Book: Woman and Womanhood

C >> C. W. Saleeby >> Woman and Womanhood




Before we consider the question of individual development, let us note
the general trend of the marriage age. There is no doubt that this is
progressively towards a delay in marriage. We have only to study the
facts amongst primitive races, and in low forms of civilization, to see
that increase in civilization involves, amongst other things, increasing
age at marriage. In his book, "The Nature of Man," Professor Metchnikoff
quotes some statistics, now very nearly fifty years old, showing the age
at first marriage in various European countries. The figure for England
was nearly 26 for males and 24.6 for females; in France, Norway,
Holland, and Belgium the figures for both sexes were considerably
higher, the average age in Belgium being very nearly 30 for men and more
than 28 for women. In England the age has been rising for many years
past, and probably stands now at about 28 for men and 26 for women. It
need hardly be pointed out that this increase in the age of marriage is
one of the factors in the fall of the birth-rate, which is general
throughout the leading countries of the world, proceeding now with great
rapidity even in Germany.

On the whole, it is further true that the marriage age rises as we
ascend from lower to higher classes within a given civilization, though
a very select class among the wealthy offer an exception to this.

Now nothing is more familiar to us all than that there is a disharmony,
as Professor Metchnikoff puts it, between these ages for marriage and
the age at which the development of the racial instinct is unmistakable
and parenthood is indeed possible. The tendency of civilization is to
increase this disharmony, and it is impossible to believe that this
tendency can be healthy either for the civilization or for the
individual.

Still concerning ourselves with the more general aspects of the
question, let it be observed that, as regards men, this unnatural delay
of marriage very frequently brings consequences which, bearing hardly on
themselves, later bear not less hardly on hapless womanhood. The later
the age to which marriage is delayed, the more are men handicapped in
their constant struggle to control the racial instinct under the
unnatural conditions in which they find themselves. The great majority
of men fail in this unequal fight, and of those who fail an enormous
number become infected by disease, with which, when they marry, they
infect their wives, sometimes killing them, often causing them lifelong
illness, often destroying for ever their chances of motherhood, or
making motherhood a horror by the production of children that are an
offence against the sun. These are facts known to all who have looked
into the matter, but there is no such thing as decent public opinion on
the subject, and the author or speaker who dares to allude to them takes
his means of living, if not his life, into his hands.

No doubt men are largely responsible themselves for the rising marriage
age, but women are also responsible in some measure. This must mean on
the whole an injury to themselves as individuals, to their sex, and to
society. Both sexes demand a higher standard of living; the man spends
enough in alcohol and tobacco, as a rule, to support one or two
children, and then says he is too poor to marry. There is everything to
be said for the doctrine that people should be provident, and should
bring no more children into the world than they are able to support; but
before we accept this plea in any particular case, we should first
inquire how the available income is being spent. At present, every
indication goes to show that we are following in the track of all our
predecessors, spending upon individual indulgence that which ought to be
dedicated to the future, and thereby compromising the worth or the
possibility of any future at all.

In the light of these considerations and many more, some of which we
shall later consider, I deplore and protest against with all my heart,
as blind, ignorant, and destructive, the counsel of those women, some of
them conspicuous advocates of the cause of woman's suffrage--in which I
nevertheless believe--who advise women to delay in marriage, or who
publish opinions throwing contempt upon marriage altogether. Later, we
must deal in detail with marriage; here we are only concerned with the
marriage age. It will then be argued that the conditions of marriage
must sooner or later be modified in so far as they are at present
inacceptable to a certain number of women of the highest type. This may
be granted without in any degree accepting the deplorable teaching of
such writers as Miss Cicely Hamilton, in her book entitled "Marriage as
a Trade." Every individual case requires individual consideration, and
no less than any individual case ever yet received. But in general those
women who counsel the delay of the marriage age are opposing the facts
of feminine development and psychology. They are indirectly encouraging
male immorality and female prostitution, with their appalling
consequences for those directly concerned, for hosts of absolutely
innocent women, and for the unborn. Further, those who suppose that the
granting of the vote is going to effect radical and fundamental changes
in the facts of biology, the development of instinct, and its
significance in human action, are fools of the very blindest kind. Some
of us find that it needs constant self-chastening and bracing up of the
judgment to retain our belief in the cause of woman's suffrage, of the
justice and desirability of which we are convinced, assaulted as we
almost daily are by the unnatural, unfeminine, almost inhuman blindness
of many of its advocates.

We have constantly to remind ourselves that our immediate concern and
duty are not with the world as it might be, or ought to be, or will be,
but with the world as it is. There are many good arguments, admirably
adapted to an imaginary world, why the marriage age should be increased.
But these forget the possible, nay the inevitable, consequences, if such
an increase show itself in one nation and not in another, in one class
of society and not in another. It is a good thing, and it is the ideal
of the eugenist, as I ventured to formulate some years ago, that every
child who comes into the world should be desired, designed, and loved in
anticipation. But if in France, shall we say, such a tendency begins to
obtain a generation earlier than it does in Germany, there will come to
be a disparity of population which, continuing, must inevitably mean
sooner or later the disappearance of France.

Or again, difference in the marriage age in different classes within a
given community has very notable consequences, as Sir Francis Galton
showed in his book, "Hereditary Genius," and later, in more detail, in
his "Inquiries into Human Faculty." He shows that, other things being
equal, the earlier marrying class or group will in a few generations
breed down the others and completely supplant them. If the natural
quality of the one class differ from that of the other, the ultimate
consequences will be tremendous. It has been proved up to the hilt that
in Great Britain these differences in marriage in different classes
exist, and that, on the whole, the marriage age varies directly as the
means of support for the children, to say nothing of natural and
transmissible differences in different classes. One can only, therefore,
repeat what was said some time ago in contribution to a public
discussion on this subject that, "considering the present distribution
of the birth-rate, nothing strikes a more direct blow at the future of
England than that which tends to increase the marriage age of the
responsible, careful, and provident amongst us whilst the improvident
and careless multiply as they do."

Let us now consider another possible factor in this question, and then
we must proceed to look at the individual woman as the question of the
marriage age affects her.

_The Marriage Age and the Quality of the Children._--Both from the point
of view of the race and from that of the individual who desires happy
parenthood it is necessary to learn, if possible, how the age of the
parents affects the quality of their offspring. If motherhood is to be a
joy and a blessing, the children must be such as bring joy and blessing.
My provisional judgment on this matter is that we are at present without
anything like conclusive evidence proving that the age of the parents
affects the quality of their children.

Let us look at some of the arguments which have been advanced. The
school of biometricians, represented most conspicuously in latter years
by Professor Karl Pearson, have desired us to accept certain conclusions
which are singularly incompatible with the opinion of their illustrious
founder, Sir Francis Galton, in favour of early marriages among those of
sound stock. By their special procedure, as rigorously critical in the
statistical treatment of _data_ as it is sweetly simple in its innocent
assumption that all _data_ are of equal value, they have proposed to
show that the elder members of a family are further removed from the
normal, average, or mean type than the younger members. This, according
to them, may sometimes work out in the production of great ability or
genius in the eldest or elder members, but oftener still shows itself in
highly undesirable characters, whether of mind or of body, the latter
often leading to premature decease. There is hence inferred a powerful
argument against the limitation of families, which means a
disproportionate increase amongst the aberrant members of the
population.

This argument really offers as good an example as can be desired of the
almost unimaginable ease with which these skilful mathematicians allow
themselves to be confused. Their inquiry has ignored the age of the
parents at marriage--or, better still, at the births of their respective
children--and has assumed that the number of the family was the
all-important point: a good example of that idolatry of number as number
which is the "freak religion" of the biometrician. Supposing that the
conclusion reached by this method be a true one--which it would need
more credulity than I possess to assert--we must conclude that, somehow,
primogeniture, as such, affects the quality of the offspring, and, on
the other hand, that to be born fifth or tenth or fifteenth involves
certain personal consequences of a special kind. Evidently we here
approach less sophisticated forms of number-worship, as that which
attached a superstitious meaning to the seventh son of a seventh son.

It seems, therefore, necessary to point out--surprising though the
necessity be--that, if the biometrical conclusion be valid, what it
demonstrates must surely be not the occult working of certain changes in
the germ-plasm, for instance, of a father, because a certain number of
his germ-cells, after separation from his body, have gone to form new
individuals (changes which would not have occurred if those germ-cells
had perished!), but rather a correlation between the _age_ of the
parents and the quality of their offspring. How cleverly the
biometricians have involved one muddle within another will be evident
not only from considering the evident absurdity of supposing--as their
argument, analyzed, necessarily supposes--that a man's body can be
affected by the diverse fates of germ-cells that have left it, but also
when we observe that one of the commonest and most obvious causes of the
reduction in the size of families is the increasing age at marriage of
both sexes. Two persons may thus marry and become parents at the age of
say thirty, their child ranking as first-born, of course, in the
biometricians' tables; but had they married ten years sooner, a child
born when the parents were thirty might rank as the tenth child, and
would be so reckoned by the biometricians. One does not need to be a
biologist to perceive that conclusions based upon assumptions so
uncritical are worth nothing at all, and it is tempting to suggest that
the biometricians are so called, on a principle long famous, because
they measure everything but life.

It is plainly unnecessary, therefore, for us to trouble about collecting
the innumerable instances where children late in the family sequence
have turned out to be illustrious, or have proved to be idiots. It is
unnecessary because the most obvious criticism of the contention before
us disposes of the proof upon which it is sought to be based.
Nevertheless, of course, though the particular contention about the size
of the family must necessarily be meaningless, unless, as is so very
improbable, it should be shown some day that the bearing of children
affects the maternal organism in some way so as to cause subsequent
children to approximate ever nearer to the type of the race; yet it is
quite conceivable, though quite unproved, that the age of the parents
involves changes in the body which affect, for good or for evil, either
the construction or the general vigour of the germ-cells. As to this
nothing is known, but a great weight of evidence suggests that little
importance, if any, can be attached to this question. Women marrying at
forty or more may give birth to splendid specimens of humanity or to
indifferent ones, and the same may be said of the girl of seventeen,
though as to this more must be said. Similarly, also, it is impossible
to make any general contrasts between the offspring of fathers of
eighteen or fathers of eighty. Correlations may exist, but we know
nothing of them yet.

Our conclusion then is that, with regard to the quality of the children
of any given mother, we cannot say that she should marry at any
particular age, within limits, rather than another. On the other hand,
it is evident that if she be highly worthy of motherhood we shall desire
her to have a large family, and therefore must encourage her early
marriage, as the late Sir Francis Galton so long maintained.

_Physical Fitness for Marriage._--We must carefully distinguish between
the question we have just been discussing and that of the marriage age
from the mother's point of view. We shall find that the best age for
marriage, so far as this question is concerned, is neither puberty, on
the one hand, nor the average marriage age amongst civilized women, on
the other hand.

If things were as we should like them to be, there would be a harmony
between the occurrence of puberty and fitness for marriage. But there
can be no question that the goal of evolution, which is perfect
adaptation, has not yet been attained by mankind, and indeed reason can
be given to show that the goal recedes as we advance towards it. The
practice of lower races, amongst whom the girls often marry at puberty
or before it, is much less injurious to the individual and the race than
we might suppose; but the harmony between the maternal body and the
maternal function is much less imperfect in lower races of mankind than
it is among ourselves. Just as we find that, among the lower animals,
the phenomena of motherhood are simple, easy, and almost painless, so we
find that, though owing to the erect attitude, as much cannot be said
for human beings anywhere, yet these phenomena are far less severe among
the lower races of mankind than among ourselves. The reason is to be
found in the astonishing progressive increase in the size of the human
head in the higher races. The large size of the head in adult life is
foreshadowed in its size at birth, and this it is which constitutes the
_crux_ of motherhood among the higher races. It is undoubtedly true that
the maternal body, by a process of natural selection, has been evolved
in the direction of better correspondence with, and capacity for, that
enlarged head of which civilization is the product. But at the present
stage in evolution the great function of giving birth to a human being
of high race--more especially to a boy of such a race--is graver, more
prolonged, and more hazardous than the maternal function has ever been
before. The gravity of the process has increased proportionately with
the worth of the product.

There are yet further consequences of the development which will
convince us how important it is that we should come to right conclusions
regarding the physical fitness of girls for marriage. Even to-day, when
the work of Lord Lister has been done, and when maternity hospitals--far
more dangerous than a battlefield less than two generations ago--can
show records from year to year without the loss of a single mother, the
fact remains that several thousands of women in Great Britain alone lose
their lives every year in the discharge of their supreme duty. It is
also the case that large numbers of infants lose their lives during, or
shortly after, birth, owing to causes inherent in the conditions of
birth, and practically beyond any but the most expert control. In many
cases no skill will save the child. A considerable preponderance of the
victims are of the male sex, so that there is thus early begun that
process of higher male mortality, which is the chief cause of the female
preponderance that is so injurious to womanhood and to society. There
are thus many and weighty reasons, individual and social--reasons in the
present generation and in the next--which conduce to the importance of
discovering the best age for marriage from the physical point of view.

We may probably accept the long-standing figures of Dr. Matthews Duncan,
one of Edinburgh's many famous obstetricians, who found that the
mortality rate in childbirth, or as a consequence of it, was lowest
among women from twenty to twenty-four years of age. Therefore it may
safely be said that, on the average, and looking at the question, for
the present, solely from this point of view, a girl of twenty-one to
twenty-two is by no means too young to marry. Of course it would be
monstrously absurd to take such a statement as this and regard it as
conclusive, even had it been communicated from on high, for any
particular case; but as an average statement it may be confidently put
forward. At this age, the all-important bones of the pelvis have reached
all the development of which they are capable. This may be accepted,
notwithstanding the fact that, especially in men, the growth of the long
bones of the limbs continues to a considerably later age. Women reach
maturity sooner than men, and the pelvis reaches its full capacity at
the age stated. Obstetricians know further that if motherhood be begun
at a considerably later date, there is less local adaptability than when
the bones and ligaments are younger. The point lies in the date of the
beginning of motherhood, for this is in general a conspicuous instance
of the adage that the first step is the most costly.[13]

_Psychical Fitness for Marriage._--At the beginning of this chapter it
was insisted that we must carefully distinguish between physical or
physiological fitness for mating and complete fitness for
marriage--which, though it includes mating, is vastly more. Few will
question the proposition that physical fitness for marriage is reached
only some years after puberty; so complete psychical fitness for
marriage may well be later still. We should thus have a second
disharmony superposed upon the first. But, instead, when we look round
us, we may often be inclined to ask whether, for many girls and women,
the age of psychical fitness for marriage is ever reached at all; and we
have to ask ourselves how far this delay or indefinite postponement of
such fitness is due to natural conditions, or how far it is due to the
fact that we bring up our girls to be, for instance, sideboard
ornaments, as Ruskin said a generation ago.

I believe that this disparity between the age of physical fitness for
marriage and the attainment of that outlook upon life and its duties,
without which marriage must be so perilous, is one of the most important
practical problems of our time, and that its solution is to be found in
the principle of education for parenthood, which we have already
considered at such length. It is a most serious matter that marriage
should be delayed as it is beyond the best age for the commencement of
motherhood; it is injurious to the individual and her motherhood, and
whether delay occurs, as it does, disproportionately in different cases,
or disproportionately within a nation, in the different classes of which
it is composed, the consequences, as we have seen, are of the most
stupendous possible kind.

Yet observe what a difficulty we are faced with. Perceiving the
injurious consequences of delay in marriage--consequences which, as we
have seen, if considered only as they show themselves in the most
horrible department of pathology, would be sufficient to demand the most
urgent consideration--we may almost feel inclined to agree with the
utterly blind and deplorable doctrine too common amongst parents and
schoolmistresses, who should know so much better, that it is good to see
the young things falling in love, and that the sooner they are married
the better. Every one whose eyes are open knows how often the
consequences of such teaching and practice are disastrous; and if there
is anything which we should discourage in our present study, it is that
marriage in haste and repentance at leisure to which these blind guides
so often lead their blind victims.

Very different, however, will the case be when the victims are no longer
blind. The condemnation of their blind guides at the present time is not
that they regard it as right and healthy that young people should mate
in their early twenties, but it is that by every means in their power,
positive and negative, these blind guides have striven to prevent the
light from reaching their victim's eyes. The day is coming, however,
when the principles of education for parenthood--for which, if for
anything, this book is a plea--will be accepted and practised, and then
the case will be very different.

Convinced though I certainly am of the vast importance of nature or
heredity in the human constitution, I am not one of those eugenists who,
to the grave injury of their cause, declare that there are no such
things as nurture and education, in that they effect nothing; nor do I
believe it in any way inherently necessary that perhaps ten years after
puberty a girl should still be irresponsible in those matters which,
incomparably beyond all others, demand responsibility; or incapable,
with wise help or even without it, of guiding her course aright. It is
we, as I repeat for the thousandth time, who are to blame, for our
deliberate, systematic, and disastrous folly in scrupulously excluding
from her education that for which the whole of education, of any other
kind, should be regarded as the preparation.

No one can attach more than its due importance to woman's function of
choosing the fathers of the future; rejecting the unworthy and selecting
the worthy for this greatest of human duties. It would be a most serious
difficulty for those who hold such a creed if it were that a girl's
taste and judgment could be trusted, if at all, only some years after
she had reached physical maturity for motherhood. It may be that in the
present conditions of girls' education, such right direction of this
choice as occurs, is just as likely to occur at the earlier age as at
any later one, when indeed it may happen that considerations more
worldly and prudential, less generally natural and eugenic, may come to
have greater weight. One can, therefore, only leave it to the reader's
consideration whether it is not high time that we should so seek to
prepare the girl's mind, that when her body Is ready for marriage her
mind may, if possible, be ready also to guide her towards a worthy
choice which the whole of her future life may ratify, and the life of
her descendants thereafter.

It must be insisted again that this question has many ramifications, and
that not the least important of them are those which concern themselves
with the kinds of disease already referred to. Some enemy of God and man
once invented a phrase about the desirability of young men sowing their
wild oats, and subsequent enemies of life and the good and progress, or
perhaps mere fools, animated gramophones of a cheap pattern, have
repeated and still propagate that doctrine. It is poisonous to its core;
it never did any one any good, and has done incalculable harm. It has
blinded the eyes of hundreds of thousands of babies; it has brought
hundreds of thousands more rotten into the world. Hosts of dead men,
women, and children are its victims. It is indeed good that a man should
be a man, and not a worm on stilts; it is indeed good that women should
prefer men to be men, and that as soon as possible they should cease to
accept in marriage the feeble, the cowardly, the echoers, and the sheep.
But this is a very different thing from asserting that it is good for
young men, before marriage, to adopt a standard of morality which would
be thought shameful beyond words in their sisters, and which has all the
horrible consequences that have been alluded to, and many more. Now,
vicious though the wild oats doctrine be in itself and in its
consequences, we have to grant that there is little need of it, for
young manhood needs the insertion of no doctrines from without to
encourage it towards the satisfaction of what are in themselves natural
and healthy tendencies. Our right procedure therefore should
be--notwithstanding the unhealthy tendency of high civilization in this
respect, and notwithstanding the terrible folly, traitorous to their
sex, of those women who decry marriage, and seek to delay it--to prepare
girlhood and public opinion, and even to modify, so far as may be
necessary, economic conditions, in order that the girls who are worthy
to marry at all shall do so at the right age, and shall join themselves
for life with rightly chosen men.

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