Radiant Motherhood/Chapter 18

"This shall be thy reward—that the ideal shall be real to thee."

Olive Schreiner: Dreams.

PROVERBS innumerable and daily experience have familiarized every one with the idea that the citizen is moulded and his or her essential characteristics determined in childhood, and as a result of childhood's training. The most profoundly operative of all his qualities is his potential sex attitude, because it is that which determines his experience of sex and marriage, which colours his thoughts towards women throughout his life, which inclines his mind nobly towards his own racial actions or which leaves him weak and frivolous in his attitude towards the greatest profundities of life.

Children, otherwise brought up with every care and forethought, surrounded by all that ​love and money can give them, are too generally left, without their mother's guidance or their father's wisdom, to discover the great facts of life partly by instinct and partly from the vulgar talk of servants or soiled children a little older than themselves. Worse even than this takes place, because most generally in this connection they not only do not hear the truth from their mother's lips, but they learn from her their most influential and earliest lesson in lying.

The curious thing about the particularly pernicious form of lying which deals with racial things in the presence of childhood is that we have the habit of thinking it quite innocent. Indeed we have even acquired the habit of thinking it one of the charming form of lies ; hence when we are in a reforming mood, seeking for the origins of the wrongs we are trying to put right, we pass these "charming " lies by, thinking them harmless.

Where did each one of us first learn to lie?

Nearly every one who is now grown up got his (or her) first lesson in lying at his mother's knee. To the little child, in his narrow but ever widening world, the mother is the supreme ruler, the all-wise provider of food, clothes, pleasures and pains. The mother (the child instinctively feels) must be also the source of wisdom.

Question after question about himself and his surroundings springs up in the baby mind. ​Mother is asked them all, and for every one she has some sort of an answer. Then inevitably, at three or four, or five years old comes the question:—"Mother, where did you find me?"—"Mother, how was I born?"

Then comes the lie.

The child is told about the doctor bringing him in a bag—or a stork flying in through the window—or the accidental finding under the gooseberry bush.

All children delight in fairy tales, but instinctively they know very well the difference between a fairy tale which is recounted to them as a story in answer to their mood of "make-believe" and a fiction which is putting them off when they are seeking the truth.

If the mother who feels herself too ignorant or too self-conscious to answer the truth to the child's questions takes him on her knee and deliberately tells him in a "make-believe" mood a fairy tale, the child will then not feel . that the mother has lied. He will feel, however, that he must ask some one else for the truth.

But most mothers give the answer containing the fiction of the gooseberry bush, or whatever it may be, in a manner indicating that that is what the child must believe, and the child receives the information as a serious answer to his serious question. It is then a lie, and a pernicious lie.

​Racial knowledge, instinct, whatever you like to call it, is subtler and stronger in baby minds than we dulled grown-ups are inclined to think. The youngest child has a half-consciousness that what its mother said in answer to this question was not true.

Nurse, or auntie, a friend's governess, or any one else who seems wise and powerful, is asked the same question when mother is not there, and the chances are that if mother had given the stork version auntie gives the gooseberry bush or some other fiction which she particularly favours.

The baby ponders intermittently, inconsequently, perhaps at long intervals, perhaps after years, but ultimately it realizes that its mother lied to it.

In this way infinite injury has been done to the whole human stock, and more particularly women have suffered from the dishonesty and the inherent incapacity of our society to be frank and truthful about the most profound and the most terrible aspects of sex, namely, its diseases. A wife or a mother has the right to be told the truth.

Women, and particularly mothers, have been outrageously wronged by the deliberate lies and untruthful atmosphere about the greater problems of sex in which the learned have enshrouded them: but mothers have themselves ​given the first bent to the little sprouting twig of that tree of knowledge, and they have bent it away from the sunlight of truth and clean and happy understanding.

The mother's excuse is, or would be if she felt herself in any way to blame (which, by the way, deplorably, she very seldom does) that these terrible mysteries of origin are not suitable for the little innocent child to ponder over. She thinks they would shock him. But here the mother is profoundly mistaken.

The age of innocence is the age when all knowledge is pure. At three, four, or five years old, everything is taken for granted—everything in the universe is equally a surprise, and is at the same time accepted without question as being in the natural course of events. If true answers were given to the tiny child's questions, they would seem quite rational—not in the least more surprising than the fact that oak trees grow from acorns, or that the cook gets a jam tart out of a hot oven.

All the world's events seem magic at that age, and if no exceptional mystery were made of the magic of his own advent, the child would feel it as natural as all the rest, and having asked the question and obtained satisfactory, simple unaccentuated answers, would let his little mind run on to the thousand other questions he wants to ask. The essential racial ​knowledge would slip naturally and sweetly into his mind mingled with a myriad other new impressions.

There is no self-consciousness, no personal shamefacedness, about a tiny child. It accepts the great truths of the universe in the grand manner.

If the mother has never failed her child, has always given it what she could of wisdom, she will retain his trust and his confidence. When he gets a little older she can teach him to go to no one else for talk about the intimacies of life, which the child is quick to realize are not discussed openly amongst strangers.

Then, later on, when personal consciousness and shyness begin, there need not be the acute constraint and tension of the shame-faced elder speaking to a mind awakening to itself. Deep in the child's consciousness, deeper even than its conscious memory goes, the true big facts are planted.

To tell a child of twelve or fourteen the truth is, for most parents, an impossibly difficult matter. The reason for this is that it is then too late for essentials; only details are then suitable or necessary.

Little children spend much of their early time in exploring themselves and their immediate surroundings—all is mysterious, all at first unknown. Their own feet and hands, their ​powers of locomotion and of throwing some object to a distance, the curls of their own hair, the pain they encounter in their bodies when explorations bring them in contact with sharp angles: all are equally mysterious, together forming a wonder-world. And babies are very young indeed when they explore with all the rest of their bodies, the rudiments of those of their racial organs with which they can acquaint themselves. In my opinion, the attitude of a man or woman through life is largely determined by the attitude adopted by the mother towards the racial organs before the child was old enough consciously to remember any instruction that was imparted.

Advice is often given in these more enlightened days to instruct your boy or girl in his racial power or duties when he or she is ten or twelve years old. This to many seems very young, and they hesitate and defer it till they are older and "can understand better." In my opinion, this is already eight or ten years too late.

The child's first instruction in its attitude towards its sex organs, its first account of the generation of human beings, should be given when it is two or three years old; given with other instruction, of which it is still too young to comprehend more than part, but which it is nevertheless old enough to comprehend in part. Very simple instruction given reverently at suitable opportunities at that early age will impress itself upon ​the very texture of the child's mind, before the time of actual memories, so that from the very first possible beginnings its tendencies are in the direction of truth and reverent understanding.

A child so tiny will usually not remember one word of what was said to it, but the effects on his outlook will be deep. For at that early age, children are meditatively absorbing and being impressed by the psychological states and feelings of their instructors and companions, and if, in these very earliest months, the mother or guardian makes the mistake of treating ribaldly the tiny organs or of speaking lightly in the child's presence, or of directly lying to the child about these facts, that child receives a mental warp and injury which nothing can ever eradicate entirely, which may in later years through bitter and befouling experiences be lived down as an old scar that has healed, but which will have permanently injured it.

I hold this to be a profound truth, and one which it is urgent that humanity should realize. I trust that my view will establish itself on every hand. If that were my way, I could easily write a whole volume on this theme, and coin a polysyllabic terminology in which to mould and harden thought on the subject. But I prefer that a few simple words should slip like vital seed into the hearts of mothers, and that they may mould the race.

​It is ignorance of this truth which has led to the dishonouring and befouling of pure and beautiful youth, which is the original source of the greater part of all the social troubles and the sex difficulties of adolescence.

The tiny child of two or three years old, just beginning to perceive and piece together the psychological impressions stamped upon it by its environment and the mind-states of those around it, is the weakest link in the chain of our social consciousness. Physically, the new born babe for the first few days of its life is the weakest link in the chain, the most liable physically to extinction, but spiritually, socially the link most liable to warping, even destruction, is the awakening mind, the still half-sleeping consciousness, of the child between two and three years old.

The mother or guardian then who desires her son or daughter to face the great facts of life beautifully and profoundly should begin from the first to mould that attitude in the child. It may appear to the unthinking like building castles in the sand even to hint at truths which it cannot comprehend to a child who remembers nothing of the words used in later years. This is not so. What the child absorbs is less the actual words than the tone of voice, the mode of expression that spiritually impresses itself upon its own little soul.

Then there comes a later stage for most ​civilized human beings, usually after they are three years old, when there arises the possibility of permanent consciousness through permanent and specific memory of things seen, done or heard. Most grown-ups of the present generation will have some vivid memory, dating back to when they were between three and four years old, when they received a strong mental impression that grown-ups were lying to them or that there was something funny or silly in questions which they asked. Perhaps they noticed that whilst Jack the Giant Killer was taken seriously, questions about where pussy got her kittens were laughed at. Almost each one of us who is to-day grown up then received some grievous injury. This time is of great importance in the psychology not only of the child, but of the whole adult race arising from the growing up of each child, for one's earliest memories are few but very vivid. As things are to-day, generally between the ages of three and four or so, in the months which are likely to yield a lifelong memory, the spirit is wounded by the shock of a serious lie.

When as a mother or father you are with your children it is vital to be most careful to answer truly, and if possible beautifully, the questions which arise. No one can foresee which question and answer may make that terrible impression which lasts for a lifetime.

​When your little son or daughter is about the age of three or four or five, the day will come when you are asked questions about the most fundamental facts in human life, and then the answers to these questions contain the probability of a lifelong memory. Answer with the truth.

Many parents are anxious to tell their children the great truths in a wise and beautiful manner. But few feel that they know how to do it, for it is a most difficult thing to know how to answer searching questions about profound subjects, and particularly about those which the community wrongly considers shameful. Each mother knows, or should know, the temperament and needs of her child, so that the adaptation of the advice I give should be varied to suit the individual child. In essence, however, children's demands at an early age are remarkably similar, and the questions of children on birth and sex differ in form, though seldom in substance.

The following conversation between a mother and her little son indicates what seems to me the best way first to tell a child who has reached the age when he may have lasting memory of the facts that he is blindly seeking in his baby questions. It will not suffice to learn the answers off by heart; the baby will then soon confound his elders, but the substance of the conversation should prove useful.

​The very first time the query comes: "Mother where did you get me?" the mother must not divert the child's interest, or hesitate, but should be ready at once to answer:—

"God and Daddy and I together made you, because we wanted you.^[1]"

"Did God help? Couldn't He do it all Himself?"

"You know when you and I are playing with bricks together, you like Mummy to help, but not to do it all. God thought Daddy and Mummy would like Him to help, but not to do everything, because Daddy and Mummy enjoyed making you much more than you enjoy playing with bricks."

That may suffice for the time, because little children are very readily satisfied with one or two facts about any one subject, and the talk could easily be diverted. The little mind may brood over what was told, and some time later—perhaps a few days, perhaps even a few months or more—this question will come up again, possibly in a different form:—

"Mummy, when was I born?"

The mother should give the day and say:—

"You know your birthday comes every year on the 18th of April. That birthday is what reminds us of the day you were born, and each birthday you are a whole year older."

​"I'm five now."

"Yes, so you were born five years ago on your birthday."

"Where was I before I was born?"

"Don't you remember I told you that God and Daddy and I made you?"

"Yes . . . Did you make me on my birthday?

"Not all in one day; you took much longer to make than that."

"How long did I take to make?"

"A long, long time. Little children are so precious they cannot be made in a hurry."

"How long did I take?"

"Nearly a year—nine whole months."

"Did baby take as long?"

"Yes, just the same time. Baby is just as precious as you are."

"I'm bigger."

"Now you are, but you were baby's size when you were baby's age. You are bigger because you have grown since your first birthday."

Again the subject may perhaps drop, or it may be carried directly forward.

"What is being born?"

"Being born is being shown to the world and seeing the world for the first time. At the end of nine months after God and Daddy and Mummy started to make you, you were ready to open your eyes and breathe and cry, and be a real live baby, and that day they showed you to somebody and you saw the world. That was being born."

"Where was I before you finished making me?"

"Mummy kept you hidden away so that nobody at all should see you."

​"Where was I hidden?"

"You were hidden in a most wonderful place, in the place where only quite little babies can be while God and their mummies are making them."

"Show me; I want to go back there."

"You can never go back; it is only while you are being made you can be there. After your first birthday, you can never go back."

"Where was I?"

"Well, you know, little babies that are being made are very, very delicate, and they have to be kept very warm and comfortable, and nobody must see them, and they must be close, close up to their mummies."

The child may interject, "And their daddies too?"

"Yes, if they have got loving daddies, the daddy keeps close to the mummy; but while babies are being made it is God and mummy that have most of the work to do. That is why you must always love your mummies and obey them."

The child may be temporarily satisfied, or may continue at once:—

"But where was it that I was while you were making me?"

"What is the warmest, softest, safest place you can think of? Mummy's heart: that is all warm with love. The place Mummy hid you while God and she were making you was right underneath her heart."

"Her real heart—the heart that beats like a clock ticking?'

"Yes, her real heart, just here."

The mother should lay the child's hand on her heart and let him feel it beating.

"And just inside, right underneath here, Mummy kept you while God was helping her to make you."

The child who has been brought up in a home of love and tenderness and beauty will find this a thrilling and beautiful thought, like a little boy whom I know personally, and to whom this fact was told in this way. Solemnly, and without a word, he went away from his mother into the middle of the room and stood deep in thought for several minutes. Then he turned, looked round, and rushed across the room, threw himself into his mother's lap, his arms round her neck and cried: "Oh, Mummy, Mummy, then I was right inside you."

For days afterwards he was filled with a rapturous joy, and at times used to leave his play and come to his mother and put his arms round her neck, saying: "Oh, Mummy, that is why I love you so."

Whatever form the child's feeling may take, the opportunity should not be allowed to pass without a little addition to the conversation, and the mother should say:—

"And you see that is why you must never talk to any one but Daddy and Mummy, or God through your prayers, about such things. As God and Daddy and Mummy, and no one else made your little body, so every thing you want to know about it, all the questions you want to ask, you should ask of them and no one else. You see, you are different from any ​other child in the world, and as Daddy and Mummy helped to make you, only they know your works. So whatever it is you want to know, or whatever it is that goes wrong, it is Mummy and Daddy who can tell you about it."

Once may be sufficient for a child to be told the greater truths it desires to know, but it is seldom that the child will leave so wonderful a subject entirely alone after first learning of it, and many portions of the beautiful facts will have to be repeated in a variety of forms, or in just the same words, as are repeated again and again the beloved fairy tales. The child, however, will be quick to know the difference between this story and fairy tales, for children have an instinct for truth at a much earlier age than grown-ups generally remember.

A further series of questions will probably arise when the child is about twelve.

The essential difficulties of these later questions, and the shamefaced self-consciousness so usual between parent and child will never arise if from the first the deep truths have been known to the child.

The child so instructed is not supplied with all necessary facts, and instruction of a more specific and exact nature will have to be repeated at further intervals throughout its life, but on this foundation, further knowledge can be built without having to wipe out anything already implanted, without having to contradict earlier ​instruction, or to acknowledge the gravest error of having lied. Life teaches much to a quick child trained to observation, particularly in the country, where all children should spend much of their time. If the little one has been told what has been given in the previous pages it will have all the essential truths on to which it will fit in for itself the other data which daily life will bring it; thus it may garner a harvest of facts one by one.

Concerning the later instruction which will be necessary, the information can be given in many ways. Some advocate school instruction of children of twelve or more in the physiology of all the members of the body, so that the racial powers are treated in their proper place in conjunction with the digestive organs, brain, lungs, etc. Some parents prefer to give the instruction themselves, for none but they can know so well the individual needs of the child.

Much has already been written and is available in the voluminous literature about the presentation of the facts to be imparted at the various later ages, and almost every book advises comparisons with flowers. For the later ages of ten years and after, this is probably the best introduction for specific details, but for the first and earliest instruction of the baby mind, such direct simple answers as I have indicated are, I am sure, the best.

​Children whose parents have treated them as I advise in this chapter are essentially safe whatever form later instruction may take. They will then have the vitality to survive lies, although ever to lie to them will be putting a cruel and useless strain on their recuperative powers. If the little child is started upon its life with a beautiful and true conception of its relation to its mother, and of man's relation to woman, it will be unlikely indeed that it will grow up a hooligan who flouts his parents or a loose and lascivious destroyer of women.