I have tried in these few hints on body-building to show young mothers how much they can do, if they set about intelligently learning how to care for their children. Make the study a painstaking one, and you will bless your families by your research, and the world by the healthy men and women you send out.
A noble band of women, which is yearly increasing, have set themselves the task of instituting a new order of things, and the great problems of childhood, girlhood and boyhood, wifehood, motherhood, and fatherhood, are being studied with a will to master their mysteries, and endow the coming generation with a clearer knowledge of the causes which have led to much of the sin and sorrow in home and society. Mother’s meetings and Congresses witness the awakening of many along these lines and herald a brighter future for our grandchildren than our children have enjoyed; and that there is a call for such a book as this, evidences the recognition of the need for knowledge along these lines.
Some one has wisely said, “what we need most is a generation of educated mothers.” The few are aware of this and have long since passed into the higher grades of such an education; but for the many mothers who have not yet entered the schools, such chapters as this are written. To keep abreast of the questionings of her children, to be thoroughly informed on all the subjects which touch their training and well-being is, next to her religion, the highest prerogative of woman to-day. For any mother to be so prepared that she can teach her children truth, and in such a wholesome way that it shall beautify their whole after lives, and keep them close to her in counsel, is a noble outlook for any woman. And what other right or privilege can be above this?
I am coming to think that a woman is living a great life, and doing a great service for humanity, who trains well one child—if this be all she should and can have—Godward and manward. True she may do this and do much else; but if she be a mother, all else she may do, neglecting this, can never bring to her or the world much blessing. All else she may do while fulfilling well this duty, will but make her the better mother and world-helper. No mother can divorce the home and fireside from her work and retain success and happiness.
J. C. Fernauld has said truly, “With every mother the relation of motherhood should be the controlling one, and in all doubtful cases, mother duty should have the benefit of the doubt.” Charles H. Parkhurst says: “Society rises no higher than the mass, and the measure of the home is the mother. In the last analysis the world’s downward pressure is sustained by woman, and more than the public generally suspects, the man’s talent for achievement is supported by the wife’s or mother’s genius for quiet, patient, continuous endurance.”
“A nation rises no higher than its mothers.”
A beginning has been made in our schools toward a wider knowledge along the lines of being, which heralds the day when teachers who are intelligent in these matters shall prepare our young people for the responsibilities of life—then those whose home training has been neglected, shall not come out of our schools unprepared, but fitted to take their places as home-makers, as fathers and mothers who shall be capable of training their children in the wisest way.