What a Young Wife Ought to Know

by Emma F. Angell Drake

It will do them no harm to take them a little into the agony of the birth chamber; they will love and reverence you the more, and feel the closer bond. One dear boy on hearing the story of his birth, throwing his arms about his mother’s neck, while the tears streamed down his cheeks, exclaimed, “Oh, how boys ought to love their mothers.”

Tell the boys as well as the girls, dear mothers, and do not make the mistake so often made, in thinking it will do no good to talk to the boys. It will do all the good in the world, and they will bless your memory for it; aye, more, their wives and all good women will bless you as well. Just one illustration to prove my point, and to encourage mothers who have put off teaching their children later than they should.

A mother who had but one child, a son, who had grown to be fifteen, untaught in these things, as so many boys are, had grown away from his mother and sought companionship that was not all it should have been, outside the home. The mother in a heart to heart talk with a friend, expressed her grief that she had lost the confidence of her boy. “He has grown away from me,” she said. “I see,” said the friend, “but why don’t you tell him your condition”—she was expecting then a little one—“and nine chances in ten you will win him back.” “Oh,” said the mother, “I could never talk with him of such things. What could I say?” “Don’t you suppose he knows already?” said the friend. “Yes, I am sure he does, for he seems shy and conscious when he looks at me.” “Then why be afraid to talk to him of it?”

Then followed a long earnest talk of what she had missed all these years in neglecting the teaching that the boy must and would have, and had probably gotten from those who had clothed it in impurity and shame, instead of purity and loveliness. And a promise was exacted that she would talk with her boy and tell him as only a mother can, of her condition, and of her sorrow that she had lost his full confidence, which she once had and delighted in so much.

But in her timidity the time passed and the confidence was not given until the very day of her confinement. The boy rushed into the house and found the mother alone in the agony of labor, the father having gone for the physician and nurse.

“What is the matter, mamma? You are sick. Can’t I help you?” At the loving question the broken promise came to mind, and in the desperation born of her suffering, she resolved to tell him still. “Oh, son, darling, I’m going to have a baby;” she groaned in her agony. “Oh, mamma, why didn’t you tell me that you needed me?” he exclaimed, as he threw his arms around his mother’s neck. “I thought you didn’t want me to know, because you never talked to me about such things, but I wish you had.” And they were crying together, mother and son, thinking the same thoughts, all reserve broken down, loving in the same old way, and the lost confidence restored.

The questions relating to their being and to the mysteries of procreation are legitimate ones, and demand a patient hearing. They should be met with such pure candor, that they shall never in the minds of innocent childhood be clothed in a mystery which is too often interpreted as sin. Little wonder that untaught boys grow to be men that trample upon every holy instinct of womanhood, and set at naught the sacredness of maternity.

I have read somewhere of a great physician who gave finely illustrated lectures to women upon the subjects relating to maternity. One wise mother who had listened with wrapt interest to his talks, called at his office one day with her twin boys seven years old. “Doctor,” she said, “I would like you to show my boys the beautiful anatomical plates that you use in your lectures, and tell them about some of them.” “Certainly, madam,” he replied, “I will gladly do so.”

He turned them over one by one, answering an eager question here and there, put by the bright boys, until he came to one illustrating twin pregnancy, which he passed hastily over without giving an opportunity for sight or question. “Stop, doctor,” said the mother. “That is the very one I want my boys to see. I have promised them that as soon as they were old enough I would tell them all about the little room in mamma’s body where they grew for nine months before they came into her arms.”