Woman

by Anthony M. Ludovici

Short of impossible conduct on his part, therefore, it may be taken for granted that it never occurs to the positive healthy married woman, who bears children at regular intervals, to make any effort to seek another love affair, and even if the opportunity for such a love affair should come her way, and be set before her with all the persuasiveness that deep desire in the other party can lend it, she will, as a rule, resist it and let it pass by without very much of a struggle. She is finding the consummation of her being in the life she is leading, and let her husband be ever so besotted, ignorant, boring and uncompanionable, it will never occur to her to go in search of another love.

This conclusion is, I think, borne out by the statistics of divorce in England and Wales, where separations between people who do not attempt to limit the family, is extremely rare. It is usually said with reference to such cases that it is the children who “strengthen the union.” This is the popular and even the learned opinion.[72] The prevalence of this opinion, and the high authority behind it, however, should not lead us to misunderstand the true nature of the actual forces at work. It is to some extent true that the presence of children does induce parents, who might be tempted to separate, to think twice about it. The father pauses before he decides to deprive his offspring of their mother, and vice versâ. But these wholly impersonal considerations binding a couple together are as nothing compared with the vital forces that are actually at work. The impersonal considerations may weigh, but only if supported by the far more potent promptings of healthy and normal conditions. Nor should it be concluded too hastily from the low figures of divorce among people who have large families, that the presence of children operates in causing the parents to feel a deeper “love” for each other. It is possible for a fruitful couple to be almost entirely indifferent to each other, as many thousands are, and yet to remain together, partly because of the impersonal considerations already referred to, partly from pure conservatism, and also from fear of publicity, or scandal, or a feeling of shyness, or a certain cynicism which leads them to prefer the devil they know before the devil they know not.

We must not allow ourselves to be blinded by sentimental tears, therefore, to the extent of supposing that offspring invariably increase conjugal affection. A long observation of our fellow-creatures convinces us, on the contrary, that the presence of children operates in precisely the opposite direction, and that if we are going in search of “romantic” love, lasting long after the first years of marriage, we are much more likely to find it among infertile than among fertile couples. Children, far from cementing the affection existing between their parents, are rather inclined to supply its most potent and infallible corrosive.

The alacrity with which a young mother becomes absorbed in her young ones, the lightning speed with which all her activities, mental and physical, concentrate upon her brood, their wants and their development, is hardly calculated to effect that “cementing” which is believed to take place in marital relations from the moment children begin to appear.

Very soon after the birth of the first children there occurs in all decent positive women a certain definition of the maternal side of their nature, which tends to convert them ever more and more into the nun, miser, or prophet type—that is to say, self-centred, impatient of distracting forces, and fanatical. They listen to matters foreign to the nursery and their children, as if they had been wakened out of a dream or roused from some thrilling meditation. A certain vagueness comes over them in regard to all matters not strictly domestic, which, while it may please the wise and understanding husband, as furnishing a conclusive proof of their perfect femininity, nevertheless can hardly fail to inform him that his rank in the household has suffered noticeable degradation.[73]

When he speaks concerning topics which interest him, he is no longer listened to with the same attention—not to mention eagerness. Indeed, he soon finds that strangers outside his home are very much more inclined to vouchsafe him an attentive hearing than the spouse of his heart, and more ready to give serious consideration to his more thoughtful expressions of opinion. Now, it requires all the philosophy and understanding in the world—particularly to the man who may cherish certain ideals about marriage as companionship—to accept this secondary position in the home of his own creating, without a feeling of resentment or mortification. How, then, can the full realization of the position be said to “cement” or “strengthen” the affection between the couple?

It is true that the normal father acquires a deep fondness for his children, and that this attaches him to the home in which he has suffered his degradation of rank.[74] It is also true that, as the children grow older and realize him as their father, he may enjoy a fresh access of the very importance of which their arrival deprived him. But, while all these facts are readily admitted, they can hardly be used to prove that the presence of children “strengthens” the union between the parents as lovers. That has been shaken once and for all beyond any hope of recovery. Economic reasons, the attitude of each parent to the children, reasons of policy, etc., may now attach each parent individually to the home; but that does not mean that the other parent is the lasting attracting force.

Later on, when the children grow old enough to discriminate or to draw comparisons, and the original dependence, which makes filial affection so fanatical, is beginning to wane, certain members of the growing brood may, and frequently do, exhibit preferences for one parent or the other—preferences which nine times out of ten are reciprocated. The more passionate the attachment between the parents and the children has been in infancy and childhood, the more likely is this to occur. But distinctions of this sort drawn by children in favour of one parent only tend to increase the cleavage already existing; and wherever in such circumstances an occasion for any divergence of opinion happens to arise between the parents and sides are taken, as they must be taken where preferences have already been mutually proclaimed, the declaration of allegiance by becoming overt amounts to little less than a frankly acknowledged feud with the other side.

Quite apart, however, from the possibility of particular children appealing more to one parent than the other, and the cleavage which such factions confirm or start in the home, children and their multifarious wants are, in themselves, an inexhaustible source of contention. Their particular foibles, their wilfulness, their education, are matters which, while they are constantly to the fore among the problems of the home, as constantly give rise to friction, or, to say the least, to differences of opinion between their parents. When once, therefore, one of the parents—the father—has naturally and inevitably suffered so marked a degradation in rank that his word, his opinion, his judgment, is no longer attended to with the respect and eagerness which he encountered in his wife in their early childless days, it is not surprising that discussions or arguments, from being merely amicable exchanges of opinion, should degenerate into acrimonious and heated quarrels—the husband resenting every minute more and more the cavalier manner in which his views are rejected as worthless by the “spouse of his heart,” the wife resenting every moment more and more the presumption with which the mere means to an end, this sparking-plug and breadwinner, is daring to assume supreme authority over her brood, her babes, the fruit of her womb.

Now, in view of all this, can it any longer be maintained that this element in the home—the children—actually contributes to the affection between the parents? In the happiest cases the ardent love of the father for one child, and the ardent love of the mother for another, may attach each parent individually to the common hearth; but to argue as the two judges, above quoted, argued before the Divorce Commission of 1912,[75] that this proves that children “strengthen the union,” or “keep it together,” without explaining more narrowly how they effect this end, is to deliver the whole question over into the hands of the romanticists and sentimentalists, who will not scruple to arrive at the foolish conclusion that children perforce increase the affection existing between parents.