Love and Marriage

by Ellen Key

One or two children have a poorer, and also a more dangerous, childhood than those who among a number of brothers and sisters learn the value of mutual consideration, of shared joys and troubles. Thus, without any risk of loss of individuality, awkwardness is polished and sensitiveness strengthened, which otherwise in later life would cause great losses of power. For a circle of school-fellows can only imperfectly take the place of the nursery’s first education in social humanity.

Besides which it may easily happen that parents lose an only child, or the only son or daughter.

Thus perhaps from the point of view of the nation, always from that of the children, and most frequently from that of the parents, the normal condition for the majority of healthy, well-to-do married people must be, that the number of children shall not fall short of three or four.

But in this case a mother must reckon that her children will occupy about ten years of her life, if she will herself give them the nursing and care which will make them fully efficient. And during these years—if her contribution in either direction is to have its full value—she must neither divide her powers by working for a living nor by constant public activity. During these years, she may continue her own general development; she may take occasional part in social work; now and then she may have time for mental production. But any continuous and exhausting work outside the home will, at least indirectly, diminish her own vital force and that of her children.

Thus the majority of women will never avoid a conflict, lasting for years, between the renewal of the race and their own outward self-assertion, in whatever direction the latter may go; just as little as they can avoid the conflict of the double burden, now laid with increasing frequency upon women: that of bread-winning and the increase of the race.

When to all this is added the need, for both husband and wife, of mutual converse, and finally the cares of housekeeping, then every thoughtful person must see that woman—and with her society—is confronted by a problem in the form of “either—or,” not of “both—and.”

Only by society undertaking the support of those women who by well fulfilling the duties of motherhood have produced the highest social asset, can the question of married women’s bread-winning be solved.

And only if women put their personal creative desire into their mission as mothers during their children’s first years, will the problem be solved of woman’s self-assertion and of her simultaneous devotion to the mission of the race.

No, is the answer of Charlotte Perkins Stetson[5] and of many others with her; the solution is State care of children. Look at all the wretched homes, where the children lack the most necessary mental and bodily conditions for healthy development. The collective rearing of all children would be both better and cheaper. Only those women who are liberated from the toils of the nursery and the kitchen are really free. To the woman accustomed to public activity, the tasks of the home are monotonous and tiresome. On the other hand, as a calling freely chosen, the care of children would satisfy those who have the gift for it. The majority of mothers are only ape-mothers to their little children, and, as the latter grow bigger, this vague affection is replaced by an obstinate misunderstanding.

This is what one hears over and over again at the present time. And the more it is repeated, the more certain do women become that all these half-truths are—the truth.