Free Motherhood
The most important question that confronts the future is not New Thought, the Juvenile Court, the Tariff, the Single Tax, nor Fletcherism. It is Free Motherhood. The perpetuity of the race depends upon Motherhood. I trust there will be no argument on that ❦ The quality of our race turns on the quality of the parents; and especially does the quality of the child turn on the peace, happiness and well-being of the mother. You can not make the mother a disgraced and taunted thing and expect the progeny to prosper. When you strike a mother, you strike the race. There is no hint in Nature that Motherhood is evershameful or disgraceful. Only a social and legal fiction ever makes it so. It is vain to look to the Church for reform in this direction. In fact, the Church is the chief sinner. ¶ The necessity for orphan asylums came in with the vows of celibacy and chastity ❦ Wherever these two things exist—celibacy and chastity—orphan asylums flourish ❦ Less than five per cent of the children in orphan asylums are orphans. The rest are waifs and outcasts. If the State did not make the mother a criminal; if Society did not look upon her as disgraced; and if the Church did not refer to her as “ruined,” most of the mothers of these “orphans” would cling to them ❦ For every thousand orphans, nine hundred mothers reach empty arms out into the darkness. The desire of the mother to protect and care for her child is the most persistent instinct that is implanted in the human heart. If there is anything sacred in the world it is mother-love. If there is anythingdivine in the universe, it is the love of the mother for her baby ❦ We give pensions to the men who fought to save the State. Why not give a pension to every woman who goes down into the valley of death and kisses the white lips of pain? ❦ Isn’t the mother just as necessary to the perpetuity of the State as the soldier? I rather think so. The necessity of the one is absolute, the other is conjectural ❦ Every mother should be recognized by the State “for heroic services.” If she is not married, her pension should be double that which her married sister receives. We must conserve mother-love, not dissipate it. And let us remember this: We can not successfully legislate against the biologic imperative. To trample mother-love ruthlessly into the mire of conventionality, and tear the child from the mother’s arms, and place it in an orphan asylum, is the work of a false and hypocritical “Christianity.” ¶ Now that the whole world is trying to get back on atruthful basis as a move in the line of self-preservation, is it not time that we look this issue squarely in the face and express ourselves concerning it? Before this babe is born it runs the hazard of murder from its conception ❦ That it survives reveals its hold on eternal life. When born, it is greeted with tears, fears, secrecy, untruth, hypocrisy, and its divine heritage of mother-love is traded for a mess of institutional potash. That most orphan asylums are now managed by skilled and able people is only a mitigation of the wrong. A substitute is thus offered for mother-love—something just as good ❦ But the eternal fact remains: There is no substitute for mother-love. God is that jealous of it that He supplies nothing to equal it. ¶ We can never have a noble race of men until we have a noble race of mothers. And in order to be a noble woman, this woman must be economically free ❦ Wonderful changes have come to the world within a few years.For a woman not to wed, no longer carries a penalty. The term “old maid” has now no terrors. Spinsterhood is an achievement, not a disgrace. ¶ The unmarried woman between forty and fifty is probably a self-supporting woman. And this responsibility makes her the mental superior of her married sister who looks to a male man for food, clothing and protection from the storm. Yet because a woman has not seen fit to marry is no reason for assuming that the cosmic urge is dead. And just remember this, that no woman ever lived who couldn’t marry some man if she wanted to. She will not marry because she is not content to accept any old thing. ¶ It is always a question of what man. And as women more and more are able to care for themselves—and this is the one sure economic tendency of the times—they will more and more cease being willing to swear to honor, love and obey one man for ninety-nine years. Yet the mother instinct will notdie on that account. The race will not perish ❦ The independence of women will make them better mothers. Their children will be stronger in brain and body, cleaner, abler, firmer in the ability to discover and decide for the right. But Free Motherhood must be respected. ¶ The word “illegitimate” is now pretty nearly banished, since we have discovered that God smiles upon the freeborn child as upon none other. William the Conqueror, Theodoric the First, Erasmus, Jean Dunois, Leonardo da Vinci, the Empress Josephine, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, and scores of other intellectual kings that might be named, have redeemed the “small and select class” from the unmanicured finger of shame ❦ We no longer look askance upon the offspring; as for the father we smile away his “past” as a mere peccadillo, and he becomes a deacon in the church—a pillar of society. The mother, however, Society still spits upon as one polluted.¶ This will not always be so. The very fact that I am now writing on the subject, and that several hundred thousand gentle men and women—the very intellectual pick of the world—will read my words, argues progress. Others, too, are writing. The world is changing—all things are being made new ❦ The crime of orthodoxy is its lack of faith. It believes too little. What we want is not a belief in one “immaculate conception,” but a fixed and firm faith in the fact that whenever and wherever a mother holds in her arms a babe, hugging it to her heart, crooning to it a lullaby, there is God. ¶ When this time comes the State will provide a pension for every mother who cares for her babe. ¶ As an economic move, this will be cheaper than maintaining orphan asylums. The child will be loved, not institutionalized. It will be a better citizen. But best of all, we will wipe away the tears of the mother. We will rejoice with her that a man is born into theworld ❦ We will extend gladness and congratulation, not hypocritical sighs, snarling sneers and sour faces. ¶ Froebel spoke of the “little souls fresh from God” ❦ And so, too, must we; and when we do we will cease regarding the mother, the vehicle of transport, as a being to be shunned and maligned ❦ Rather, the miracle of Motherhood will be reverenced; and this will be a great moral uplift to all fathers as well as to mothers. Thus will the whole race be purified, benefited, strengthened and carried forward toward the Divine Ultimate ❦