Motherhood and the Relationships of the Sexes

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

Such a rest period in specially adapted schools as I am here advocating would serve not only to establish the health of adolescent girls and fit them for vigorous womanhood, it would, as I believe, change their ideal and remake life. In such surroundings fitted to their own needs, and with a different valuation of the future set before them, they would have a truer sense of self-consciousness; they would come to understand in quite a new way the responsibilities and high glory of being women.

The difficulties, of course, are numerous. And, first of all, it will not be easy to find the right teachers for these adolescent schools. They will need to be specially trained; but training alone will not serve. The teachers must have had a much wider experience of life than is usual to women; they ought to have genius and a passionate love of children: they need to be mothers in spirit.

Necessarily, the expense of such teachers and of these special schools, which should be established in great numbers and with no thought of sparing the cost, will be heavy. It will be thought, I know, by many that this fact alone makes the plan impracticable. I can answer only, that any expenditure that will produce fit and glad mothers for the future is an expense that will be met by a wise nation.

I would urge that this question be approached from a practical attitude. On all sides concern is being felt at the decline in the birth-rate, which has fallen one-third in the last thirty-five years. The Royal Commission that I have referred to already has made its investigation and issued its report. Much has been written on the problem, and many guesses made as to the vaguely understood causes. The economists find all the evil in economic conditions; the religious say that it is our morality that is at fault. Many are the remedies suggested, a few of which are practical and good. And so urgent is the matter felt to be, now that war with its destruction of life is teaching us a little more the value of life, that changes, long called for, but hitherto seemingly unattainable, shortly may be made in our divorce and marriage laws. The sharp and cruel line drawn between the married and the unmarried mother will at last waver and break on its rotten supports. Already the saving of child life has become a matter of such urgent need that much necessary reform is being accomplished. There is little doubt that these valuable movements will go on.

Yet, I think, we are failing to attack the real cause, and unless we do attack it there, right at the beginning, we shall go on as we usually do, experimenting in this way and in that, doing one thing and leaving another undone, and we shall only tinker and fuss and then wonder why we fail. Blind and fools! we fail, and shall go on failing, because we do not educate our girls and act in life in such a way as will encourage motherhood.

I have put out my idea: I have tried to be as explicit as possible in suggesting the remedy. I am conscious now of opposition that will be raised. I shall be told that my plan, which seems so simple, of educating girls to be women is not practicable. And then I shall be reminded of the immense surplus of women in this country who are unable to marry and live a full and healthy life—a surplus large before the war, enormously greater now.[107]

Let me state at once that I am very far indeed from forgetting this great host of enforced celibate women. I have spoken more than once in my book about them, and I am not now concerned with their position. What I want is to save the future. Many girls and women to-day are finding their work and the fresh excitements of independence sufficient to gladden life. They do not claim pity; yet this satisfaction that women are feeling is the danger that threatens the future. It is just because these women, whose desires will be fixed on work and away from motherhood, must be here among us, in every place, especially in our schools and in our factories—everywhere in contact with youth—that I am pleading with all the power that I have for a quite changed training for the young girls of the coming generation of women. I fear greatly the influence that I believe must grow up if industrial values of what is good in life are unchecked, and the desire of women is turned more from motherhood and the life that matters to the outside details of existence.

Life must be re-shaped, and the first step is the perception of an idea. We want belief, for life must have a structure—the scaffolding on which we may build. And each individual woman among us may not be trusted to make her own structure—to convey and carry whatever it may be that she desires. Such selfishness makes any permanent building impossible. That is why in this generation we have lost our ideal.

The previous age fixed its attention on the reform of injustice in the outward relations of men and women, on the regulation of capital and labour, on the equality of the sexes and the improvement of the conditions of life—efforts which culminated naturally in socialism. My work is one dealing essentially with an attitude towards life. I would protest against the want of respect for the ultimate emotional aspects of life, the love of man for woman and of woman for her child—a want of respect which makes it impossible to tell a young girl openly the reason why she must not over-exert herself at the time of her monthly periods. I confess to little patience with this effort to escape sex. Everything connected with birth and maternity has to be hidden and mentioned only in whispers. We have forced the attention of girls away from motherhood, fixing their desires on work and independence. Obedient and inexperienced, they have followed our guiding. We have taught them to regard the physical attraction which they ought to feel towards men as not nice, thereby associating in their young minds all sexual feelings without distinction as not nice. We have left them ignorant that sex feelings may be good or bad according to their associations. Harmful emotional repression has been inevitable, with a result in the after years of distaste for motherhood and passionate marriage. We have made love unclean and separated it from their lives. And, where love is not, all else is barren. I must speak strongly, for very great is the evil we are countenancing.