The home: its work and influence

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

In the homes of civilised races, where the light of social progress is most fully felt, we see the most improvement; but even here the pressure of growing knowledge is still combated by the jealous arrogance of the untaught mother, and the measureless inertia of the home.

In plain fact, what does the average home offer to the newcomer, the utterly defenceless baby, the all-important Coming Generation? See physical conditions first. To what sort of world is the new soul introduced? To a place built and furnished for several mixed and conflicting industries; not to a place planned for babies—aired, lighted, heated, coloured, and kept quiet to suit the young brain and body; but a building meant for a number of grown people to cook in, sweep and dust in, wash and iron in, cut and sew in, eat and wash dishes in, see their friends in, dress, undress, and sleep in; and incidentally, in the cracks and crevices of all these varied goings on, to "bring up" children in.

In that very small percentage of families where a nursery is arranged for children, and a nurse and a nursery-governess do deputy service for the always alleged "mother's care," we find some provision made for children; but of what sort? This deputy is inferior to the mother, save in a certain rule-of-thumb experience which enables her to "manage children." Her knowledge of infant hygiene is not much greater, nor of infant psychology. Look, for instance, at the babies of our richer classes, as we see them continually in the streets and parks. Our only alternative from the home is the street, we having as yet no place for our babies. If near a park so much the better, but in general the sidewalk must serve, for rich or poor.

As one immediate physical condition, examine the dress of these babies and young children; this among parents of wealth, and, presumably, intelligence. See the baby in the perambulator so rolled and bedded in, so tucked and strapped, that he cannot move anything but perhaps a stiffly projecting arm. Think of an adult cocooned in this manner, unable to roll, stir, turn, in any way relieve the pressure or change the attitude. And, when you have considered the sensations of a tough and patient adult frame, think further of those of a soft, tender, active, and impatient baby body.

The dress of a baby or little child bears no relation to his immediate comfort or to the needs of his incessant growth. Among our wisest parents there is to-day a new custom, happily increasing, of barefoot freedom, of dirt-proof overalls, of a chance for beautiful, unconscious growth; but this does not reach the vast majority of suffering little ones. It does not spread because of the seclusion and irresponsible dominance of the separate home; and further—because of the low-grade intelligence of the home-bound mother.

She whose condition of arrested development makes her unquestioningly submit to the distortion, constriction, weight, and profusion of fashion in clothing for her own body, is not likely to show much sense in dressing a child. Beautiful fabrics, rich textures, expensive adornments, she heaps upon it. She wishes it to look pretty, according to her barbaric taste; and she disfigures the grave, sweet beauty of a baby face, the lovely moving curves of the little body, with heavy masses of stiff cloth, starched frippery, and huge, nodding, gaily decorated hats that would please an Ashantee warrior.

If some cartoonist would give us a copy of the Sistine Mother and Child in the costume of our mothers and children, showing those immortal cherub faces blinking obliquely from under flopping hat brims and rich plumes, perhaps we might in sudden shocked perception see with what coarse irreverence we disfigure our blessed little ones.

The child does not find in the home any assurance of health, beauty, or free growth. He, and especially she, must wear the dainty garments on which our misguided mother love so wastefully lavishes itself; and must then be restricted in all natural exercise lest they be torn or soiled. To dress a little child so that he may be perfectly comfortable, and grow in absolute freedom, has not occurred to the home-bound mother.

Neither has she learned how to feed it. If the home is the best place for children, if the home is the best place for the preparation of food, would it not seem as if in all these long, long years we might have evolved some system of feeding little children so as to keep them at least alive—to say nothing of their being healthy?

The animal mother, guided by her unspoiled instinct, does manage to feed her young, and to teach it how to feed itself. The human mother, long since cut off from that poor primitive guidance, and proudly refusing to put knowledge in its place, feeds the baby in accordance with her revered domestic traditions, and calls in the doctor to remedy her mistakes. One man, in Buffalo, has recently saved fifteen hundred babies in a year, lowering the annual death rate by that amount, by public distribution of directions for preparing milk. He was not a mother. He was not shut up in a home. He studied and he taught in the light of public progress, in a growing world; and succeeded in filtering some of this saving knowledge into the darkness of fifteen hundred homes.