Of course most mothers never have to face physically dangerous situations for their children. In most lives the way this aspect of the mother instinct expresses itself is in everyday sacrifices. Mothers give up (and, in the healthy woman, with pleasure, by preference) their time, intellectual pursuits, careers, first to have the child and then to see him safely to maturity. Everything else a woman could call her own becomes secondary to this impulse in the maternal woman. As you saw in the normal woman, there are checks and balances within the female personality which prevent her from making a psychological martyr of herself to the point where she would be a detriment to her children, but at this time I should like to make a different point.
I have said that the maternal instinct is more powerful than the instinct for self-preservation. I ask you to imagine for a moment how easily this characteristic of women could frighten a young girl if the experience of pregnancy or the role of the mother is presented to her in an improper way. She will react with acute anxiety, fear, rather than with joyful anticipation. This anxiety will color in dark hues though will not overwhelm her desire and determination to have babies. It will tend to take all the pleasure out of her sex life, however; it will tend strongly to make her frigid. And it will tend to make her a less effective mother, even a very poor one indeed.
The biological role of woman is motherhood. If a woman cannot dare to accept this aspect of her destiny, she will be deeply defeated in her life. From any standpoint one wishes to look at the maternal role, it is a great and beautiful one, embodying in it and giving expression to qualities that are universally admired and cultivated: nobility, the sacrifice of self, fortitude, love that passeth understanding.
The depreciation of motherhood in any sense whatsoever in the mind of a young girl is a crime against her if one is in a position to be influential with her. To fill her with fears, misunderstandings, resentments of and reservations about her historic role is to cut her off from full flowering as a woman. The ability of woman to have an orgasm, her deepest form of relatedness to man, is planted rather lightly in biological soil, as we saw in the first section of this chapter. This ability is tightly interwoven with her psychological experiences at every stage of her development, and the quickest and most effective way to force her into frigidity is to teach her to be frightened of the maternal aspects of her personality.
We saw how well womankind functioned before the Industrial Revolution as an equal partner with her husband in the family home. Her experiences were fully satisfying to her body and mind because her role was recognized at its true value; she was needed, rewarded, depended upon, universally admired. When she lost her role and, in agony, mistakenly turned to feminism to find a new definition of self, or to Victorianism, she found only ashes, a depreciation of all those things that made her a woman; she found, and adopted, values that turned her against her feminine self, her maternal self, her passionate self. Scorn for true femininity was what she found and, tragically, she took this attitude for her own.
If woman is to find true happiness once again, she must return to her real and joyful self. She must relearn that surrender to her biological destiny is not a trap, not a condition of slavery to her uterus, of exploitation by man and nature, but rather a wonderful and privileged condition.
I should like to give the contents of a letter that came into my hands recently. I consider it a beautiful letter. It describes in a very simple way the reactions of a woman who had been caught in a maze of misunderstanding and fear but who had found her way out, had learned the power and joy she could receive by surrendering to her true destiny.
This letter was written by a young woman who had just become pregnant. Six months before, sick with anguish at her joyless marriage, unable to enjoy any aspect of her sexual relationship because of a constant and acute fear of becoming pregnant, she had consulted the pastor of her church, having heard that her church had psychiatric services. The pastor had gained her admission to a group-therapy project run by a psychologist. The group was made up of women who had encountered some difficulty in their lives with their husbands and children.
The patient had attended the group for four months and then had had to leave, for her husband’s job had been transferred to another part of the state. The letter, sent to members of the group, arrived three months after her departure. I have received special permission from this ex-patient to reproduce this letter on the understanding that the names originally mentioned in it be changed.
Dear, dear Friends: