Concerning Children

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

No bottle is as good as the breast. "You cannot improve on nature!" But you can improve in methods of clothing, feeding in later years, house and school building, teaching, and every other distinctly human process.

If the human mother does not compare favourably with other animals in the physical processes of reproduction, she is therein "unnatural." If she does not keep up with the opportunities of her race and time in all the ensuing care of the child, she is therein unnatural. Such care and culture as was natural to give a cave-baby would be unnatural to-day. Is not the average mother of to-day too prone to content herself with a very low-grade performance of a modern mother's duties, on the plea that her methods are "natural,"—namely, primitive?

The grade of "care" given by the mother of to-day is too often exactly that of the mother of many thousand years ago. We depend almost altogether on what is known as "the maternal instinct," which is a "natural instinct," to be sure, just as it is a natural instinct for the male to fight. The right education of a child to-day requires more than instinct to produce the best results. Because we have not used the helpful influences of association, study, and experience in this most important labour of life, we keep our progress as a living species far below the level of our progress in material improvements.

When anything is said of improving the human stock, we instantly think of the methods of breeders of cattle, and are at once convinced of the undesirability and impossibility of applying any such means to humanity.

But there remain open to us two immense avenues of improvement, both free to mothers. One is the mother's modifying influence upon the race through selection,—that duty of wise choice of a superior father for her children, which is "natural" enough to the lower animals, but which we agree to ignore in the bringing up of our young women. Careful and conscientious training to this end would have a great effect upon the race.

This does not mean the self-conscious forcing of a young heart to marry a "superior" man without the blessed leading of true love; but such open knowledge of what constituted an inferior or positively injurious man as would lower the likelihood of nice girls loving the undesirables.

The other and far more practical road of racial advance is in improving the environment of our young children, both materially and psychically, by the intelligent co-ordinate action of mothers. If we improve the individual as far as possible, it is better not to meddle too much with the subtle forces which lead to mating. These processes are not cerebral, and ought not to be made self-conscious. But educational processes are conscious, and should be studied.

The "natural" mother gives no thought to her approaching duties during youth. The animals do not, the savages do not, and our charming young girls do not. Is it not time for us to show a generation of mothers sufficiently "unnatural" to give honest thought and study to the great duty which lies before them? Clear-headed, intelligent girls, as yet unhampered by the blind brute instinct of maternal passion, might be able to plan together for the good of the child, as they never would be able to plan separately for the good of their own individual children.

A year or two of thorough study and practice in the arts and sciences of child-culture would soon convince the girl as to whether she was adapted to be an educator of little children or merely a mother. I say "merely a mother" in this rather derogatory way, alluding to the process of bearing young and perhaps suckling them. This is an essential physical function, common to all the higher animals, and usually fulfilled by them much better than by us. The continuous and subtle processes of education which come after, and the wise care required for the physical health and comfort of the child, do not come "naturally" to every mother. It is here that the skill and training are needed. Maternity is one thing, and education another.

It cannot be too strongly reiterated that maternal love does not necessarily include wisdom. It is "natural" for every mother to love her children, but it does not follow that she knows what is best for them. The animal mother does know by instinct; and we, content to take our pattern of motherhood from the beasts, have imagined that we needed nothing more.