For this reason alone, were it the only one, every young mother should nurse her own baby if possible; but, on the other hand, to-day it not infrequently happens that the mother may have an apparent flow of milk, quite sufficient for the infant in quantity, but that milk may be devoid of the necessary supply of fat or sugars or some other ingredient for complete nutriment. When this is so, it is often wisest to allow the mother to nurse the child partly and to supplement its diet by other milk.
Various schools of doctors and maternity nurses have differed even on this matter, but it is quite obvious that if the actual food value of the mother’s milk is below a certain point then the added value of its individual vitamine-like qualities will not wholly compensate for the loss of actual nourishment.
Among baby’s rights, I should perhaps also make it clear that there is his right that he should not be used as a bulwark between his mother and another baby in a way which is sometimes recommended so that a mother may go on nursing her infant for a very long time, sometimes even into its second year, in the hope that this nursing may prevent her conceiving again. Such a course of action is very harmful both to the child and to her and should never be followed. Such a practice is, of course, much less common in this country (except among aliens) than it is abroad where I have seen healthy children of even three or four years of age nursing upon their mother’s knees.
In these days, perhaps it is hardly necessary to accentuate baby’s other rights since the century of the child dawned a generation ago. To-day it is perhaps almost more important to accentuate the rights of others who exist in the neighbourhood of a baby. But on the other hand if one looks penetratingly at the whole problem of character development, one sees that among baby’s rights is its right to be trained from the very first so that its life shall be as little hindered by friction as may be possible: that it should be taught the elementary rules of conduct and necessary conformity with the hard material facts of existence from the very first. A wise nurse’s or mother’s training from the earliest weeks of infancy may make or mar a future man’s or woman’s chance of getting on in the world and making a success of their lives, by making or marring the character, the capacity to obey, the formation of regular and hygienic habits and the realization of the physical facts of the world.
The ancient Greeks taught their youth to reverence that which was beneath them, that which was around them, and that which was above them. In my opinion this right of youth to be placed in its proper orientation in relation to the world has been neglected of late. We are suffering from the wayward revolt from an earlier and perhaps harsher type of mistake, that of too greatly controlling and thwarting the child’s impulses. We must maintain a just balance and return to the due mean in which the right of a child, not only to be well born but well trained, is universally recognized.
CHAPTER XVIII
The Weakest Link in the Human Chain
“This shall be thy reward—that the ideal shall be real to thee.”
Olive Schreiner: Dreams.