Education for Motherhood: Ii

II

As I stated in my article in the last issue of the Atlantic, economy and religion determine the trend of life, especially that of family life. And for this reason the tide of the age, which has already turned women outward, is likely to wax stronger until a new religion once again shall kindle the soul of the people with a burning desire for great spiritual values.

Certain signs have appeared, indicating that the religious as well as the economic transformation is in progress. And the heart-beat of humanity has always gone thus: after the outflowing, the inflowing — from the surface back to the heart. The new religion will probably not be a ‘ refined ’ Christianity. But the deepest experiences of the race to which Christianity gave expression in myths and symbols now worn out, will reassert themselves in new form. And the highest ideas which Christianity has given to humanity will again become life-determining forces, although on other grounds.

The crisis through which all the assets generally considered ‘ Christian ’ and ‘feminine’ are now passing, arose out of their sharp contrast to the present social development or outlook on life. Women have no longer that Christian faith, as a mainstay against the power of the times, which among other things made them willing to accept as many children as it ‘pleased God to send.’ Implicit devotion and self-sacrifice are no longer women’s ideal. The legitimate individualism which has made the modern women determined also ‘to live their own lives’ has, with many, resulted in a decision to throw off ‘sexual slavery in the interests of the family.’ From this individualism women can be converted only through a new religious belief, namely, that every human being ‘lives his own life’ in the greatest and most beautiful sense when his will is in harmony with that will to create of which the whole evolution —of culture as well as of nature — bears witness.

But the will to create, which is the mysterious innermost nature of life, nowhere reveals itself more simply or more strongly than in that love out of which new beings spring, and in that parental devotion to these new beings. From the point of view of the new religion, the professional and social work, which by many modern women is considered an obstacle to motherhood and of greater social value than the latter, will only be a ‘tithe of mint and anise and cummin ’ when husbands and wives, well equipped for parenthood, do not give the race their flesh and blood. All that the intelligence and genius of men and women can do for eugenics and the care of infants, for education and schools, is of small consequence so long as it is lavished on a human material constantly shrinking in value because produced by physically and psychically inferior parents, while those who have the making of good parents cannot afford, or have not the will, to supply children to the race. Or, as a well-known botanist has vigorously expressed it: ‘A single miscroscopic cell from which one great human being springs is of greater importance to the race than the painstaking efforts of a hundred thousand child-rearers and educators with a child-material below par.’

It is this conception which must become dominant before any ‘education for motherhood’ can be effective. Thoughts and emotions, will and imagination, must become converted and sanctified through a religion that considers the present superficial culture as a fall of man. The low ideal of happiness held by an irreligious race — an increasingly easy, gliding, automobile existence — will lose its attraction for humanity through the religious awakening, and men and women will once more dream of noble and dangerous deeds, an epoch of aviation even in a spiritual sense. The heroic attitude toward and in life, which the ancient world and Nietzsche in the modern world represent, will again become the ideal of happiness which guides the leaders of the race. Even the many will again desire the deep feeling, the strong emotions and difficult tasks, — despite the dangers, sufferings and sorrows they may bring, — because the ideal of happiness will not then, as now, be the easiest existence, but one which allows the greatest expenditure of power.

For a majority of women it is family life that offers this more toilsome and troubled, but also more rich and joyous existence. But not family life alone! Power expands also in taking part in the organization of a more and more perfect society, in a more concerted progress toward a wiser and higher moral goal. This too is a collaboration with the Will to create, an adjusting of one’s own individuality to individual assets beyond, or, in other words, a form of the new religious worship.

The morning star which augurs the birth of the new religion is already visible on the horizon. For instance, not only economic and democratic forces are at work for the new social order: there are also religious ones. And to the same extent that these forces increase in strength we shall draw nearer to that state which is to relieve the present chaotic and energy-wasting society, the present soulless and aimless existence.

And not until then are we likely to have mothers well trained for the vocation of motherhood and well cared for by society during the discharge of this duty.

A new time comes, as a rule, with quiet and small steps, only rarely wit h great, swift strides. Such a small step is the recognition in Europe, as well as in America, of the obvious need of a training for the inherently womanly vocations. To begin with, we have discovered that it is only an empty phrase to assert that industry has wholly supplanted the business of the household, since very many tasks remain which have to be done in the home. And further, we have grown to understand that to purchase all the necessities of fife ready-made lowers the family’s standard of living and increases the cost more than if the wife performed certain work in the home. We have begun to see that the value of the wife’s industrial work does not, from a national economic point of view, compensate for the family’s higher cost of living, the women’s indisposition toward motherhood, and incapacity for it, the neglect of the children and the home and the consequent increase of alcoholism and criminality, and finally the constantly growing expense to the state of the rearing and care of the children in public and charitable institutions.

As a result of these observations, women especially, but also men, have begun to advocate cooking-schools, courses in domestic science and household economics. Such courses are given in conjunction with the public schools and colleges, or as independent courses, whether or not combined with the care of children. ‘Mother schools,’ childtraining schools, kindergarten schools, lecture courses in child-psychology and in experimental psychology, everywhere are springing into existence. In a word, efforts are being made to remedy the ignorance of the young women of the present generation as to the mission of the home — an ignorance which is the result, on the one hand, of the early entering into industrial labor, on the other hand, of the long studies.

We are ready to deplore the colossal mismanagement which has gone on century after century in allowing women to come unprepared to their most important vocation, — for society and for the race, — the bearing and rearing of children. Information as to sexual matters is still, by many, considered an abomination — in Germany a girl was expelled from a boarding-school because she possessed a scientific book on the ‘sex-life of plants’! — but it is beginning to be imparted by all thoughtful educators. The moderate feminists in Europe are using all these measures in their endeavor to make women professionally capable in their old department of labor. They understand that only increased capability can give the inwardly directed expenditure of woman’s power a new dignity, make it a new social asset. I have no knowledge of the stand taken by American feminists in regard to this movement.

Considering this training by itself, I believe that the cooking course is wisely taught in the early teens when it is enjoyed by most as a change from bookstudies, and as a knowledge of which the young may easily make use. But I do not believe that that age is the psychologically correct time for the more serious and important education in the art of home-making and for motherhood. The fundamental evil of the present school-system is its tendency to line up the manifold desirable teachings for the young like soldiers on parade, namely, on graduation day. This is an insurmountable obstacle to thoroughness and veracity in instruction, qualities which cannot be fully attained without perfect peace for both teachers and pupils — a peace which is never associated with fixed courses and examinations. Without serenity, no knowledge can fully ring out, vibrating through thought, feeling, and imagination. But only in such a resonance does the knowledge manifest itself as living, only thus does it become a power for growth within the individual.

And that is more especially what education for motherhood must accomplish; otherwise it is a failure. During the early ‘teens’ the young girls’ minds are already crammed with abstract knowledge which they have frequently neither desired nor needed. Then comes this education for motherhood for which they have no direct use, and it comes at a time when their minds are mostly filled with thoughts, emotions, and dreams of life which attract all their yearning, though as yet in indefinite forms. It consequently follows that they will come absent-mindedly to the instruction in the vocation of motherhood, and when later in life they stand before the reality, they will have forgotten most of this teaching, as they forget so much of the other instruction they have received without longing and without the personal assimilation referred to above.

Even if one takes this instruction as seriously as, for example, the German woman suffragists desire, — who endeavor to introduce an obligatory yearlong post-graduate course for all girls, as a preparation for motherhood, — such preparation, for the reasons mentioned heretofore, would in reality be far from as effective as a training given some years later. In my opinion, girls as well as boys, after having at about the age of fifteen finished the common preparatory school, which ought to be entirely free from examinations —should devote themselves to their special professional training, which, in the case of the majority, would be completed at about the age of twenty. And this is the age at which I would advocate a year of social service for women as well as for men. In the states that enforce military training, such a period of service is already required of the men and it often lasts two years. I consider a parallel service for women the right education for the care of home and children. And this period of training should be set at the psychologically important age when many of the young women already look forward to a home of their own, or at least have become conscious of a longing for home and children.

The year of training should be divided into three courses: —

1. A theoretic course in national economics, hygienic and fundamental æsthetic principles for the planning of a home and the running of a household. This course would hardly need to include practical exercises, since sewing and cooking classes, and the like, form a part of the curriculum in the present day schools, and thus the first principles of domestic science are there imparted.

2. A theoretic course in hygiene, psychology, and education for normal children, with some directions for the recognition of abnormalities.

3.A theoretic course in the physical and psychical duties of a mot her before and after the birth of a child, and the fundamental principles of eugenics.

To these theoretic courses must be added practical training in the care of children, which should embrace knowledge of the child’s proper nourishment, clothing, and sleep; its physical exercise, play, and other occupations; and its care in case of sickness and accident. Children’s asylums, day-nurseries and hospitals, and mother-homes (where mothers with children would find refuge for shorter or longer periods), would give opportunity for such training led by the teachers.

Already in the year 1900 (in The Century of the Child, first edition), I had proposed a service for women similar to the compulsory military service for men. Such propositions had been made in Sweden even earlier from several quarters. But they had only referred to the obligatory training of women in the care of the sick and their compulsory service as nurses in time of war. My plan, on the other hand, was that the training should principally comprise domestic science and the care of children, although the rudiments of hygiene and therapeutics ought, also to be considered. In 1900, no one took up my proposition, not even in order to attack it. To-day, after a lapse of twelve years, this same proposition, but quite independently of me, has been put forth from many sides, not alone from Sweden, but from Norway, Germany, and elsewhere, and by men as well as women. Some of these — rather unfortunately in my opinion — have connected the question of such a year of social service for woman with the question of woman suffrage. This has come from quarters where it is considered that men’s right to suffrage answers to their military duty. For my part, I have never connected these two questions, since I consider that the duty of paying taxes, equal for men and women, corresponds to their equal rights of suffrage, and, besides, that society’s need of the women’s point of view as well as of that of men fully justifies their eligibility to office. And, if we seek a parallel to man’s sacrifice of life and limb or health on the battlefield, we find it in child-bearing, a battlefield where many women give their lives or become invalids for the rest of their days.

The duty of a training for social service as mother or soldier naturally follows, in my opinion, the education that society has given the young, an education which, in regard to professional training, they repay by efficient work in their various professions, but in other respects by preparing themselves to defend and promote the culture of which they are beneficiaries. The natural division of labor will then be that the men prepare themselves to defend the country in case of an impending peril, and deliver it from danger, while the women prepare themselves to defend and care for the new generation on which the future depends.

In the distant future, when military service shall no longer be needed, and at present, in countries where it is not enforced, all young people ought to have some such training as that of which the Scout movement is, in a certain sense, a beginning — a training in readiness and ability to assist in case of natural calamities and other accidents which may befall society or individuals. Even now, it is the soldiers and seamen who, at times of fire, railroad and mine accidents, floods and earthquakes, show themselves the best helpers, because of their habits of discipline, and of swift and efficient action. Boys ought to be taught — as is done here and there in America — the preparation of the plainest dishes and the simplest mending of clothes, in order that they may not be utterly helpless in any situation in which they may find themselves in fife. And the young man should, during his year of social service, receive instruction in the first principles of eugenics and hygiene.

Both men and women ought also, as a matter of course, to have some knowledge of the essential features of the structure of society. This may be done already during the school period — as has very successfully been tried at an excellent coeducational reform school in Sweden — if the knowledge be not imparted through dry discourses, but the young people are allowed, under the guidance of an expert teacher, to play at parliament some hours a week during several years — playing at elections, committee-meetings, party divisions, motions, and discussions, just as in the national legislature. Even the rudiments of national economy ought in some such manner to be made living and interesting.

That all of this directly belongs to woman’s education for social motherhood, and indirectly also to her vocation as the mother of future servants of society, needs no further proof. For men, as well as for women, the socialservice year would not be wasted even if many would have no occasion personally to use for their own individual benefit all the knowledge gained. There exists no woman, who does not, in some way or other, come into contact with children. And it is increasingly rare for women not to find opportunities in social work to use the knowledge gained during a year’s instruction in the care of children, hygiene, eugenics, and domestic science. But far beyond and above the benefits which understanding of this or that individual case would bring, is the awakening to social responsibility and the leveling of class distinction which such a year of obligatory social service would bring to the daughter of the millionaire and the factory girl alike. As guides in the instruction of young women, I would choose noble matrons, serene as priestesses, who themselves have fulfilled the mission of motherhood — women ripened into sweetness of wisdom, and with power to impart vividly the fruits of their experience to the young who, some day standing before the serious task of making a home and bringing up children, may perhaps by a single word of advice remembered in time save life’s happiness for themselves.

As a transition toward a legally established social-service year for women, I think it might be a good plan to make a course in housekeeping and the care of children a condition of the right to marry. This would result in the private establishment of such courses everywhere. But, on the one hand, the state would have no control over their character, and on the other, these courses would mostly be taken during the above-mentioned and least appropriate age, while in cases when this would not be true, they might come as an unwelcome compulsion later on. In consideration of all these reasons, it is best for us to fix our eyes upon an obligatory year of service for women as a goal to be realized in the near future. The nation which tried this out would find its health and prosperity increased after a few generations in a measure that would thoroughly compensate for the cost involved. Such a cost need not, however, be as great as it is for the compulsory military training of men. To be sure, certain buildings would have to be erected, — suitable homes for the teachers and students, who were not living in the neighborhood of the training centres,— but appropriate lecture-halls would, in most cases, already be found on the spot. And while the service of the men does not confer any direct benefit to society in times of peace, the service of the women would place a large working force at the disposal of society for the care of the sick and of children and of all in need. In each centre, various energy-saving combinations would be possible. As an example may be mentioned that in Stockholm the feeding of poor children has been combined with the schools of domestic science. These embrace not only cooking, and similar subjects but also a course in the care of children, which in turn is combined with day-nurseries. Diningrooms for working women are also combined with the cooking-school. By wise, womanly organization, there are consequently not less than six socially useful enterprises which directly support each other.

These suggestions suffice to show in what direction one must go in order to make practicable the use of the year of social service for women. Different conditions in different nations, and in various districts within each country, would dictate a variety of applications, and a detailed programme would be as impossible as unnecessary.

Only certain essential conditions would need to be established everywhere. First, the making of the legal marriage age for women the same as for men,—as it now is in most European countries, — twenty-one, which in the United States of America, as well as in Europe, has been proved to be conducive to the betterment of society and the race; and that the year between twenty and twenty-one be establishecl as the year for social service, although — as is now the case for men — an earlier or later entering into service for valid reasons might be allowed. Secondly, that complete freedom from service be granted for reasons similar to those which now exempt men from military service.

In analogy with men, the women under obligation to serve ought to have free choice, within certain limits, in regard to the place of training, and also in regard to the selection of the practical and theoretic courses in which they would participate. For example, it would be foolish to waste time on such courses as may have already been taken during medical or normal-school studies, and so forth. And, similarly, it would be a great waste of energy if one already graduated as a trained nurse were commanded to do duty in a hospital, or if a capable and well-informed child-nurse were sent to a children’s home, and so on. The object should be so to arrange the training that each one would till up the gaps in her knowledge to the greatest possible extent.

After some generations of such earnest education it would be found that, just as now, the training for the teacher’s calling has supplied the countries with good teaching forces, while the same forces untrained have remained insignificant; the education for motherhood would supply the various nations with many good mothers well able to fulfill the duties of the home, while such ‘born educators’ as did not become mothers would find work enough in institutions where children must be cared for by society because of the death or the viciousness of their parents.

The attitude of the women, once they have gained full suffrage, toward the questions herein dealt with, will be the great test of the nature of their ‘social motherliness.’ If they comprehend that the education of the mothers, and the rendering secure the functions of the mothers, is the life-question of the race, they will then succeed in finding the means of meeting these demands.

Did humanity ever halt helplessly before any of its vital needs? Least of all could this happen in America, where the very air reverberates with songs of faith in the power of will, with the hope of realization of most wonderful dreams? From the Pilgrim Fathers, from the wars of independence and secession, we have strong evidence of the power of will over the destiny of the world. Ever since, in my youth, I listened to Emerson’s prophetic words, and Whitman’s songs of the creative power of the soul and of the pliability of life in the moulding grasp of this power, I have again and again received new impressions — through thinkers, moralists, and sects — of this typically American spirit. To be sure, it may sometimes lapse into boastfulness or degenerate into superstition as, for instance, when it is believed that the will can conquer every disease and even abolish death. But in itself this sovereign assurance of the victory of will, faith, and hope is the world’s greatest power for overcoming evil with good.