What Women Should Know/Chapter 8

The "Maternal Instinct."—We are taught that in the female nature the love of and desire for offspring are early developed and become ruling motives in ordering the girl's life. We are told how the little girl takes naturally to the doll, and nurses it and pets it as a mother does her child. Those who tell us this, see dolls in the hands of young girls, but do not watch to see what is done with them. In the mimic life of their plays, children represent what they know of the world. The little girl who, from her own experience, knows only of babyhood, naturally makes a baby of her doll. So also will the little boy, if you give him one. As the little girl grows older and her experience of the world widens, her dolls are made to play more varied parts. They represent almost invariably grown-up men and women, who get married, keep house, go journeys, and die; or it may be they enact the plot of some recently read story. They live existences totally distinct from their young owners, who are miniature overruling providences, directing and controlling their movements. Such, at least, I believe to be the state of the case, ​judging from my own experience and observation, both of which have been somewhat extended.

Do Girls Look Forward to Becoming Mothers?—As the young girl approaches womanhood the maternal feeling still remains undeveloped. I can recall but two out of a wide circle of girlish acquaintances who, in the intimacy of friendship and in the candor of their hearts, acknowledged that they looked forward to motherhood with any degree of complacency. The two to whom I refer confessed that they hoped if they were ever married they would have large families of children. One of these girls, notwithstanding the apparent development of the maternal instinct, did not possess it in sufficient strength to impel her to matrimony, although good opportunities were not wanting. She is now on the wrong side of thirty, leading a contented and happy single life, without so much as a cat, dog or bird to utilize her wasted maternal instincts.

No doubt many, in consternation, will declare that this apparent lack of the maternal instinct is both unnatural and shameful, and will cry out against the degeneracy of American girls. But it is not degeneracy; it is the natural state of things. Girlhood is not the period of life in which it is necessary that the maternal instinct should be developed. Wifehood should come before motherhood. It is sufficient that instinct leads young women to assume the duties of the former without thinking greatly about the latter.

​Tendency of the Education of Girls.—Moreover, the whole tendency of the education of girls—aside from a few platitudes about their being the future mothers of the nation, addressed to them on stated ceremonial occasions—is against the idea that motherhood is desirable, or that it is their duty to fit themselves for it. They are usually excused if not excluded from the study of physiology, particularly in the special parts of it which they most need to know; books which might be of use to them are kept out of their sight; mothers are silent; and certain knowledge which is of the utmost importance is withheld on the score of its impropriety. Still further, if it were the desire and intention of those who have control over them to unfit them physically for the duties of maternity, their dress from infancy up could not be better devised than it is to accomplish that purpose.

Deductions which Girls draw from Observation.—Meanwhile, girls are neither blind nor deaf. They see the physical suffering and wretchedness, the weariness and never-ending toil of the mother. They see the young wife lose her beauty, youth and sprightliness in the nursery, and come forth, after a few years' seclusion, a wan, worn, faded, listless woman, dwarfed in intellect and old before her time. They do not. know how much of this suffering can be avoided; how much of this toil is needless; and that this loss of youth and vitality is unnecessary. How few women do! They do not know—they cannot know—of ​the compensations of the mother; and, added to the undoubted fact that as yet there have been aroused no maternal beatings in their own hearts, it is no wonder that so many young wives are unwilling mothers.

Young Wives do not always wish for Children.—The young girl marries, and is expected to assume the gravest and most important duties and functions of life with a knowledge almost equaled by that of a baby, and a thoughtlessness such as might attend the preparations for a ball. As she takes upon herself the vows of a wife, the thought of children assumes the form of an undefined dread, of a possibly impending evil, which she confidently believes she shall, after all, in some inscrutable manner escape. A pretty little innocent baby of a wife and mother once told me with delightful naiveté that on her marriage night she prayed as earnestly as ever she could that she might never have any children, but in less than a year her baby was born, and from that fact she concluded that there was no use in praying.

Job's Comforters.—Of course the young wife's hopes prove delusive. It is not long before she finds herself in a condition soon to become a mother. If she has any fears and terrors at the prospect, they are in no way lessened by every woman to whom she reveals her condition exclaiming, "I am so sorry for you! Now your trouble begins. If I were in your place, I should feel like jumping into the river." ​There is not one woman in ten who has any more consoling remarks than these to offer on such an occasion.

Dismal Forebodings.—I pity the young wife most sincerely at this period, for it is the most pitiful of her whole existence. She is forced to turn her back on the life she has hitherto led, with all its well-known pleasures and compensations; while suddenly all the brightness vanishes which had made the future so attractive. She sees before her an entirely new life, about which she knows nothing-about which she hears nothing but lamentations; on whose threshold she experiences unparalleled wretchedness; and to fully enter which she knows she must pass through the gateway of pain down to the very portal of death. It is all darkness, and she gropes weariedly without a guide to direct her to the light.

A Husband's Consolations.—It is not unlikely her husband seems heartless, though I believe this apparent heartlessness should often be set down to thoughtlessness and ignorance. He sees his wife despondent at what he knows to be the common lot of women. He cannot realize her sufferings nor enter into her feelings. "What else did she look for? Didn't she expect to have children when she married? She isn't suffering any more than other women have to; so what is the use of making a fuss? It is all in the course of nature." In short, he agrees with the man (or was it a woman?) who thought that eels ought to get used to being skinned. This is poor ​comfort to the suffering, perhaps terror-stricken, girl, and it wounds deeply; for where she looks for sympathy and help, she finds what seems to her unfeeling heartlessness. She certainly did not look forward to having children when she married, for she thought nothing at all about it; and if every woman in the universe were suffering the same as she, it would not make her individual distress the less intense.

Lack of a Wise and Judicious Friend.—There is no kind woman to take the frightened, ailing girl sympathizingly in her arms and tell her that she has no cause for sorrow and regret; to talk to her sensibly and wisely about the means of mitigating or altogether avoiding her physical sufferings; to tell her of the mother-love that will spring up in her heart when the time shall come for its exercise—a love which shall so far surpass all others that the pains which precede it will seem light—a love now budding and ready to burst into bloom if it were not chilled and kept back by untoward circumstances; to reveal to her the comfort and happiness to be derived from a wise motherhood; to paint the beauty of the family institution, and the delight to be found in a full family circle bound together by ties of affection; to describe the loneliness and desolation of a house which has never echoed to the voices and footsteps of children, and in which the husband and wife sit like monarchs without subjects; to depict in glowing language a perfect home filled with healthful, well-developed children and presided over by wise and ​loving parents; and to impress upon her mind that upon herself rests a large measure of the responsibility whether her home shall be such as this; for such as he wills it she can make it. There is no one to talk thus until cheerfulness, and hope, and courage shall have taken the place of despondency; and then to indicate how much the fulfillment of this bright picture depends upon herself at the present time; how, if she would have loving children, she must love them even before their birth; how, if she would have them happy and peaceful and quiet, giving no trouble as babies, and developing good dispositions as they grow older, she must keep herself serene and hopeful and even-tempered now; to assure her that there must be no repining, unless she wants a fretful babe; that there must be no giving way to selfish, passionate or morbid impulses, unless she wishes to see the trait reflected afterward in the character of her child; and to impress upon her that this course of conduct is doubly a duty, inasmuch as it will result in her present happiness, while at the same time she is holding in her absolute keeping, for a short period, the character, the happiness—in brief, the whole future—of a human being.

Bad Counsel and its Results.—What young wife was ever talked to in this manner? What young wife, previous to the birth of her first child, has any opportunity for searching out these truths for herself? From the first her condition is pitied by women, and her ill-feelings under-estimated by men. ​She has drugs recommended to her to cure the nausea which is one of the earliest symptoms of pregnancy. She is told that she must eat when her stomach loathes food; not only that she must eat, but that she must eat more than usual of strong, hearty food, "to keep up her strength," and "to supply nutriment for two." She must not lift; she must not run; in fact, must deprive herself of all her usual modes of exercise, for fear of untoward results. She is taught that every passing whim must be gratified at a cost of whatever inconvenience to others. Presently it is hinted that it is no longer proper for her to appear in public, so she stays at home a close prisoner, only venturing out at long intervals when necessity compels. From being a prisoner to the house, she is likely to become a prisoner to her room. If she goes up and down a flight of stairs once during the day, it will be an event worth mentioning. If circumstances oblige her to engage in household occupations—and there are probably more working wives than idle ones—she goes about them with great difficulty and pain, grasping at support when it is within reach, and suffering torments of which the spectators have no suspicion. Her personal appearance certainly becomes such that one cannot wonder at her hesitation at making a public display of herself.

No Way of Escape.—So the last day comes round, bringing with it a sense of helplessness and dread such as no one who has not experienced it can know anything about. "If there was only any way ​of escape!" is the constant tenor of her thoughts. But the circle of pain closes around her.

"A Very Bad Time."—She has a "very bad time," and possibly the attendant physician finds it necessary to make use of instruments. She comes back to life from almost the very jaws of death ta remain a close prisoner in her room, if not in her bed, for weeks. At last she issues forth-because no injunction of either friend or physician can longer keep her there-pale and tottering, suffering weakness that nearly bows her to the earth, and pains in the back and elsewhere almost too acute to be borne. Have I painted the picture in too vivid colors for truth? Ask any young wife about her first experience, and see if she does not verify my statements.

Feelings after a First Confinement.—The agony of my own first confinement I shall never forget. For years afterward I could not hear of a friend or acquaintance as being in a condition liable to pass through a similar experience without a shudder, and a thought that I would rather hear of her impending execution, in which case the suffering could not possibly be more intense, and would certainly be far briefer.

Possibility of Mitigating the Pains of Child-bed.—I have since learned that, though it is probably natural that there should be more or less pain at child-birth, this pain may be so mitigated in various ways as to be looked forward to with little dread.

​Miseries of the Sick-room.—I have not described the prolonged tortures of the sick-bed; the head that aches to bursting as soon as it touches the pillow, and yet is so weak that it cannot be lifted from it more than a moment at a time. I have as yet said nothing about the nauseous medicines and their dreadful results; the sickening invalid messes that one is expected to eat; the dread and dislike of the monthly nurse; the worry of having all one's preconceived ideas and intentions regarding the dress and management of one's babe set aside by those who, by virtue of their superior years, set up for superior wisdom. Elderly people certainly ought to be wise, but it does not follow that they always are. Besides, a mother has certain rights which should be in violable, even though she be but young. Then there is sometimes the seeming neglect of a thoughtless husband, who, finding a sick-room a tiresome place, and having no comprehension of the yearning of his forlorn young wife for his care and companionship, visits her but seldom, and then only for short periods.