The unwelcome child

by Henry Clarke Wright

One distinctive characteristic of a true and noble husband is a feeling of manly pride in the physical elements of his manhood. His physical manhood, as well as his soul, is dear to the heart of his wife, because through this he can give the fullest expression to his manly power. But if such manifestations are made when the wife is not prepared to receive them, and when she repels them and dreads the consequences, his physical nature becomes associated, not with the pure joy of a longed-for maternity, but with a deep sense of shame and degradation, with an outrage on her nature, and with the protracted suffering and anguish of an abhorred maternity. How can she respect the person of her husband? How can she cherish, and proudly care for, the purity, health and comfort of his physical nature? He has made it disgusting to her. She regards it as the deadliest enemy of her purity and peace as a wife, and as the bane of her home. She cannot look upon his person but as the source of her degradation and ruin. In its presence, she feels as in the presence of some hated reptile, from which her soul and senses shrink. How can she lovingly cherish and care for it? How can the husband respect himself, when by his own abuse of his wife and of himself, he has made his physical manhood thus contemptible to her?

How can you, my friend, avoid this? How can you secure for your person the loving care and respect of your wife? There is but one way; so manifest yourself to her, in the hours of your most endearing intimacies, that all your manly power shall be associated only with all that is generous, just and noble in you, and with purity, freedom and happiness in her. Make her feel that all which constitutes you a man, and qualifies you to be her husband and the father of her children, belongs to her, and is sacredly consecrated to the perfection and happiness of her nature. Do this, and the happiness of your home is made complete in righteousness. Your body will be lovingly and reverently cared for, because the wife of your bosom feels that it is the sacred symbol through which a noble, manly love is ever speaking to her, to cheer and sustain her.

Woman is ever proud, and justly so, of the manly passion of her husband, when she knows it is controlled by a love for her, whose manifestations have regard only to her elevation and happiness. The very power which, when bent only on selfish indulgence, becomes a source of more shame, degradation, disease and wretchedness, to women and to children, than all other things put together, does but ennoble her, add grace and glory to her being, and concentrate and vitalize the love that encircles her as a wife, when it is controlled by wisdom, and consecrated to her highest growth and happiness, and that of her children. It lends enchantment to her person, and gives a fascination to her smiles, her words and her caresses, which ever breathe of purity and of heaven, and make her all lovely as a wife and mother to her husband and the father of her child. Manly passion is to the conjugal love of the wife like the sun to the rosebud, that opens its petals, and causes them to give out their sweetest fragrance, and to display their most delicate tints; or like the frost, which chills and kills it ere it blossoms in its richness and beauty.

Beware, then, how you perpetrate this wrong against your wife, as you would secure her love and respect. Trifle not with the function of Maternity in her; for as this comes to her as the crowning joy and glory of her earthly existence, or otherwise, will be her estimate of you as her husband and the father of her children. See to it that she is never subjected to the possibility of becoming a mother unless she calls for it, and is ready with joy to assume the responsibilities of maternity.

But I will let woman tell her own story. She can speak on such a theme, and tell her own needs and wrongs, as no man can. The following extracts from a private letter will give you an insight into the wants and feelings of a wife and mother in regard to this subject. When woman speaks of her feelings while suffering an undesired maternity, let man reverently give heed to her words:

“My maternal experience has been varied. I have never been the recipient of a designed maternity, but I have that within me which gives me an idea of what its joy and blessedness might be. I have never been forced, with entire repugnance on my part, into the relation which resulted in conception; and yet I have suffered the keenest agonies in view of such a result.

“In the first years of my married life, I had no thought but to submit to the passion of my husband, without regard to the consequences to myself. As every true woman does, living in conjugal relations, I desired to be caressed by my husband, and to be pressed to his manly bosom. I did not suppose it was incumbent on him to control himself.

“In an unwelcome maternity, I have sometimes felt a deep repugnance to the passion of my husband,—a sense of deep suffering and anguish through it; but I have usually been so encircled by love as to make me forget this, or rather, shun such thoughts as sinful. But since my husband and I have come to a truer knowledge of parentage, I have come to ‘love, honor and cherish’ those functions which I had before only feared and obeyed. I think this is not the feeling that married women usually have towards the physical manhood of their husbands. I never heard a woman admit that her thoughts rested on the physical nature of her husband with loving respect and womanly pride: but I have heard, not unfrequently, expressions of disgust instead.

“I have known many instances in which the fathers of children, unintentionally and unwillingly conceived, became so repulsive to the mother, during gestation, that they would be made seriously ill by coming in contact with them, in any way; though ordinarily they would be agreeable and congenial.

“I have heard many women say they would gladly strangle their children, born of undesired maternity, at birth, could they do so with safety to themselves. I believe, judging from a long and intimate acquaintance with many mothers, and from much conversation with them on this subject, that there are many children whose existence is undesigned by their fathers and undesired by their mothers. Yet among those heterogeneous and unnatural combinations called marriages, there is enough love to produce some tolerable specimens of humanity; and when there is any thing remarkable in development, there will be found physiological and psychological conditions sufficient to produce it.