Marriage is a partnership for the higher development of each party, and the continuance of the race.
Under the past régime the highly organized and more individualized American woman has had her capacity for conjugal emotion almost annihilated. And this constantly repeats itself in her children as the abused mother transmits to her son the abnormal passions of his father, and to her daughter her own feeble, outraged conjugal capacity.
This state of things will continue as long as women grow up ignorant of the laws of their own being; as long as mothers bring up their sons and daughters in absolute ignorance of what is right and wrong in marriage—the mother thinking she is modest and refined when she blushes before the honest facts of nature.
What father instructs his son before marriage as to his behavior under that most sacred bond? What mother advises with her daughter, assuring her that she is to be the judge and regulator in her private life with her husband? Too often the health of both is impaired, and the mutual attraction destroyed, because knowledge came too late. Instead of this, the young wife should be proud to say, “My mother taught me that this relation should take place very seldom. We shall be less happy if we are intemperate.” The man who married her because he loved and admired her, would willingly be guided by her to a true continence. As it is, she evades the responsibility, and abandons soul and body to the undisciplined will of one as ignorant of law as herself. Here, as elsewhere, men, and women too, persuade themselves that subserviency in woman is lovely as in a man it is contemptible.
[DESIRES AND FANCIES.]
A superstition is common among the ignorant that every whim, every craving of the pregnant woman should be gratified, or the child will be “marked.” I once heard of a woman who, shortly before her confinement, insisted on having a pint of whisky, and because it was thought best to give her only half a pint, the child was never satisfied and drank himself to death.
It is true that the very great change in the system, the forces now specially drawn to the womb which before were equally distributed throughout the body, leaves the stomach often in a very delicate condition, needing more acid or less, more flesh and less vegetable diet, or the reverse, as the case may be, and there should certainly be no pains spared in providing the mother with the food that she can relish and digest, or in her yielding to her innocent and harmless fancies. The first months are often wearisome and depressing. She feels restless and unsettled, and should be treated with patient sympathy even if she seems a little unreasonable.
But the patient should never resign her own judgment and conscience. Gross feeding, excess of meats, gravies, pastry, wine, etc., should be avoided if desired. Over-eating is nearly as bad as over-drinking, and a sense of repletion after meals should be a warning that the intemperance must not be repeated. It is very plain that if the pregnant woman used her will in denying herself that which she knew to be unwholesome, or in excess of sufficient, the child would be more likely to inherit self-control. The true mother will have constant reference to the well-being of the child she is bearing, and she will have ample reward.
[BIRTH-MARKS.]
Birth-marks, whether unimportant in character, or amounting to deformity, are to be referred not so much to the first impression made on the mother’s mind, as to her subsequent and frequent reproduction of the image. The unfurnished mind of the illiterate woman seizes on and retains the ugly or grotesque picture, which another rich in thought and experience would have dismissed at once. Thus we see club-feet, strabismus, and other physical defects almost confined to the lower orders of the people.