Book: Woman and Womanhood

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




If every child is sacred, every mother is sacred. If every child is to
be cared for, every mother must be cared for. It is true that we may
make experiment with devices for superseding the mother. Man has
impudent assurance enough for anything, and if Nature has been working
at the perfection of an instrument for her purpose during a few score
million years--an instrument such as the mammalian mother, for
instance--man is quite prepared to invent social devices, such as the
incubator, the _creche_, the infant milk _depot_, and so forth; not
merely to make the best of a bad case when the mother fails, but to
supersede the mother altogether directly the baby is born. Such cases,
except in the last resort, are more foolish than words can say. We have
to save our children; we can only do so effectively through the
naturally appointed means for saving children, which is motherhood. The
rights of mothers follow as a necessary consequence from our first
principle, which was the rights of children. Because every child must
be protected, every mother must be protected, if not in one way, in
another.

The State may not be able to afford this. The necessities of existence
may be so difficult to obtain, not to mention for a moment such luxuries
as alcohol and motor-cars and warships and fine clothes and art, and so
forth, that no arrangements for the support of motherhood can be made.
If we lay down the proposition that no mother should work because she is
already doing the supreme work, it may be replied that this is
economically impossible; the thing cannot be done. The only reply to
this is that the State which cannot afford to provide rightly for the
means of its continuance had better discontinue, and must in any case
soon do so. Motherhood is rapidly declining as a numerical fact in
civilized communities generally. Not merely does the birth-rate fall
persistently and without the slightest regard to the commentators
thereon, but it will continue to do so for many years to come. In the
light of this fact the great argument of presidents and bishops,
politicians and journalists, moralists and social censors generally is
that somehow or other this decline must be arrested. To all of which one
replies, for the thousand and first time, that, whatever it ought to be,
it will not be arrested; that the really moral policy, the really human
one, and the only possible one, is to take care of the children that are
born. Then when we have abolished our infant and child mortality and
have solved the substantial problem of finding room for all new-comers,
having ceased to far more than decimate them, we may begin cautiously
to suggest that perhaps if the birth-rate were slightly to rise we might
be able to cope with the product. At present the disgraceful fact is not
the birth-rate, but what we do with the birth-rate; though more
disgraceful perhaps are the blindness and ignorance and assurance of the
host of commentators in high places who waste their time and ours in
animadverting upon a fact--the falling birth-rate--which is a necessary
condition and consequence of organic progress, whilst the motherhood we
have is so urgently in need of protection and idealization in the minds
of the people.

We have reached the conclusion that all motherhood is to be protected.
This means that from some source or other the money shall be forthcoming
for the maintenance of the mother and her children. For, in the first
place, the children are not to work because, if they do, they will not
be able to work as they should in the future. The State cannot afford to
let them work. Further, the proper care of childhood is so continuous
and exacting a task, and of such supreme moment, that it is the highest
and foremost work that can be named; and therefore, in the second place,
she whose business it is must not be hampered by having to do anything
else. If any labourer is worthy of his hire, she is. Her economic
security must be absolute. She must be as safe as the Bank of England,
because England and its banks stand or fall with her. In the rightly
constituted State, if there be any one at all whose provision and
maintenance are absolutely secure, it will be the mothers. Whoever else
has financial anxiety, they shall have none. Any State that can afford
to exist can afford to see to this. No economist can inform me what
proportion of the labour and resources of England are at this moment
devoted to the means of life, and what proportion to superfluities,
luxuries and the means of death. But it is a very simple matter with
which the reader, who is doubtless a better arithmetician than I am, may
amuse himself, to estimate the number of married women of reproductive
age in the community, and allowing anything in reason for illegitimate
motherhood and nothing at all for infertile wives, to satisfy himself
that the total cost which would be involved in the adequate care of
motherhood, is a mere fraction of the national expenditure. Few of us
realize how extraordinary and how unprecedented is the margin of
security for existence which modern civilization affords. A savage
community may have scarcely any margin at all. The same may be true of
many primitive communities which cannot be called savage. They maintain
life under such conditions, whether in Greenland or in a thousand other
parts of the world, that they cannot afford to labour for anything which
is not bread. The primary necessities of existence take all their
getting. Some transient accident of weather or the balance of Nature in
the sea or in the fields imperils the existence of the whole community.
They, at any rate, are wise enough to take good care of their women and
children. But in civilization we have an enormous margin of security.
Not only are we dependent on no local crop or harvest, but the getting
of necessities has become so effective and secure that we are able to
spend a vast amount of our time and energy on the production of luxuries
and evils. How little, then, is our excuse if we fail to provide the
first conditions for continuance and progress!

Our first principles of the value of the child and therefore of
motherhood are unchallengeable, nor will anyone nowadays be found to
question that neither children nor mothers should work in the ordinary
sense of that word, since the proper work of children who are to work
well when they grow up is play, and since the mother's natural work is
the most important that she can perform. It remains, then, for us to
determine by whom mothers and children in the modern and future State
are to be provided for.

The conditions of mothers are various, and we shall best approach the
problem by the consideration of different cases.

The simplest is that of the widowed mother who is without means. It is
only too common a case, and we have already seen certain causes which
contribute to the enormous number of widows in the community. Men do not
live as long as women, and men are older when they marry. These natural
causes of widowhood, as they may be called, are greatly aggravated by
the destructive influence of alcohol upon fatherhood, as will be shown
in the chapter dealing with alcohol and womanhood.

On the individualistic theory of the State, a theory so brutal and so
impracticable that no one consistently upholds it, the widow's
misfortune is her private affair, but does not really concern us. Her
husband should have provided for her. Indeed she should, and indeed we
should have seen that he did. But if he and we failed in our duty to
her, the consequences must be met. The hour is at hand when the State
will discover that children are its most precious possessions, more
precious as they grow scarcer, and efficient support will then be
forthcoming, as a matter of course, for the widowed mother and her
children. The feature which will distinguish this support from any past
or present provision will be that it recognizes the natural sanctity and
the natural economy of the relation between mother and children. It will
be agreed not merely that the children must be provided for, but that
they must be provided for through her. The current device is to divorce
mother and children. "Whom God hath joined together, let no man put
asunder," is quoted by many against the divorce of a married pair whom,
as is plain, not God but the devil has joined together; but the
principle of that quotation verily applies to the natural and divine
association of mother and children.

If, then, the State is to provide in future for all widowed mothers and
their children, husbands need no longer trouble to insure or make
provision for them. Such is the proper criticism. The reply to it is
that the State will have to see to it that, in future, husbands _do_
take this trouble. To this we shall return.

Next we may consider the case of the unmarried mother and her
"illegitimate" child or children. Here, again, the child must be cared
for, and the care of the child is the work which has been imposed upon
the mother. We must enable her to do it, nor must we countenance the
monstrous and unnatural folly, injurious to both and therefore to us, of
separating them. Napoleon, desirous of food for powder, forbade the
search for the father in such a case, though the French are now seeking
to abrogate that abominable decree. Our law recognizes that the father
is responsible, and under it he may be made to pay toward the upkeep of
the child. Some contemporary writers on the endowment of motherhood are
advocating changes which would make this law absurd, for they are
seeking to free the married father from any responsibility for his
children, and could scarcely impose it upon the unmarried father. Such
proposals, however, are palpable reversions to something much lower and
aeons older in the history of life than mere barbarism, and I have no
fear of their success. Assuredly the unmarried father must be held
responsible; and no less certainly must we see to it that, with or
without his help, the unmarried mother and her children are adequately
provided for. The present death-rate amongst illegitimate children is a
scandal of the first order and must be ended. If we are wise, our
provision will involve protecting ourselves against the need for new
provision, especially where the mother is feeble-minded or otherwise
defective, as is so often the case: but provision there must be.

Finally, we come to the central problem of the mother who has a living
husband in employment. It is the case of the working classes that really
concerns us, not least because the greater part of the birth-rate comes
therefrom. It is the contemporary settling-down of the birth-rate in
this class, combined with the novel consequences of modern
industrialism, especially in the form of married women's labour, that
makes the question so important. Before we go any further, the
proposition may be laid down that married women's labour, as it commonly
exists, is an intolerable evil, condemned already by our first
principles. It need scarcely be said that one is not here referring to
the labours of the married woman who writes novels or designs
fashion-plates. There is no condemnation of any kind of labour, in the
home or outside it, if the condition be complied with, that it does not
prejudice the inalienable first charge upon the mother's time and
energy. Her children are that first charge. It may perfectly well be,
and often is, chiefly though not exclusively in the more fortunate
classes, that the mother may earn money by other work without prejudice
to her motherhood. Such cases do not concern us, but we are urgently
concerned with married women's labour in the ordinary sense of the term,
which means that the mother goes out to tend some lifeless machine,
whilst her children are left at home to be cared far anyhow or not at
all. No student of infant mortality or the conditions of child life and
child survival in general has any choice but to condemn this whole
practice as evil, root and branch. And from the national and economic
point of view it may be said that whatever the mother makes in the
factory is of less value than the children who consequently die at home.
The culture of the racial life is the vital industry of any people, and
any industry that involves its destruction and needs the conditions
which make up that destruction, is one which the country cannot afford,
whatever its merely monetary balance-sheet. A complete balance-sheet,
with its record of children slain, would only too readily demonstrate
this.

Our right attitude toward married women's labour must depend upon a
right understanding of the social meaning of marriage. This was a
question which had to be dealt with at length in a previous volume and I
can only state here in a word, what was the conclusion come to. It was
that marriage is a device for supporting and buttressing motherhood by
fatherhood. Its mark is that it provides for _common parental care of
offspring_. A more prosaic way of stating the case would be that
marriage is a device for making the father responsible. If we go far
back in the history of the animal world, we find mating but not
marriage. The father's function is purely physiological, transient and
wholly irresponsible. The whole burden of caring for offspring, when
first there comes to be need for that care, in the history of organic
progress, falls upon the mother. But even amongst the fishes we find
that sometimes, as in the case of the stickleback, the father helps the
mother to build a sort of nest, and does "sentry-go" outside it to keep
off marauders. In this common care of the young we see what is in all
essentials marriage, though some may prefer to dignify the word by
confining it to those human associations which have been blessed by
Church and State, even though the father throws the baby at the mother,
or sends her into the streets to earn her bread and his beer.

If some of our modern reformers knew any biology, or even happened to
visit a music-hall where the biograph was showing scenes of bird-life,
they would learn that the human arrangement whereby the father goes out
and forages for mother and children has roots in hoary antiquity. The
pity is that there is no one to point the moral to the crowd when the
father-bird is seen returning with delicacies for the mother, who tends
her nest and its occupants.

The reader will already have anticipated the conclusion, to which, as I
see it, the study of the fundamental laws of life must lead the
sociologist in this case. It is that the duty of the father is to
support the mother and children, and that the duty of the State is to
see that he does this.

Thus, if asked whether I believe in the endowment of motherhood, I
reply, yes, indeed, I believe in the endowment of motherhood by the
corresponding fatherhood. If our first principles are sound, we must
believe that the mother must be endowed or provided for; there can be no
difference of opinion so far. Often, as we have seen, there is no
corresponding fatherhood, for the mother may be a widow, or unmarried
and unable to find the father. But where the corresponding fatherhood
exists, we fly directly in the face of Nature, we deny the consistent
teaching of evolution as the study of sub-human life reveals it to us,
if we do not turn to the father and say, this is your act, for which you
are responsible.

At all times the community has been entitled to say this to the father.
It is even more entitled to say so now, when, as everyone knows,
parenthood has come so entirely under the sway of human volition. The
more knowledge and power the more responsibility. The more important the
deed, the more responsible must we hold the doer. The time has come when
fatherhood, whether within marriage or without it, must be reckoned a
deliberate, provident, foreseen, all-important, responsible act, for
which the father must always be held to account.

On a recent public occasion, having endeavoured to show that the history
of animal evolution teaches us the increasing importance and dignity of
fatherhood, I was asked whether I had any argument in favour of parental
responsibility. To this the fitting reply seemed to be that, primarily,
I believe in parental responsibility because I believe in human
responsibility. It need hardly be said that the questioner belonged to
that important political party which loathes the idea of paternal
responsibility and styles it a "fetish." Without it none of us would be
here. Yet the Socialists are less likely than any other party to abandon
the idea of human responsibility. They propose to hold men responsible
for the remoter effects of their acts--upon the present--as no other
party does. The maker of money is held to account for his deeds and
their effect upon the life around him. I agree with the principle: but I
maintain that the maker of men is also to be held to account for his
deeds and their effect upon the future and the life of this world to
come. No Socialist can afford to question the practical political
principle that men are to be held responsible for their deeds: and no
Socialist can explain the sudden and unexplained abandonment of this
principle when we come to the most important of all a man's deeds. To be
consistent, the Socialist should uphold the doctrine of a man's
responsibility for the remoter consequences of his acts in this supreme
sphere, more earnestly and thoughtfully and providently than any of his
opponents.

The position of those who would free the father from responsibility is
even less defensible when, as we commonly find, they are prepared to
make the mother's responsibility more extensive and less avoidable than
ever. Why this distinction? And if parental responsibility is a "fetish"
when it refers to a father, why is it not the same when it refers to a
mother? In the schemes of Mr. H. G. Wells, kaleidoscopic in their
glitter and inconsistency, there remains from year to year this one
permanent element, that while the mother must attend to her business, it
is no business of the father. This is the essential feature, the one
novelty of his scheme. Already the married mother--he proposes nothing
for the unmarried mother--is legally entitled to some measure of
support. His endowment of motherhood is essentially a _discharge of
fatherhood_, and should be so called. There can be no compromise,
nothing but a fight to the finish, between the principle of endowing
motherhood by making fatherhood less responsible, and the principle here
fought for, of endowing motherhood by making fatherhood more
responsible. As Nature has been doing so, in the main line of progress
for many millions of years,--a statement not of interpretation or theory
but of observed fact--I have no fear of the ultimate issue. But it
might well be that any portion of mankind, perhaps a portion ill to be
spared, should destroy itself by an attempt to run counter to the great
principle of progress here stated. There is an abundance of men who will
be very happy to side with Mr. Wells. Men have never been wanting, in
any time or place, who were happy to gratify their instincts without
having to answer for the consequences; and it has always been the first
issue of any society that was to endure, to see that they did not have
their way: hence human marriage. The "endowment of motherhood" sounds as
if it were a scheme greatly for the benefit of women. Let them beware.
Let them begin to think of, not the remoter, but the immediate and
obvious consequences of any such schemes as are proffered by the overt
or covert enemies of marriage, and they will quickly perceive that _the
last way in which to secure the rights of women is to abrogate the
duties of men_. The support allotted to such schemes as these is not
feminine but masculine. That is the impression I derive from discussions
following lectures on the subject; and that is what I should expect,
judging from the natural tendencies of men, and the profound intuition
of women in such matters. And, conversely, the opposition to such
principles as are expressed here, and embodied in the "Women's Charter,"
will be masculine. But woman has been civilizing man from the beginning,
and she will have her way here also--for, in the last resort, not merely
youth, but the Unborn must be served.

Before we consider the alternative suggestions that some are making,
and proceed to indicate how the paternal endowment of motherhood can be
enforced in every class, as public opinion practically enforces it in
the upper and middle classes, let us meet the objection that, if
fatherhood is to be made so serious an act, and if so much
self-sacrifice is to be exacted from those who undertake it, the
marriage-rate and the birth-rate will fall more rapidly. And as regards
the marriage-rate, the answer is that marriage and parenthood are not
inseparable, a proposition which might be much amplified if a writer who
wishes to be heard could afford to have the courage of everybody's
convictions. But already, in the middle classes, men limit their
families to the number they can support. They simply practise
responsible fatherhood, and the mothers and children are protected. On
what moral grounds this is to be condemned, no one has yet told us.

And as regards the effect of more stringent responsibility for
fatherhood upon the birth-rate, it must be replied, for the thousandth
time in this connection, that the question for a nation is not how many
babies are born, but how many survive. The idea of a baby is that it
shall grow up and become a citizen; if babies remained babies people
would soon cease to complain about the fall in the birth-rate. But, in
point of fact, a vast number of babies and children are unnecessarily
slain, and if we could suddenly arrest the whole of this slaughter, the
increase of population would become so formidable that everyone would
deplore the unmanageable height of the birth-rate. Its present fall is
quite incapable of arrest, and is perfectly compatible with as rapid an
increase of population as any one could desire. We must arrest the
destruction of so much of the present birth-rate, so that it means
nought for the future. By nothing else will this arrest be so
accelerated as by those very measures for making fatherhood more
responsible for the care of motherhood, which are here advocated. Let it
be freely granted that these measures will lower the birth-rate. Much
more will they lower the infant mortality and child death-rate, and
diminish the permanent damaging of vast multitudes of children who
escape actual destruction.

And now we can turn to those proposals which have lately been revived by
one or two popular writers in England, for the endowment of motherhood
by the State, leaving the fathers in peace to spend their earnings as
they please, whilst others support their children. Detailed criticism is
not needed, for the details to criticize are not forthcoming, and the
opinions on principles and on details of these imaginative writers are
never twice the same. It suffices that proposals such as these, apart
from their vagueness and their obvious impracticability in any form, are
directly condemned by the fundamental principle that a man shall be
responsible for his acts. The endowment of motherhood, as Mr. Wells
means it, is simply a phrase for making men responsible for their
neighbours' acts and for striking hard and true at the root principle of
all marriage, human or sub-human, which is the common parental care of
offspring. Reference is made to this proposal here, not that it really
needs criticism, but in order that one may be clearly excluded from any
participation in such proposals.

The difference between such schemes for the endowment of motherhood and
the proposal here advocated is that those seek to endow the mother by
making the father less responsible--or, rather, wholly
irresponsible--while this seeks to endow her by making the father more
responsible. The whole verdict of the ages is, as we have seen, on the
side of this principle. It has been practised for aeons, and it is the
aim of sound legislation and practice everywhere to-day.

As has been admitted, the more we express this principle, the lower will
fall, not necessarily the marriage-rate, but the parent-rate; fewer men
will become fathers, _but they will be fitter_. There will be fewer
children born, but they will be children planned, desired and loved in
anticipation, as every child should be, and will be in the golden
future. These children will not die, but survive; nor will their
development be injured by early malnutrition and neglect. The believer
in births as births will not be gratified, but there will be abundance
of gratification for the believer in births as means to ends.

The practical working-out of our principle is no more difficult than
might be expected if it be remembered that we are counselling nothing
revolutionary nor even novel. The demand simply is that the practice
which obtains among the more fortunate classes shall be made universal,
and that the State shall see that all fathers who can, do their duty.
The State will be quite busy and well employed in this task, which may
legitimately be allotted to it even on the strictly individualist and
Spencerian principles, that the maintenance of justice is alone the
State's province. We allot a great function to the State, but deny that
it can rightly or safely set the father aside and perform his duty for
him.

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