Parenthood and Race Culture: An Outline of Eugenics

by C. W. Saleeby

Even our least biological reformers must admit that purely physical motherhood, up to the point of birth, can scarcely be omitted in any schemes for social reform or race-culture. Some of them will even admit that purely physical motherhood, so far as the mother's breasts are concerned, cannot wisely be dispensed with. The psychical aspects of motherhood, however, many of these writers—I do not call them thinkers—ignore. In relation to infant mortality—which is the most obvious symptom of causes productive of vast and widespread physical deterioration amongst the survivors, and which must be abolished before any really effective race-culture is possible—it is worth noting that motherhood cannot safely be superseded. I do not believe in the crèche or the municipal milk depôt except as stop-gaps, or as object-lessons for those who imagine that the slaughtered babies are not slaughtered but die of inherent defect, and that therefore infant mortality is a beneficent process. In working for the reduction of this evil we must work through and by motherhood. In some future age, boasting the elements of sanity, our girls will be instructed in these matters. At present the most important profession in the world is almost entirely carried on by unskilled labour, and until this state of things is put an end to, it is almost idle to talk of race-culture at all. But under our present system of education, false and rotten as it is in principles and details alike, it is necessary for us to send visitors to the homes of the classes which, in effect, supply almost the whole of the future population of the country, and to establish schools for mothers on every hand.

Psychical motherhood.—I confess myself opposed to the principle of bribing a woman to become a mother, whether overtly or covertly, whether in the guise of State-aid or in the form of eugenic premiums for maternity. It may sound very well to offer a bonus for the production of babies by mothers whom the State or any eugenic power considers fit and worthy. But though the bonus may help motherhood in its physical aspects, the importance of which no one questions, I do not see what service it renders to motherhood in its psychical aspects—which are at least equally important. What is the outlook for the baby when the bonus is spent? In fact, with all deference to Mr. Galton, and with such deference as may be due to the literary triflers who have discussed this matter, I am inclined to think that a cardinal requisite for a mother is love of children. Ignorant this may be, and indeed at first always is, but if it is there it can be instructed. The woman who does not think the possession of a baby a sufficient prize is no fit object, I should say, for any other kind of bribe or lure. The woman who “would rather have a spare bedroom than a baby” is the woman whom I do not want to have a baby. Thus I look with suspicion on any proposals which assume that the psychical elements of motherhood are of little moment in eugenics. I see no sign or prospect that they can be dispensed with, and I think eugenics is going to work on wrong lines if it proposes to ignore them. Even if you turn out Nature with a fork she will yet return—tamen usque recurret.

In this question we should be able to derive great assistance from biography. Real guidance, I believe, is obtained from this source, but only a pitiable fraction of that which should be obtained. Scientific biography is yet to seek, and it is the ironical fact that when Herbert Spencer, in his Autobiography, devoted a large amount of space to the discussion of both his parents and their relatives, the literary critics were bored to death. Nevertheless, we cannot know too much about the ancestry, on both sides, and the early environment, of great men. At present it is always tacitly assumed that a great man is the son of his father alone. The biographer would probably admit, if pressed, that doubtless some woman or other was involved in the matter, and that her name was so and so—if any one thinks it worth mentioning. On the score of heredity alone, however, we derive, men and women alike, with absolute equality from both parents; and we cannot know too much about the mothers of men of genius. Such knowledge would often avail us materially in cases where the paternal ancestry offers little explanation of the child's destiny.

We do owe, however, to great men themselves many warm and unqualified tributes to their mothers, not on the score of heredity, but on the score of the psychical aspects of motherhood. This, indeed, is one of the great lessons of biography which some eugenists have forgotten. It is all very well to breed for intelligence, but intelligence needs nurture and guidance, and that need is the more urgent, the more powerful and original the intelligence in question. The physical functions of motherhood from the moment of birth onwards can be effected, no doubt, though at very great cost, by means of incubators and milk laboratories, and so forth. But there is no counterfeiting or replacing the psychical component of complete maternity, and a generation of the highest intelligence borne by unmaternal women would probably succeed only in writing the blackest and maddest page in history.

The eugenic demand for love.—Mr. Galton desires that we breed for physique, ability, and energy. But we also need more love, and we must breed for that. Nothing is easier or more inevitable once we make human parenthood conscious and deliberate. When children are born only to those who love children, and who will tend to transmit their high measure of that parental instinct from which all love is derived, we shall bring to earth a heaven compared with which the theologian's is but a fool's paradise.

The first requisite, then, for the mothers of the future, the elements of physical health being assumed, is that they should be motherly. They may or may not, in addition, be worthy of such exquisite titles as “the female Shakespeare of America,” but they must have motherliness to begin with. For this indispensable thing there is no substitute. It must certainly be granted, and the fact should not be ignored, that the hidden spring of motherliness in a girl may be revealed only by actual maternity, and the frivolous damsel who used to think babies “silly squalling things” may be mightily transformed when the silly squalling thing is her own—and the Fifth Symphony sound and fury signifying nothing compared with its slightest whimper. I will grant even that the maternal instinct is so deeply rooted and universal that its absence must be regarded as either a rare abnormality or else as the product of the grossest mal-education in the wide sense. But the reader will not blame me for insisting at such length upon what, as he would think, no one could deny, when he discovers that these salient truths are denied, and that in what should be the sacred name of eugenics, they are openly flouted and defied.

Before we go on to consider these perversions of a great idea, it may briefly be observed that, though fatherhood is historically a mushroom growth compared with motherhood, and though its importance is vastly less, yet as a complementary principle, aiding and abetting motherhood, and making for its most perfect expression, fatherhood played a great part in animal evolution, in the right line of progress, ages before man appeared upon the earth at all, and that its work is not yet done. To this subject we must return. Meanwhile it is well to note the dangers with which eugenics is at present threatened in the form of certain proposals which, if for a time they became popular—and they have elements making for popularity—would inevitably throw the gravest discredit upon the whole subject.

Eugenics and the family.—Certain remarkable tendencies invoking the name of eugenics are now to be observed in Germany. These have considerable funds, much enthusiasm, journalistic support, and even a large measure of assistance in academic circles. In pursuance of the idea of eugenics there is a movement the nature of which is indicated by the following quotation from a private letter:—

“I wonder if your attention was drawn to the German projects of the reform of the Family. They all aim at improving the German race and rendering decisive its superiority over all others. The means seem to be too revolutionary. The more modern wish the establishment of the matriarchal family (ein nach Mutterrecht), the more logical require universal polygamy and polyandry, an individualisation of Society. Others hope to increase the production of German geniuses by the ‘hellenic friendship.’[!] The three movements are strongly organised, command large pecuniary means, a phalanx of original and prolific writers, and enthusiastic devotion to their cause. More even than the support of Courts and aristocracy is, in my eyes, that of the Universities. It is there that the destinies of Germany have always been shaped, and if they are determined to reform the Family in that way, it will be done.... The Herren Professoren are terribly in earnest, yet they say things which even to the least prejudiced minds appear ridiculous and even vulgar. Still, their projects have some relation to Eugenics, and to Sociology in general.”