CHAPTER VI
EXEMPTION FROM MOTHERHOOD
To him whose thoughts go beyond the surface of life to its depths, the demand for the right of motherhood is a sign of health, an evidence of the existence in a nation of the strong, sound woman’s will to people the earth, without which the nation shall no longer live upon earth. Even if certain manifestations of this will fall short of the life-enhancing purpose, in itself the will is only worthy of respect.
It is, however, significant of the confusion of ideas on this subject that the evidence of health inspires terror in the guardians of morality, while they regard with calmness that tendency of the age which is charged with the materials of tragedy, alike for the individual and for the nation—namely, the desire of exemption from motherhood.
Christianity, with its extension of the idea of personality and corresponding lack of consideration for the race, in opposition to the world of antiquity, made marriage the affair of the individual. The development of love has carried on the liberation that Christianity began. As stated in the first chapter, the champions of Christianity constantly admit the right both to remain unmarried and to limit the birth of children, if both are only the result of abstinence.
To the evolutionist, on the other hand, only the cause, not the manner, is the deciding point. Danger to the possible children or to the mother herself; the fear of pecuniary or personal insufficiency for the bringing-up of the children; the desire of using all one’s powers and resources for an important life-work; a Malthusian point of view in the question of population—these and other motives are regarded by the evolutionist as good reasons for limiting or altogether abstaining from parentage. And in this respect the individual is allowed freedom of choice also as regards the method which best agrees with the opinion of science on hygiene, and with his own on morality and fitness.
As soon as it is recognised that the individual is also an end in himself, with the right and duty of satisfying in the first place his own demands according to his nature, then it must remain the private affair of the individual whether he will either leave altogether unfulfilled his mission as a member of the race, or whether he will limit its fulfilment.
But as the individual cannot attain his highest life-enhancement or fulfil his own purpose otherwise than in connection with the race, he acquires duties also towards it, and not least as a sexual being. If life has given the individual a lot which renders moral parentage possible, and conditions which are favourable to new lives, then the only moral limitation of the number of children is one which—in and by means of the individual’s own life-enhancement and that of the children—is to the advantage of the whole community.
But when only petty and selfish reasons—such as considerations of the children’s inheritance, personal good-living and voluptuousness, beauty and comfort—determine fathers and mothers to keep the number of their children below the average required to secure the due increase of population, then their conduct is anti-social. A person, on the other hand, who is content with few or no children, because he or she has a work to perform, may be able to compensate society by the production of another class of value.
To these now moral, now immoral, motives for having few children or none at all, must be added woman’s desire to devote her purely human qualities to other tasks. This, however, does not refer to those wives who are obliged to establish their married life upon their own bread-winning labour as well as their husband’s; a necessity which for the present hinders them from motherhood although they are continually dreaming of the future child. It is here a question only of women’s personal self-assertion.
Women are no longer content to manage their husbands’ incomes, but wish to earn their own; they will not use their husband as a middleman between themselves and society, but will themselves look after their interests; they will not confine their gifts to the home but will also put them in public circulation. And in all these respects they are right. But when, in order thus to be able to “live their life,” they wish to be “freed from the burden of the child,” one begins to doubt. For until automatic nurses have been invented, or male volunteers have offered themselves, the burden must fall upon other women, who—whether themselves mothers or not—are thus obliged to bear a double one. Real liberation for women is thus impossible; the only thing possible is a new division of the burdens.