Love and Marriage

by Ellen Key

So far from homes being too warm, they are seldom sufficiently warmed by the only love that lasts for life, that of knowledge and comprehension. Never yet was a human being too much loved, but only too little, or not in the right way. The whole spirit of the age is now opposed to the fatherly and motherly feelings of older times, which were related to the blind affection of animal parents. The affection that is left must be intensified, not weakened.

The child’s splendid, unconscious happiness is in making others happy; in being answered by the smiles it produces; in showing outbursts of affection and receiving affection in return; in feeling the security and pride of itself owning and belonging to its father or mother; in allowing this delight to show itself in play and caresses and being met with the same delight without its being empty. For in a home, where some seriousness prevails, a child soon learns that affection also means work and sacrifice for others. From such affection the psychically personal tie of blood is formed, while the “natural” one grows weak, as it is not renewed by the apparently unimportant daily, hourly influence of the intangible, invisible things, through which, as even the Edda tells us, the indestructible ties are formed. In a word, the home of one’s childhood is for the development of human feelings, what one’s native place is for the development of patriotism. Even now home-life suffers in a disquieting degree from the school’s increasing grasp of the older children; from the indifference to and disconnection from the home which occurs when it sees the children only at meal-times, on Sundays, and during the holidays. But if even the little children were to be placed in the same situation, then this evil would be extended to the most decisive years of their lives.

To turn now from parents and children to the new foster-mothers of the town and country nurseries, how is it intended that these shall suffice for their own children, if they are mothers, how—if they are motherly—are they to content themselves with the children of others, which they will furthermore be compelled to lose over and over again? Have the women who want to be “freed” ever given a thought to the sufferings of these others?

The only possibility of endurance for such nurses will be to give the children only that general kindness that is not enough for them. Love they will not be able to give. No word is more abused than love, not least by the interpreters of Christianity, who attenuate it into a wafer for the nourishment of all, under the name of universal love. But there is no such thing as universal love, or love of humanity; there cannot be such a thing; it would be as much a contradiction in terms as a quadrilateral triangle. There is a charity which pours itself out like oil upon all wounds; there is sympathy in joy and sorrow between individuals; mutual help and mutual responsibility in society; a common feeling of rejoicing or suffering with our nation or with humanity at great moments. But all love from one human being to another which deserves that name, is in the highest degree individual; it is a selection, a separation. If it is not this, it is nothing. A woman chooses her children even when she chooses their father; and she often shows her preference among the children themselves. An individually developed mother rightly asserts her privilege of not loving all her children equally. She gives them all the affection they need in the same degree; she is capable of the same broad justice towards them all, but she has for one of them a more personal love than for the rest. The profound tragedy in the relations between parents and children is precisely this, that this relationship is often as passionate as personal love, but without the latter’s understanding; that it involves the claims of a great emotion, but not the power that an individual feeling has of becoming intensified in the same degree as the claim is increased.

Individual love is alone sufficient for a child’s needs. An “elected mother” may perhaps once, or several times, be able to feel such a love for one or more of the children entrusted to her. But she cannot have this love for all of them, and she will herself be torn asunder when one after the other the children she loves are taken from her.

The mothers for the State institution must furthermore be found by thousands, if the whole of society is to be constructed on this plan. And then it will be with them as with the clergy, who in the earliest congregations were called by the Holy Spirit, but afterwards by the congregation. It would be more and more rarely the proved personal aptitude and inner necessity that would decide the choice, but in its place the accepted standard of professional training.

It is by means of these professional mothers, as is now the opinion, that children would have better conditions of life than in their own homes, where, in spite of all shortcomings, personal responsibility and personal affection render imperfection in the higher grades of education less dangerous than perfection in a lower grade.

Exceptional circumstances exist, to provide for which the crèche, the kindergarten, the asylum, and the industrial school must continue for the present. But instead of trying to make these expedients universal, we ought to endeavour to eradicate the causes which render them necessary. This would be road-making in the right direction. The other is a short cut, which will infallibly take us longer round.

It is true that poverty now gives many children unhealthy homes. Attack the causes of poverty then, instead of taking away the children and leaving the parents in misery. It is true that much parental affection is injudicious. Then educate people to be parents. It is true that parents now increase the inheritance of certain children at the cost of the others. Then lessen the possibility of this.

But do not deprive all children of their rightful inheritance: home feelings and memories of home, home sorrows and home joys, all that gives its peculiar tone, colour, and perfume to every human being’s disposition.