditary, such as scrofula, gout, rheumatism, rickets, consumption, apoplexy, hernia, urinary calculi, hemorrhoids or piles, cataract, etc. In fact, all physical weakness, if ingrafted in either parent, is transmitted from parents to offspring, and is often more strongly marked in the latter than in the former.
7. MARKS AND DEFORMITIES.--Marks and deformities are all transmissible from parents to offspring, equally with diseases and peculiar proclivities. Among such blemishes may be mentioned moles, hair-lips, deficient or supernumerary fingers, toes, and other characteristics.
It is also a.s.serted that dogs and cats that have accidentally lost their tails, bring forth young similarly deformed. Blumenbach tells of a man who had lost his little finger, having children with the same deformity.
8. CAUTION.--Taking facts like these into consideration, how very important is it for persons, before selecting partners for life, to deliberately weigh every element and circ.u.mstances of this nature, if they would insure a felicitous union, and not entail upon their posterity disease, misery and despair. Alas! in too many instances matrimony is made a matter of money, while all earthly joys are sacrificed upon the accursed altars of l.u.s.t and mammon.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Outdoor Sports Good Training For Morals As Well As Health.]
PREPARATION FOR MATERNITY.
1. WOMAN BEFORE MARRIAGE.--It is not too much to say that the life of women before marriage ought to be adjusted with more reference to their duties as mothers than to any other one earthly object. It is the continuance of the race which is the chief purpose of marriage.
The pa.s.sion of amativeness is probably, on the whole, the most powerful of all human impulses. Its purpose, however, is rather to subserve the object of continuing the species, than merely its own gratification.
2. EXERCISE.--Girls should be brought up to live much in the open air, always with abundant clothing against wet and cold. They should be encouraged to take much active exercise; as much, if they; want to, as boys. It is as good for little girls to run and jump, to ramble in the woods, to go boating, to ride and drive, to play and "have fun"
generally, as for little boys.
3. PRESERVE THE SIGHT.--Children should be carefully prevented from using their eyes to read or write, or in any equivalent exertion, either before breakfast, by dim daylight, or by artificial light. Even school studies should be such that they can be dealt with by daylight.
Lessons that cannot be learned without lamp-light study are almost certainly excessive. This precaution should ordinarily be maintained until the age of p.u.b.erty is reached.
4. BATHING.--Bathing should be enforced according to const.i.tutions, not by an invariable rule, except the invariable rule of keeping clean. Not necessarily every day, nor necessarily in cold water; though those conditions are doubtless often right in case of abundant physical health and strength.
5. WRONG HABITS.--The habit of daily natural evacuations should be solicitously formed and maintained. Words or figures could never express the discomforts and wretchedness which wrong habits in this particular have locked down upon innumerable women for years and even for life.
6. DRESS.--Dress should be warm, loose, comely, and modest rather than showy; but it should be good enough to Satisfy a child"s desires after a good appearance, if they are reasonable. Children, indeed, should have all their reasonable desires granted as far as possible; for nothing makes them reasonable so rapidly and so surely as to treat them reasonably.
7. TIGHT LACING.--Great harm is often done to maidens for want of knowledge in them, or wisdom and care in their parents. The extremes of fashions are very p.r.o.ne to violate not only taste, but physiology.