Radiant Motherhood: A Book for Those Who are Creating the Future

by Marie Carmichael Stopes

Epictetus.

The imposition of motherhood upon a married woman in absolute despite of her health and of the interests of the children is none the less an iniquity because it has at present the approval of Church and State.

Saleeby: Woman and Womanhood.

Why do poor slum mothers buy more coffins than do the same number of rich women?

The incredulous may answer this question by asserting that they don’t, but as a matter of fact they do. The Registrar-General’s Report for 1911 shows that of every thousand births in the upper and middle classes, 76·4 babies die, while of a thousand births in the homes of unskilled workmen (this would be the class of the “poor” mothers) 152·5 babies die.

So that it is clear that if each member of this poorest class of mothers had exactly the same number of babies as each mother of the rich class, she would have to purchase about two coffins for every coffin bought by those whose babies are not so prone to die.

There is, however, another fact which completes the proof of my first sentence. The upper and middle classes do not have so many children per family as do the poorest class. To a thousand married people in the upper and middle classes there were born in 1911 119 babies, but to the poor mothers—the wives of the unskilled workmen—there were born 213. So that in addition to buying twice as many coffins per thousand children born, these poor mothers have nearly twice as many coffins again, owing to the fact that nearly twice as many children are born to them.

I wonder if poor women have ever asked themselves if they can afford coffins at this rate?

Of course the coffins of these poor little babies are very small, and do not require very much wood to make them. But let us think in what other ways they cost: To the mother they cost not only all the little the baby had eaten, and used in the way of clothes before its death, but all the wastage of her own vitality while she was bearing it; she could not work so well, at any rate towards the end of the time. Home duties had to be somewhat neglected; the older children had to go to school dirtier and less cared for; the husband had less comfort and fewer smiles; every one in the family was poorer, not only in material things and in the work that might make material things, but in happiness and buoyancy.