Woman's Profession as Mother and Educator, with Views in Opposition to Woman Suffrage

by Catharine Esther Beecher

other household labors. The tending of infants, the bending, twisting, and stooping constantly practiced in these domestic labors are exactly what are demanded to preserve in health and activity the muscles most important to womanly development and vigor; while the interchanging employment of the needle and other sedentary domestic pursuits, when in proper proportion, equally tend to healthful results. Very different are the influences on woman's health as she stands six and eight hours behind the counter or in shops and mills in one continuous and unvaried toil, or sits day after day over the needle without intervening healthful exercises. Not less are the evils to the daughters of wealth and ease, whose brain and nerves are never relieved and strengthened by the exercises of domestic life. Still more lamentable is the common practice of those who, when sending daughters to the public schools, free them from domestic labor, that they may give their whole time to study and school duties. If instead of this, these pupils were required to engage in domestic labor two hours each day and this amount of time

was deducted from school duties, not only health but higher intellectual development would be secured.

If a time should come when the aims of the Woman Suffrage party are attained, and women are trained for the pulpit, the bar, the political arena, and other professions drawing woman from domestic life, still more disastrous influences will show the great mistake of taking woman from her true sphere and giving her the work designed for man. If, on the contrary, women are trained to both the science and the practice of their true profession in all its varied departments, and with the honor and emolument that now are given exclusively to the professions of men, every woman will be in demand for the services of the family and the school, and will regard the employments of men as less important and less inviting than her own sacred ministries.

It is often said that it is mothers who must give the domestic training to daughters, and that school duties should be confined to literature and science. This might have been true in former days, when

daughters and mothers performed most of the family labor, and when the style of living was simple and economical. But with the present style of houses and expenditures, demanding two, three or more servants, it is utterly impossible for a mother and housekeeper to add to her multiplied cares the scientific domestic training of her daughters; nor can anything of this kind be successfully connected with large boarding schools. The demand for scientific domestic training is greatly increased by improved modern conveniences.

The one item of selecting and superintending the management of stoves and furnaces, demands much scientific study and practical instruction, and there is no one point where family health and economy suffer more than for want of them. The inhaling of poisonous gases, the sudden changes of temperature, and the want of proper ventilation probably are doing more to destroy the constitution and health of families than any other cause, and owing greatly to the want of needed science and skill in housekeepers.

In various other departments, the increase of

civilization and its elegancies and conveniences have greatly increased the need of scientific training for mothers and housekeepers, who, never having been thus instructed themselves, are not qualified to train their daughters.

As to the virtue of economy, in our nation among the more wealthy classes, it seems to have become one of "the lost arts." The art and skill of domestic economy can no more be acquired without instruction and training, than any of the mechanical trades. As eldest daughter of a poor minister, and the pupil of a most ingenious mother and a vigorously economical aunt, I know that by proper training, a young lady can dress with taste and propriety at one half the expense required by one untrained; and that a housekeeper without such a preparation needs double the means of one who is properly instructed. Not that there are not women as well as men, who have natural gifts that enable them to excel in handicraft and skill without any training, so as to equal those properly instructed. But these are exceptional cases.