Motherhood.
The sacred vocation of motherhood is regarded almost entirely from a commercial or social standpoint in non-Christian lands. The free woman who remains unmarried is wellnigh an impossibility,—she has no chance for winning respect or position in this life, and, according to Mohammedan belief, has a very inferior place in heaven. The woman who marries and has no children needs one’s sympathy almost as much as does her unmarried sister. In many cases she may be divorced after a certain number of years if no child has been born to her, or she lives in dread of having another wife brought into the home, who will make her life miserable with taunts such as Peninnah heaped upon Hannah in days of old. And there is no hope that her lord and master will comfort her as Elkanah comforted Hannah, offering her the devotion of ten sons.
A mother of girls.
But the unmarried woman and the childless wife are not alone in their degradation and distress. Never can I forget my feelings when told of a neighbor in Persia who had just given birth to her seventh daughter. Her husband on visiting the room crossed over to where she lay on her bed on the floor, looked at her with disgust and disapproval, spat in her face and covered it with a cloth to show that she was a disgraced wife. To be the mother of sons is the great wish of a woman’s heart, to have many daughters-in-law brought into the home to serve her and cower before her tyranny is her fondest ambition, and when she attains it her influence is indeed great, and in one respect at least she is queen of her home.
Foundations of family life.
Is it a mistake in this study of child life to pay so much attention to the subjects of fatherhood and motherhood? Nowhere can we find the real remedy for the evils that degrade and debase and oppress and crush the sweet innocence and dependence of childhood unless we go back of the child to the very foundations of family life. Many great authorities in America and Europe, as well as those who have labored and studied in Oriental lands, will testify to the truth of this statement. Rev. J. Sadler of Amoy says, “You would be profoundly impressed if you could realize how the strength of heathenism is in the women. From earliest years they teach their children concerning demons, and to be early eager as to inheritance, and thus inspire selfish and quarrelsome ideas leading to divisions and life-long conflicts. The importance of women’s work cannot be estimated. The destiny of the country is largely in their hands.”[21]
Training Christian wives and mothers.
This is one side of the picture. The other is equally true. Dr. Daniel McGilvary, for half a century a missionary among the Siamese and Lao, tells of the wonderful result of a school for girls that provides Christian wives and mothers.
Notwithstanding our disappointment in the delay of the school for boys, it proved a wise arrangement that the girls’ school was started first. A mission church is sure to be greatly handicapped whose young men must either remain single,—which they will not do,—or be compelled to take ignorant non-Christian wives.... After marriage the almost universal custom of the country has been that the husband lives with the wife’s family.... Where all the atmosphere of the family is strongly Buddhist, with daily offerings to the spirits and gala days at the temple, the current would be too strong for a father, with his secondary place in the family, to withstand. For a while it was feared that Christian girls would have difficulty in finding husbands. But, on the contrary, our educated girls become not only more intelligent, but more attractive in manners, dress, and character; and therefore, have been much sought after. The homes become Christian homes, and the children are reared in a Christian atmosphere. The result is that, instead of the wife’s dragging the husband down, she generally raises the husband up; and, as a general rule, the children early become Christians.[22]
The Mohammedan girl educated in a Christian school, even though she must marry and live her life according to Mohammedan customs, takes with her to her father-in-law’s home new ideas and customs that are going far to break down the old walls of prejudice. Mrs. C. M. Wherry of India writes:—