We use the word "natural" in many senses,—sometimes with warm approval, as indicating that which is best; sometimes with disapproval, as low and discreditable.
"Natural affection" is one familiar phrase, and "unnatural monster" another, which show a firm belief in the rightness of the working laws of the universe.
On the other hand, the whole story of human development lies in changing those conditions and habits which were once natural to the slow, laborious, hard-won advantages of civilisation. "The natural man" or man "in a state of nature" is a remote ancestor; and we do not allow unchecked freedom to animal passions and appetites among us on the ground that they are "natural."
It is natural to take revenge for injuries; it is natural to eat too much; it is natural to be too careless in youth and too cautious in old age. "Natural" means according to the laws of nature; and the laws of nature have a wide and long range.
In applying the word to any one creature, we have to limit it by time and circumstance. It is natural for an absolutely wild creature, which has never seen man, not to be afraid of him. It is natural for the same creature, when hunted, to fear man, and shun him. If long tamed, like the cat and dog, it is natural to come trustfully to the well-known friend.
Nature is essentially changeful. Its laws remain the same, but the interaction of those laws produces ever-varying results. "The nature" of any given creature varies with its circumstances,—give it time,—as in the above case of the dog and cat; but the whole scale of behaviour is "natural" in its place and time. "A state of nature" is not a period with an exact date, nor any one grade of conduct. That conduct which is most advantageous to a creature under given circumstances is natural. The only conduct which is "unnatural" would be that which was exhibited in contradiction to the laws of nature, if such were possible.
In this sense an ascetic life is unnatural, as meaning destruction to the individual and race; but, in the sense that the ascetic fondlybelieves he is acting for his ultimate benefit, his conduct is "natural," after all.
A wild rose is "natural," a garden rose or hot-house rose is "cultivated," a velvet rose on a bonnet is "artificial." Yet it is as natural for man to cultivate and imitate for his own good pleasure as for a bee to store honey. When we were in what we usually call "a state of nature," we did not keep clean, wear clothes, go to school or to church. Yet cleanliness and clothing, education and religion, are natural products of "human nature."
When we apply the word to human conduct, we ought to be clear in our own minds as to whether we mean "natural"—i.e., primitive, uncivilised, savage—or natural,—suited to man's present character and conditions. Primitive man did not send his children to school, but we do not consider it unnatural that we do send ours. Primitive woman carried her naked baby in her arms; modern woman pushes her much-dressed infant in a perambulator. But there is nothing unnatural in preferring the perambulator. It is natural to do what is easiest for the motherand best for the baby; and our modern skill and intelligence, our knowledge and experience, are as natural to us as ignorance, superstition, and ferocity were to our primal ancestors.
With this in mind, let us look at the use of the term "natural" as applied to mothers. What sort of mother do we praise as natural, and what sort do we blame as "unnatural"? Is our term used with reference to a period of development, "natural" motherhood, meaning primitive, savage motherhood? or is it used with reference to the exercise of that intelligence, acquired knowledge and skill, and array of conveniences, which are natural to civilised man to-day? I think it will be found that in most cases we unconsciously use it in the first sense, natural meaning merely primitive or even animal, and with but too good reason, if we study the behaviour we are describing.
Motherhood is pre-eminently a "natural" function in both senses. It might almost be calledthenatural function, as reproduction seems to be more important in the evolution of species than even self-preservation. Itwould seem as if the instinct of self-preservation were given merely to keep the creatures alive for purposes of reproduction; for, when the two forces come into conflict, the reproductive instinct is the stronger.
The reproductive functions are performed by both male and female; but, as species developes and more conscious effort is applied to the great task, the female has the larger share.
In furnishing nutrition to the young, order mammalia gives the entire task to the mother; and their care, protection, and defence are mainly hers.
With the human species, in proportion to its development, the scales have turned the other way. With us the father furnishes food, shelter, and protection, save for the first period of suckling. In many cases the mother fails even to provide this assuredly "natural" contribution to the child's nourishment. This would be a good opportunity to call her "unnatural"; but, if she is sufficiently assiduous with the bottle or wet-nurse, we do not. Beyond that period the human mother merely waits upon and watches herchildren in the shelter provided by the father, and administers to them such food, clothing, and other supplies as he furnishes.
Her educational office, too, has largely passed from her, owing to the encroachments of the school and kindergarten. She still moulds their morals and manners as far as she is able, and has command of their education during the earliest and most important years.
Now is it "natural" for a mother to take no part in getting food for children? If ever there was a natural function pertaining to motherhood, that seems to be one. If we use the word in its primitive sense, she certainly is "an unnatural mother" for relinquishing this primal duty. But, if we use it in the other sense, she is quite natural in accepting the conditions of civilised life as far as they are advantageous to the child. Is it "natural" for a mother to submit her children to the instruction of other extra-maternal persons? or to call the doctor when they are sick, engage the dentist to fill their teeth, and hire persons to help take care of them? These things are not primitivesurely, but neither are they "unnatural." The "nature" of motherhood is to provide what is best for the child; and the multiplied services and facilities of our socially developed lives are as natural to us as our smooth white skins, once "naturally" brown and shaggy.
In all fair thinking, speaking, and writing, we should decide clearly upon our meaning, and see that it would be very unnatural for modern women to behave as was natural to primitive women.
The main duty remains the same,—to benefit the child. Methods and materials are open to choice and change. Motherhood is as open to criticism as any other human labour or animal function. Free study, honest criticism and suggestion, conscientious experiment in new lines,—by these we make progress. Why not apply study, criticism, suggestion, and experiment to motherhood, and make some progress there?
"Progress in motherhood" is a strange phrase to most of us. We would as soon speak of progress in digestion.
That shows how we persist in confoundingthe physical functions of reproduction with the elaborate processes that follow; and yet we do not apply our scornful term of "unnatural mother" to the weak, unhealthy woman who cannot compete with a cow in this stage of motherhood. We should think fairly one way or the other. Success in the physical functions of maternity we shall do well to keep up to a level with the performance of the "lower animals." The ensuing processes are the ones open to progress.
No bottle is as good as the breast. "You cannot improve on nature!" But you can improve in methods of clothing, feeding in later years, house and school building, teaching, and every other distinctly human process.
If the human mother does not compare favourably with other animals in the physical processes of reproduction, she is therein "unnatural." If she does not keep up with the opportunities of her race and time in all the ensuing care of the child, she is therein unnatural. Such care and culture as was natural to give a cave-baby would be unnatural to-day. Is not the average mother of to-day too prone to content herself with a very low-gradeperformance of a modern mother's duties, on the plea that her methods are "natural,"—namely, primitive?
The grade of "care" given by the mother of to-day is too often exactly that of the mother of many thousand years ago. We depend almost altogether on what is known as "the maternal instinct," which is a "natural instinct," to be sure, just as it is a natural instinct for the male to fight. The right education of a child to-day requires more than instinct to produce the best results. Because we have not used the helpful influences of association, study, and experience in this most important labour of life, we keep our progress as a living species far below the level of our progress in material improvements.
When anything is said of improving the human stock, we instantly think of the methods of breeders of cattle, and are at once convinced of the undesirability and impossibility of applying any such means to humanity.
But there remain open to us two immense avenues of improvement, both free tomothers. One is the mother's modifying influence upon the race through selection,—that duty of wise choice of a superior father for her children, which is "natural" enough to the lower animals, but which we agree to ignore in the bringing up of our young women. Careful and conscientious training to this end would have a great effect upon the race.
This does not mean the self-conscious forcing of a young heart to marry a "superior" man without the blessed leading of true love; but such open knowledge of what constituted an inferior or positively injurious man as would lower the likelihood of nice girls loving the undesirables.
The other and far more practical road of racial advance is in improving the environment of our young children, both materially and psychically, by the intelligent co-ordinate action of mothers. If we improve the individual as far as possible, it is better not to meddle too much with the subtle forces which lead to mating. These processes are not cerebral, and ought not to be made self-conscious. But educational processes are conscious, and should be studied.
The "natural" mother gives no thought to her approaching duties during youth. The animals do not, the savages do not, and our charming young girls do not. Is it not time for us to show a generation of mothers sufficiently "unnatural" to give honest thought and study to the great duty which lies before them? Clear-headed, intelligent girls, as yet unhampered by the blind brute instinct of maternal passion, might be able to plan together for the good of the child, as they never would be able to plan separately for the good of their own individual children.
A year or two of thorough study and practice in the arts and sciences of child-culture would soon convince the girl as to whether she was adapted to be an educator of little children or merely a mother. I say "merely a mother" in this rather derogatory way, alluding to the process of bearing young and perhaps suckling them. This is an essential physical function, common to all the higher animals, and usually fulfilled by them much better than by us. The continuous and subtle processes of education which come after, and the wise care required for the physicalhealth and comfort of the child, do not come "naturally" to every mother. It is here that the skill and training are needed. Maternity is one thing, and education another.
It cannot be too strongly reiterated that maternal love does not necessarily include wisdom. It is "natural" for every mother to love her children, but it does not follow that she knows what is best for them. The animal mother does know by instinct; and we, content to take our pattern of motherhood from the beasts, have imagined that we needed nothing more.
The individual animal has the necessary knowledge of its kind lodged in each specimen. One bear, lion, or sheep, can teach its young all that any of them know, and care for them one as well as another.
There is an immense difference between this "natural" condition and ours, where individuals differ so widely in wisdom, and where the material conditions essential to the good of the child are not open to every mother to select from as instinct dictates and procure according to her individual skill, but are produced by us collectively, and only tobe secured by combined intelligence. For our mothers to insure good conditions for their children requires more than maternal instinct.
The "natural" mother of to-day is reared without an inkling of what lies before her; and no preacting instinct warns her of the effect of her girlhood's wasted opportunities. She marries still by "instinct," which often leads her astray; or, when she uses her conscious reason, it is generally in lines of financial advantage, irrespective of the to-be-father's health or character. She fulfils the physical functions of maternity rather reluctantly and with poor success, being frequently much the worse for the performance, and then rather boasting of her enfeebled condition, as if it was in some mysterious way a credit to her.
Then she brings to the care and education of her children merely her rudiments of maternal instinct,—an instinct so far painfully lacking in wise prevision of the event and preparation for it.
Where failing health or "social duties" or any other causes prevent her constant attendanceon the child, the rich mother hires a low-class woman to take care of him; and, if the poor woman has too much work to be able to constantly attend upon the child, she gets along as she individually can without taking much care of him. Or, if she is of that small class who do really "take care of" their children personally, the care she gives is the mere chance outcome of her personal character and conditions, and may or may not be beneficial.
All this conduct we call "natural," and see no blame in it. We assume that every mother knows how to care for her children; and, if we only see her keeping at it incessantly, we never criticise the methods or results. That is not, in general, a charge against motherhood. We do criticise individual cases very freely, yet make no deduction from our own wide observations.
Now let us picture an "unnatural" mother. As a young girl, she thoughtfully considers her approaching duties. She says to herself: "I am to be a mother; to contribute my personal share to the improvement of humanity by bringing into the world someone better than I am. I must do all I can to be better personally, in character and physique, for the child's sake. Whatever I may be able to do for it afterward, I will give it good endowment at birth." And then this unnatural young girl proceeds to train herself in all right living, avoiding anything in dress or food or late hours that might injure her health, because she hopes to be a mother some day. She studies child-culture eagerly, hoping that she may be fit for the splendid work, but is disappointed here perhaps, having a strong musical temperament, or a good head for business, or capacity for prompt and skilful manual labour, but not the faculties that go to make the good educator.
This is a blow, for she considers the training of little children as the highest work on earth, but she recognises that only about one in twenty has the requisite capacity; and the knowledge gained in her careful study in these lines shows her the importance of giving children thebestconditions, which involves association with those specially endowed with the teacher's power. So she studies her own profession cheerfully, resolved to make goodprogress there, to be a mother her children can be proud of, and to be able to guarantee them all they need. She loves and marries, led by the deepest force in organic life, but governed by a clear and conscious wisdom even here. If she has the misfortune to be attracted to a man diseased or immoral or defective, she will not accept him, for the sake of her children. But marry she will, for this is the law of life; and the exceptions go to extinction. This fair woman, vigorous and beautiful, with her well-trained body, clear mind, and tender spirit of mother-love waiting within her, would not go unloved. She marries. She bears healthy, beautiful children, and nourishes them at her proud and loving breast. She has provided beforehand for their care and training, knowing from the study and experience she has given the subject, and the reading she has kept up, what are now the best obtainable conditions. Her home has been chosen with a view to its proximity to the best baby-garden and child-home she knew, where some of the teachers were old friends of hers, and all were known by reputation.
Having chosen a profession with a view to the physical limitations of motherhood, and prepared during her plentiful time of waiting such arrangement of hours and substitutes as shall enable her to meet the mother's duties properly, she takes a complete vacation for the months that need it; and then gradually resumes her work for part of the day, as her hours between nursing the child lengthen. She goes gladly to her work because she loves it, is well trained for it, and by doing it she serves her child. She comes more gladly to the child, the deep primal instinct coming out strongly; and at night the healthy little one sleeps near her in the quiet home.
Between the hours of nursing, the baby sleeps peacefully or wakes happily, in the beautiful home that his mother—working with the other mothers—have made for their children; and is watched and cared for by the wise and tender women who have proved their fitness for this precious work.
His mother is not worried about him. She knows that in that home there is no possible danger, in that trained care no leastneglect; and that, if any sudden illness smote him, the visiting physician is there daily, and others in instant call. This place was made for babies, and is not in charge of servants. She is at ease about the child. Eagerly she goes to him when work is done. No weariness, no anxious uncertainty, only the glad triumphant mother-love which is content in knowing that the best possible conditions are secured to the child, and a constantly renewed delight in its health and beauty and good progress. Owing to her previous study, she knows enough not to undo the good effects by foolishness at home. She is in daily communication with the teachers,—and nurses and doctors, if necessary. She does not lose touch with the little life. Her untired affection surrounds him always, and to the child she is probably the most agreeable of the several agreeable persons in whose society he finds himself. Unless she falls terribly below the common standard, he will love her the best; for the beautiful background of nursing won and held his dawning affection, and the sweet home-coming every night is a constantly strengtheningtie. Any clean, comfortable, human home should be suitable for a healthy child to sleep in; but it is in his impressionable day-time hours that he needs more appropriate surroundings.
It will be seen that this unnatural mother has her child in her own care for sixteen hours out of the twenty-four, and during the eight hours of a working day she herself places him in what she knows to be better conditions than her own home could offer. If she does chance to possess that degree of educational genius essential to the best care of young children, her eight hours of work will be spent in taking care of them, and the remaining sixteen in still taking care of her own. Thus the exceptional mother, who is also an educator, will have her own all the time; and her unusual ability will benefit many other little ones for part of the time.
The "natural" mother, of course, believes that her own care of her own child is better than any one's else. She can give no proof of this, and would be very unwilling to submit to any examination or competition. She simply thinks she is the best educator becauseshe is a "mother." The sickness and death of her children, or the accidents which happen to them, or their inferior development and disagreeable behaviour, she never takes as proof of her incompetence. Where an experienced teacher could remove half a dozen bad habits in as many months without the child's knowing it, the mother scolds and spanks along the years, or resignedly lets the small people trample upon the rights of their elders, in serene conviction that her methods must be right; for is she not their mother?
The unnatural mother, who is possessed of enough intelligence and knowledge to recognise her own deficiencies, gladly intrusts her children to superior care for part of the time, and constantly learns by it herself.
The mother-love, which is so far strained by the difficulties of rearing children in the home as to frequently give way to irritability, weariness, and even bad temper, would be kept fresh and unworn by the eight-hour rest; and the child would never learn to despise his mother's irascibility and lack of self-control, as, unfortunately, so many childrendo. To the child, happy and busy in his day hours of education, the home-coming would be an ever new delight, and the home—"papa and mamma's house"—a lovely place to respect and enjoy.
Many will wonder why the mother is described as "working" during eight hours. The able-bodied and able-minded human being who does not work is a contemptible object. To take from the labour of others so large a share of human products as is necessary to our comfort to-day, and contribute nothing in return, is the position of a devouring parasite.
Most women do work, hard and long, at house-service. The "natural" mother is content to mingle her "sacred duties" of child-care with the miscellaneous duties of a house-servant; but the "unnatural mother," for the sake of her children, refuses to be the kitchen-maid, parlour-maid, and chamber-maid of the world any longer. She recognises that her real duties are too important to be hindered in their performance any longer by these primitive inconveniences; and, with combined intelligence, she and the othersarrange their households on a basis of organised professional service, with skilled labour by the hour, and so each has time to perform some professional service herself, and pay well for the better performance of the "domestic" tasks.
This subject is treated in a special volume on "Women and Economics," but here it is sufficient to present the position of the mother, the "unnatural" mother, who would refuse to maintain any longer our grossly defective system of household service (either by herself or by a hired woman), on the ground that it was not conducive to the best development of her children.
To those who for any reason prefer, or are compelled by circumstances, to pursue the profession of private house-servant, it will, however, be of inestimable advantage to have their children taken out of the dirt and danger, and placed in proper conditions, while the mother follows her profession at home. The natural mother cares only for her own children. She loves and labours without knowledge, and what experience she gains by practising on her own children is buriedwith her. The unnatural mother cares for Children,—all of them,—and knows that she can best serve her own by lifting the standard of child-culture for all.
We have urgent need of the unnatural mother,—the mother who has added a trained intellect to a warm heart; and, when we have enough of them, the rarest sound on earth will be that now so pitifully common,—the crying of a little child.
The mother does her duty by her children as best she can. The father does his duty by his children. But we do not do our duty by our children. The relation of the State to the child is little thought of, much less understood. We have discussed it only as an alternative to the parental relation, involving the removal of the child from the home and family, and the substitution of civic for domestic care. Such a proposal naturally excites the hot opposition of parental love and instinct, and cannot stand. It has been tried more or less thoroughly, as in Sparta, but does not appeal to the human heart or head, and is not in the least what is here under discussion. The true relation of the State to the child includes the parental relation, and in no way controverts the love and instinct of those invaluable public functionaries.
It is not necessary, or in any way desirable, for the State to remove the child from the parent. Parents are evolved for the purposeof rearing children, and possess highly specialised and urgent impulses in that direction,—far too useful forces to be ignored.
But the civilised human parent lives as part of an elaborate society,—a State; and, as a member of the State, he holds a new relation to his child—she holds a new relation to her child: they—and they are the State—hold a new relation to their children. This is what we so generally ignore.
The individual parents do their individual duty fairly well; but the collective parents, who constitute society, fail shamefully in their collective duties. What is a society? It is an organisation of human beings, alive, complex, exquisitely developed in co-ordinate inter-service. What is it for? It is for development, growth, progress, like any other living thing. How does a society improve? By combinations of individuals evolving social processes which react favourably upon the individual constituents, and develope in them better social faculties. For instance, early combinations of individuals evolve low forms of legal protection for the citizens of the early State. Under those protective enactments,citizens grow up in comparative peace, and become capable of enacting further and superior laws.
In recent and particular instance, our American forefathers established a system of public education under which many citizens were developed to a degree of intelligence sufficient to see the need and the means of extending and improving that education. Education is a social process, impossible—in any human degree—among detached individuals.
The education of children is a distinctly social process. Much of it may be carried on by the parents, but it is for social improvement and as a member of society that they do this. Here is where our parents, who constitute society, fail to see the nature and extent of their work. They have an exaggerated idea of "parental responsibility" to the child, and no idea at all of social responsibility to the child. That social development which has enlarged the mind and soul of the beast-savage to our present capacity for love and service we still imagine to be purely parental, and endeavour to concentrateit all on our own children, failing utterly in our duty to each other's children.
No such gross error can work good results. This disproportionate concentration of feeling on the individual child, and neglect of the child in general, produces a world full of people with a congested family life, full of morbid sensitiveness and potential difficulty and suffering, and a weak, anæmic social life, full of mutual neglect and dereliction of duty.
The well-known illustration of education can be used again still farther to show this. Suppose a small community, wherein the parents are all very anxious for the education of their own children and profoundly indifferent to the education of anybody's else children. Suppose these parents all labour religiously to buy books, pictures, statues, music, and to have the best of tutors for their own children.
It can be seen without much mathematical effort how inferior would be the supplies purchasable by the individual parent's funds compared to those purchasable by their collective funds. Separately, they could not compass a good teacher to each family, norgood pictures, nor many books and instruments, nor any statuary and music to speak of. Collectively and for less money, they could have all these things in far higher degree of excellence.
It is social parentage, such as we have, which gives us the school as we have it. It is the weakness and irresponsibility of our social parentage which leaves the school as it is, and fails to push on to something far fuller and better. What thought, what care, what service, does the average mother give to other people's children? None. She does not imagine it to be her duty. She imagines that her duty lies only toward her own children, and that it is no faintest fault of hers if other children suffer. If she sees little ones visibly neglected and injured, she merely blames their individual parents, and gives no further thought to the matter.
Now, once for all, what is the advantage of living in a society instead of living alone? It is that we do not have to spend all our time and strength in very imperfectly taking care of ourselves, as the separate individual would be obliged to do, but are more andmore perfectly taken care of by one another. We all share in the advantages of living together,—the protection not only of numbers, but of our specialised defenders, civil and military; the vast accumulations of knowledge and skill acquired by many and transmitted to all; the increasing measure of mutual love, in which we thrive and grow. The more perfectly a society can distribute these advantages to all its citizens, the more swiftly and healthfully does it advance and improve.
Public peace and safety, public justice, public education, the public hall, the public road, the public library and gallery and museum and bath,—these are what react so favourably upon the individual, and make better homes and citizens. The father is, to some extent, awake to the duties of social parentage; the mother, hardly at all. The difference is this: the father serves his children by means of serving other people; the mother serves her children personally, with her own hands. Suppose a number of families (we cannot call it a community, because it would not be one), wherein the fathers endeavouredto serve their children personally with their own hands only, each man building, weaving, farming, fishing, blacksmithing, making dishes and tools and instruments, and trying in all ways to meet the family needshimselfpersonally.
It will readily be seen how little the families of these men would have. The time, strength, and skill of one man do not go far, if he tries to do all things himself. Why do women imagine that their time, strength, and skill severally will serve better than in combination? Why are they content to give their children only what they can do themselves alone, thus depriving them of the rich possibilities of civilised motherhood, combined, collective, mutually helpful?
The term "city fathers," and its painful lack of companionship in city mothers, shows the wide gulf between the development of social parentage in men and women. The accidents to little children from electric and cable cars are pitifully numerous. What mother has taken any steps to prevent these accidents? Individually, each tries to protect her own, as does the animal or savage.Collectively, they do nothing; yet it is the lack of this collective motherhood which makes our cities so unsafe for children. The idea that, if each takes care of her own, all will be cared for, is as false for women as it is for men. If each man took care of his own, and not of the others, we should have no soldiers, no policemen, no government, no society, only that social chaos called anarchy.
Social health and progress demand collective action, the largest mutuality, the care and service ofall, which is the only guarantee of safety and prosperity to each. Our fatherhood is to a considerable degree socialised. Our motherhood is flatly anarchistic, refusing all co-ordination.
An earnest—hotly earnest—woman once disputed this suggestion of mutual service in motherhood, thus: "When I make the bed for my child, I put some of mypersonalitybetween the sheets. My child sleeps better if I make his bed for him." I gazed at her calmly.
"Does your child walk better if you make his shoes for him?" I asked.
It is a pretty sentiment that the mother'slove in some mysterious way makes all she does for the child superior to what another could do. But apply the test of fact. Can she, with all her love, make as good a shoe as the shoemaker? as good a hair-brush, tooth-brush, tumbler, teacup, pie-plate, spoon, fork, or knife, as the professional manufacturers of these things? Does mother-love teach her to be a good barber? Can she cut her darling's hair so as to make him happy? Can she make a good chair or table or book or window? How silly it is to imagine that this "personality" inserted between the sheets makes the bed more conducive to healthy sleep than any other clean, well-aired, well-made bed!
Let the mother put the child to bed by all means, if she wishes. In the last sweet words and the good-night kiss is truly the place for personality. That is a mother's place, and not a tradesman's. But there is no more need for maternal personality between the sheets of a bed than between the leaves of a book or the bricks of a wall.
In our narrow-mindedness we have assumed that to care for any other children would meanto neglect our own. As if the human heart, the mother-heart, could love but one or six, and not more! As a matter of fact, we neglect our own by not caring for others. That is, we fail to take those general measures for the protection and development of all children which would so greatly benefit our particular children. Only to-day, at last, we see in some few advanced communities the mothers' club and congress, the women's civic associations, and other forms of union for the improvement of social conditions, all helping to enlarge the application of mother-love, and set that great force free to bring on the better day for children. These clubs and societies are jeered at by the majority of mothers, who proudly say that they are too busy taking care of their children to go to a mothers' congress and learn how.
Imagine, again, a majority of men, each saying he was too busy teaching his children to go to a school meeting and plan for the education of them all! It is not a shifting of duty that is required,—to cease to take care of one's own in order to take care of others instead. So ingrained are our primitive habits,so unable are we to conceive of anything but the one-woman method, that our only idea of change is a simple exchange of responsibility. It is not exchanging that is needed, but an enlarging, an embracing of the less in the greater.
The mothers of the world are responsible for the children of the world; the mothers of a nation, for the children of a nation; the mothers of a city, for the children of a city. We may ignore and deny this claim; but it is there none the less, and, because we do not do our duty as social parents, a corrupt society injures our children continually. The diseases of other children infect ours. What have the mothers ever done to prevent these diseases? They nurse their own sick little ones religiously, and bury them with tears; but what do they do before or after to learn the cause and prevention of these "family afflictions," to spread their information, and enforce measures to put a stop to them? The bad habits of other children affect ours,—their ignorance, their ill manners, their sins. Our children suffer individually from bad social conditions, but cannot be saved individually.
When the Philadelphia water supply is so foul as to poison young and old, mothers are responsible for not doing their share to make the city water fit for their families to drink. It is not a private filter on a private faucet that will do it, but public purity in the public works.
In Boston in 1899 the Society of Collegiate Alumnæ exposed a disgracefully insanitary condition in the public schools,—undisturbed filth in cellar and vault, unwashed floors, a slovenly neglect of the commonest sanitary decency worthy of an Oriental slum. Any mother in Boston would have been filled with shame to have such an exposure of her own private housekeeping. There is room for shame at this exposure of their public housekeeping, school-house-keeping, city-keeping.
Like an ostrich with his head in the sand, the mother shuts herself up in the home and imagines that she is safe and hidden, acting as if "the home" was isolated in space. That the home is not isolated we are made painfully conscious through its material connections,—gas-pipes, water-pipes, sewer-pipes,and electric wires,—all serving us well or ill according to their general management. Milk, food, clothing, and all supplies brought in bring health or disease according to their general management. The mere physical comfort of the home needs collective action, to say nothing of the psychic connection in which we all live, and where none is safe and clean till all are safe and clean.
How far does the duty of the State extend, and how much should be left to individual responsibility? This is the working point to which this discussion tends. A more serious sociological question could hardly be propounded.
Seeing that progress is the law of nature, that the human race is under pressure of every force—conscious and unconscious—to go on, to improve, to grow better, and that we, as social beings, move forward through social improvement, the main weight of care seems to rest on society rather than the individual. It is astonishing to see how far this has gone already. Whereas once the beast father and mother were the only ones to protect or serve the young, now society does farmore for the child than the parents. The father does more than the mother, and that by means of his social relation. He provides for his child by being a carpenter, lawyer, mason, or other social functionary. In this social relation he is able to provide for it the comfort and safety of a modern society. Out of that relation he would be able to provide for it only with his bare hands alone, and less competent than the hardy savage.
We need not be alarmed at some new overtures on the part of society, if we but look at what society is doing now. That we do not think of this is due to our tradition that we "take care of ourselves." We do not. No civilised man "takes care of himself." We take care of each other. But, granting this to some degree, we have heretofore supposed that the benefits of civilisation belonged only to adults,—for that matter only to adult males!—and were to be distributed to children through the individual parent. Thus, if the parent was inferior, the child was expected not only to inherit his inferiority, but to suffer from it always through inferior maintenance, breeding, and education.
The gradual reaching out of society to protect and care for the child is one of the most interesting lines of historic development. The parent had power to kill a child. The State denied the right, and protected the child against the parent. The parent had power to sell the child. The State denied that. The parent might cast off and neglect the child. The State compels him to maintain it, if he can; and, if not, the State supports the child. The parent might teach the child, have it taught, or leave it untaught. Now the State orders that the child must be taught, either at home or at school, and furnishes the school free. So far the line of advance has been from absolute parental control to a steadily enlarging State control, from absolute parental support to more and more of State support. The question of more or less in present details may be debated indefinitely to no conclusion. The principle is what we should study.
The condition of childhood in our human sense, the long period of immaturity, is a social condition. As we advance in social relation, becoming more and more highlyspecialised, the gulf between infancy and maturity increases. The young animal and the adult animal are far more alike than a Gladstone and his baby.
It does not take very long to mature the group of faculties required for maintaining individual life. It does take long to mature the group of faculties required to maintain social life. To rear a man—i.e., an adult male ofgenus homo—is no very difficult task. It is accomplished by Bushmen, Hottentots, Eskimo, every living kind of human creature. To rear a physician, an engineer, a chemist,—this takes longer. Incidentally, this is one reason why a girl's "majority" is placed at eighteen, a boy's at twenty-one. She is supposed to need only individual maturity,—physical maturity. He is supposed to take more time to become a man because he is a member of society, and so has to learn more things. It is not a question of adolescence, of physiological change. The boy of eighteen could be a father as well as the girl a mother; but he is not as well able to take his social position, to serve mankind in his craft, art, trade, or profession. Note here the earlymaturity and marriage of the less developed grades of society, filling those simpler social functions which require less specialisation, and the proportionate postponement of this period in the more highly specialised. Our long period of immaturity is a social condition, and not an individual one. That we may reach the full growth needed in the advanced member of society, we must be minors longer than would be necessary if we were not members of society. The exceeding childishness of the civilised child is also a social condition.
The nearer we are to the animals, the more capable and bright the very little ones. In the South it was common to set a little black child to take care of an older white one: the pickaninny matures much more rapidly. So, again, in our own lower social grades the little children of the poor are sharper, better able to care for themselves, than children of the same age in more developed classes. It is no proof of greater intelligence in the adult. It is retrogression,—a mark of bad social conditions.
Civilised society is responsible for civilisedchildhood, and should meet its responsibilities. The sweet confidence of a modern child, as compared to the alert suspicion of a baby savage, shows what ages of social safe-guarding have done. In the beautiful union of our civilised growth, even so far, we have made possible the Child; and it is for us still further to protect and develope this most exquisite social product,—this greatest social hope and power. Society's relation to the child is impersonal. It is not limited by parenthood. The parental relation is lower, more limited. Parentally, we care only for our own: socially, we care for all. Parentally, we are animals: socially, we learn to love one another. We become, approximately, Christians.
Christianity is a social condition. In our present degree of social progress, we produce by our specialised co-ordinate activities that safe and comfortable material environment, those comparatively developed virtues which we call "civilisation." But, in applying this common product to the advancement of the child,—which is our best and quickest way to incorporate progress in the race itself,—weallow the incapacity of the individual parent to limit the child's advantages. We deny to the child the conditions necessary to his best development, unless his particular father is able to provide them. Our theory here is that the father would not work so hard if the State provided for his child; some thinkers combating even the public school and public library on this ground. This is an outworn economic fallacy. The inferior father cannot work beyond a certain grade because he has not the capacity; and, if the child has only the advantages the inferior father can provide for him, he grows up to be another inferior father and low-grade worker. The most deadly result of this foolish neglect of the young citizen is seen in the ensuing action of the biological law, "Reproduction is in inverse proportion to specialisation." Because we leave the child to grow up unspecialised, untrained, save for the puny efforts of his single low-grade parent, therefore he, in turn, helps fill the world with very numerous and very inferior progeny.
We are hampered by the rapid reproductionof the very lowest classes of society, weighted down by their defects and limitations, forced to wait—the most advanced of us—for the great rear-guard of the population. We must wait because a society is alive, and includes all its members. It cannot outstrip its own inferior parts, however neglected and behindhand they may be. And their numbers—numbers resultant from their low condition—complicate the problem hopelessly. That is, hopelessly on this old fallacious notion that the child can have no help from all the strong, rich world, save what his father and mother can filter through their personal limitations. We are beginning to change this by our efforts at free public education. We shall change it more and more as we grow consciously awake to our true social responsibility to the child.
We cannot afford to have one citizen grow up below the standards of common comfort, health, and general education. To the scared cry, "But, if you take the responsibility off these people, they will simply flood the world with wretched babies!" comes the answer of natural law, "Improve the individual, and youcheck this crude fecundity." It is because they are neglected and inferior that they have so many children. Make higher-class people of the children, and you check this constant influx of low-grade life, and gradually introduce a better-born population.
When the wise, beneficent parental love of Human Society for its young really does its duty, tenderly removing obstructions from the path of all our little ones, we shall give to them those common human advantages without which they cannot grow to the happiness which is their right, the usefulness which is their duty. All parents who are able to do more for their children would be free to do so, as those who can afford private schools, or educate their little ones at home, are not compelled to send them to the public schools.
As now society provides the school for the young citizen, on the ground of public advantage, without regard to the inability of the parent, so we must learn to provide a far richer and more complete education, and all else that the parent falls short in, because it is necessary for the good of society, and because we love our children.