But while the mothers of that time knew nothing except housework, those of to-day have often, as unmarried and self-supporting women, enjoyed a freedom of movement and opportunities of development which, now that they are over-burdened with household cares, they may seriously miss. The work of the mother is now still further increased by the difficulty of getting servants—at least capable ones—and also by the demands of luxury. The result of this again is that hospitality in the home decreases, that the watchword of the time, “the windows of the house wide open to the world, fresh air in the home, no creeping into the chimney corner,” is so interpreted that warmth and intimacy vanish. Yes, the overworked mother often herself insists that the family leave the house and seek some place of recreation for the annual festivals, which were once the children’s happiest and brightest recollections of home.
The fact that most modern women of culture devote themselves to some branch of social work, often to several, contributes still further to the over-exertion of the mother. Even when this occurs from pure altruism, the motive cannot prevent such altruism from becoming sometimes a disease of which one may die quite as surely as of other diseases. This death is quite as immoral as any other resulting from neglected hygiene. No one has the right to perish from altruism, except when destruction is the condition of his fulfilling his duty. But in many cases the occasion is the widely ramified social activity of the woman for whom the home now often falls short; not a result of altruism, but a manifestation of that desire for power which once was satisfied in the family. Or it may be a form of the hysteria characteristic of the present time. In the sixteenth century, the hysterical were burned as witches; now they “sacrifice” themselves to an activity which offers them in reality the variety, the intoxication of publicity—in a word, the life stimulus they need. But even sound, sincere, and conscientious women are driven by the woman movement and by social work to assume pseudo duties, for which the real duties are pushed aside. If instead of instituting official inquiries among wives and mothers as to what they can accomplish, one should direct the same questions to their husbands and children, these would, if they dared be honest, testify that they must pay the price for the altruistic activity.
Since the work of married women outside the home, the woman movement, and the social work began, one seldom finds a wholly sound, joyous, harmonious wife and mother. The constant complaint of the modern woman is that she “never has time.” The minority who live a life of luxury, wholly free from work, while the husband works feverishly to provide the luxury which neither will forego, telephone away a quarter of the day making appointments concerning the toilette, visits, and amusements, which take up the remaining three quarters of the day. And others, loaded down with household work or divided between this and work for their livelihood, how shall they find time!
Least of all have they the time necessary for the countless little tokens of tenderness which intensify all relationships between people. A French mother who became a widow and brought up her children by means of her own work received from her son, grown to a youth, the judgment: “Thou hast never loved us.” Too late, it became clear to her that “it requires time to love,” that it is not enough to feel love, and, looked at as a whole, to act with love—no, love must be expressed. And for this the harassed mother of to-day lacks time and quiet.
Formerly, it was only the husband and father who had no time; the wife and mother had it and could thus preserve the warmth of the home. But now?
There are now, it is true, many women with so few claims that they think they have fulfilled the fourfold task. In reality, they have fulfilled all their duties imperfectly, or eliminated one task for a time in order to be able to accomplish the others. No woman has ever been at the same time all that a wife can be to her husband, a mother to her children, a housewife to her house, a working woman to her work. In the last capacity the difficulty of the married woman is still further increased by the present competition, as also by the fact that the better a person works the more work falls to her, so that an exact and reasonable division of time between work and home is often rendered quite impossible.
In addition to all these difficulties arising through actualities, there are finally also those evoked by the “spirit of the time.” A wife has, for example, decided to give up a vocation which she saw was not compatible with her home. But she stills finds no rest. She is harassed by the demand of the “spirit of the time” that a married woman should be able to take care of the house as well as to accomplish outside personal work. The husband, also influenced by the “spirit of the time,” thinks the same or feels painfully the fact that his wife, for love of him, has sacrificed the exercise of a talent, in which he perhaps has felt a personal interest; the longing for the vocation awakens in her, and she resumes her work, with the result that, if she has energetically resisted the lassitude that comes with beginning motherhood, she and the child must suffer later. Or she lives in a permanent state of over-exertion which finally culminates in nervous conditions under which the whole family must share her suffering. Had she been able to follow in peace her instinct to strike deep root in the home soil and to enlarge and enrich her being by the annual growth of ring after ring of her production of love, then the essential values would have been increased for all. Now, she is led astray by a biased opinion of the time, which owes its effectiveness to the single fact that the opinionated resolutely turn their back upon all facts.
Thanks to these ideas of the time propagated by certain feminists, we see increasing numbers of women who perform their “social duty” as the telegraph poles perform their function; while such duty could have been fulfilled as the tree grows in a garden: blooming, fruit-bearing, joyful, joy-bringing.
CHAPTER VII
THE INFLUENCE OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT UPON MOTHERHOOD
Because it has increased the culture of woman and her feeling of personal responsibility, the woman movement has had its influence, both directly and indirectly, upon the postponement of the legal and customary marriage age. Since young girls have exercised their brains as much as the boys have, they are no longer so far in advance of the boys in physical development. But when modern girls finish their studies they are physically as well as psychically more universally developed than their grandmothers were. They know much more of the difficulties and realities of life, not least of the sexual life. And this knowledge has instilled in them a reluctance to undertake too early the serious and difficult task of motherhood. They have greater need of truth and culture, and less tendency to erotic visionary dreaming than girls of their age in the middle of the previous century; their desire for work and their social feeling fix goals, and they work with all their might to attain them. And because, as already explained, both sexes have for each other a more many-sided attraction than the merely erotic, young people are more careful, more choice, in their erotic decisions. The finest young girls of to-day are penetrated by the Nietzschean idea, that marriage is the combined will of two people to create a new being greater than themselves. But their joy does not consist in the fact “that the man wills”; they are themselves “will,” and above all they have the will to choose the right father for their children, not only for their own sake but for the sake of the children.