Modern marriage and how to bear it

by Maud Churton Braby

The sweetest treasure in spring’s crown,

Starts in the furrow of your life.’

—Gerald Massey.

Perhaps I may be accused of dealing with marriage in a too flippant manner. Most of the treatises that I have read have erred in the opposite direction and have treated the subject from a tediously transcendental point of view. I have purposely tried to deal with realities, with facts, with matrimony as it really is—I mean as it really appears to me—in this very workaday world, and not as it might be in a glorious ideal world of noble spirits.

In truth, marriage, as it is carried out by the large majority does not seem to me to possess much of a sacred element. What is there holy in the fact of two human beings agreeing to live together to suit their own convenience, for purely social and domestic reasons, and very often with a strong commercial motive? There is, of course, a certain sanctity about all love, but, of the various kinds of human love, the sexual variety seems the least holy in itself. Family love, where the tie of blood exists, the love between friends—purest of all affections—is often more essentially sacred than the so-called holy love between husband and wife. Marriage, the mere social and physical union of men and women, apart from parenthood, is simply a partnership—resulting, if you like, in an enormous increase of happiness and good to the contracting parties—essentially an excellent contract, but a mere mundane contract for all that. But when the children come, when the divine and wonderful miracle is accomplished, then, indeed, is marriage placed on a wholly different basis, and in dealing with it, I willingly take my shoes from off my feet, for it is holy ground.

On the birth of a child the union that produced it acquires an immortal significance. Formerly of importance only to the two people concerned, the union is now of importance to the State and to posterity, and consequently a truly awful responsibility devolves on the parents. On the physique, the character, the intelligence of each child the fate of future generations may depend. If we do not feed our child properly he may be rickety, and a future generation may be deformed for our carelessness. If we do not teach him thoroughly the duty of self-control he may become a drunkard or a libertine, and a thousand subsequent evils may curse our grandchildren. ‘The responsibilities of perpetuating the existence of a race, with all its immeasurable possibilities of sin and suffering, is one from which the boldest might recoil. But the only effective way of improving the lot of man is to rear up a new generation of better stock. For the reflecting to shirk parentage is to make over the future to the spawn of unreflecting indulgence. In the world’s great field of battle no duty is higher than to keep the ranks of the forces of Light well filled with recruits. It is to no holiday that our offspring are called—rather it is to a combat long and stern, ending in inevitable death.’[5]

It has been truly said that children are the wealth of nations: if we were to take our parenthood very seriously indeed—far, far more seriously than we now do, surely this would prove the strongest defence against the moral and physical decay of which we hear so much. I would like to see parenthood elevated to the dignity of a great spiritual ideal. Not that I advocate the ultra-glorification of mere procreation in itself, though to bring fine and healthy children into the world is an excellent service, and one that men and women ought to take the highest pride in, but ‘to summon an immortal soul into being—what act is comparable to this?’ To train the new-born spirit to grow towards the sun, striving to develop in it the nobler possibilities of the complex human organism and make of it an ‘upright, heaven-facing speaker’—what better lifework can a man or woman hope to achieve, what greater monument to leave behind?

If parenthood were to become a great ideal, in time public opinion—that mighty weapon—would grow so strong that unworthy parenthood would be regarded with disfavour by all decent people. The unfit would not dare to commit the crime of perpetuating their kind, and the stigma attached to this sin against the community might eventually even equal the stigma attached nowadays to the awful crime of cheating at cards!

Inspired by the ideal of noble parenthood, maidens would look for the father’s heart in their lovers; men would seek the beautiful maternal qualities in the girls they were wooing, and the material considerations that now so largely influence both would obtain less and less. The bond of marriage would be strengthened a hundredfold. Infidelity would be rarer, for the husband and wife who had been blessed with children would feel that their union had been dignified, made truly indissoluble. The father and mother who had embraced for the first time over the form of their first-born could never forget that ineffable moment. The man and woman who had shared a baby between them, taught it to talk and to play and guided its first faltering steps, could never lightly set aside the vows that bound them. The soft hands of little children were made to link men and women’s hearts together, and wonderfully they fulfil the task!

‘Only when we become fathers and mothers do we realise all that our fathers and mothers have done for us’—and what a revelation it is! What a new heaven and a new earth are opened to us by the magic of a little child’s presence in our home—the little body that has been mysteriously fashioned in our image, the little soul given into our keeping.