“My little boy, on whom my husband set high hopes, was born after nine of the most unhappy, distressing months of my life, a sickly, nervous, fretting child—myself in miniature—and after five years of life that was predestined by all the circumstances to be just what it was, after giving us only anxiety and care, he died, leaving us sadder and wiser. I have demonstrated to my own abundant satisfaction that there is but one right, God-given way to beget and rear children, and I know that I am only one of many who can corroborate this testimony.”
Again Dr. Holbrook says: “We have evidence among primitive people that they understand the necessity of limiting offspring, and practice it in a perfectly healthful way. The natives in Uganda, a region in Central Africa, offer an illustration: ‘The women rarely have more than two or three children; the practice being that when a woman has borne a child she is to live apart from her husband for two years, at which age children are weaned.’ Seaman, speaking of the Fijians, says: ‘After childbirth, husband and wife keep apart three and even four years, so that no other baby may interfere with the time considered necessary for suckling children.’”
It occasionally happens that the wife during pregnancy is troubled with a passion far beyond what she has ever experienced at any other time. This in every instance is due to some unnatural condition, and should be considered a disease, and for it the physician should be consulted.
The husband rightly rejoices in the name of protector of his wife, and how quick is he to resent any slight or fancied insult which may be offered her. Nowhere can he show more loyally his love and respect for her, than in the tender appreciation which he shows her in the control of her own person. Nay, more than yielding simply to her wishes, he should be the leader in these things if necessary, and guide her into the stronger way.
The sedentary life of many men renders them a prey to the gratification of their lower natures. To all such men exercise becomes a religious duty, and should be practiced most persistently until their physical natures are well tired, and the sexual nature will not then dominate the finer and nobler instincts of their being.
I was pained by the remark of a cultured lady, when speaking of continence in the married life, a few days ago in my office. She said: “Does it not seem a strange thing, doctor, that among those who seem most careless in these things, are many ministers and other good men from whom we should expect higher and nobler living.” I could but assent to this, for doctors, unfortunately for their comfort, listen to many confessions of sadness and unrighteousness in marital relations, and some of them come from sources which the world would little dream of.
The lady added: “I have an intimate friend, a few years younger than myself, who married a minister, and one who stands high in the denomination of which he is a member. They have had seven children, almost as fast as it is possible to have them, and the wife is a broken-down woman, spiritless and unhappy, a common drudge at an age when she should be full of life and joy, were things as they should be. One remark shows the feeling which this state of affairs has engendered. When I asked her why her husband allowed such a state of things to exist, she said, ‘He doesn’t care,’ and she said it with such a dispirited and utterly discouraged air that my heart ached for her.”
When will a brighter day dawn for woman and for man in these things? When our young people are trained to see these great questions in the light of God’s purposes and have strength of character sufficient to make them conquerors over the false opinions of the world, the temptations of the flesh, and the wiles of the devil.
Ignorance and misconception are at the bottom of all that is wrong in the marital relation. No loving husband would for a moment allow himself to yield to the demands of his lower nature did he consider and appreciate rightly all that it meant to his wife, his unborn children and to the generations to come.