This is to say that their subject position has added considerably to what newspaper editors and other commentators are fond of calling the burden of Eve. Since woman is the childbearing sex, it has seemed natural to a great many peoples to increase the disadvantage at which her share in reproduction naturally places her, by making her confinement at home permanent instead of occasional, and by permitting her few, if any, interests save those connected with reproduction; in short, by prolonging and enhancing her subjection to the demands of the race. This is why the term married woman is still taken to imply the term housekeeper; an implication which, as the Freeman remarked editorially some years ago, modern civilization must renounce “if it wants such of its women as are editors and bank-presidents to be mothers as well.”
Civilization shortens the period of the child’s physical dependence on the mother by shortening the period of lactation. On the other hand, it increases fecundity to such an extent that where religious superstition or ignorance prevents the use of contraceptives, the burden of childbearing is greatly increased. This result of civilization is not, however, commonly found among the educated classes; and even among those classes where children are most numerous, I have already shown that women are not restrained by motherhood from engaging in gainful occupations outside the home. On the contrary, the number of their offspring is more often their chief incentive to this course. Among well-to-do families, prepared foods and wet-nursing have for a long time been rather generally employed to relieve mothers even of the responsibility of lactation, while the custom of assigning the physical care of children to hired substitutes has reduced their actual work to that of bringing the child into the world. That this mode of caring for children is approved by all classes is evident from their readiness to adopt it when fortune favours them with an opportunity. It is occasionally inveighed against by moralists, but on the whole it is coveted and approved, especially while women devote to frivolous pursuits the leisure that it leaves them. When a woman adopts this mode in order to reconcile motherhood with a serious interest outside the home, it is a different matter, and lays her open to the charge of neglecting her family, though in fact she may spend no more hours away from home than the woman who gives her morning to shopping and her afternoon to playing bridge. Why this should be the case I am at a loss to know, unless it be that a serious interest outside the home appears to smack too much of an assertion of her right to live her life for her own sake rather than for the sake of the race or that of her husband—a self-assertion not readily to be accepted without such reservations as find expression in institutes designed to “co-ordinate women’s interests.”
It appears, then, that the care of the young is the concern of both sexes, and is so recognized in the animal world and among human beings; and that among the latter such differences in usage as exist touching this matter are differences in the apportioning of the burden. Even in our own day, when there is observable a tendency to forget that the child has more than one parent—that parent being the mother—the father’s claim to his children is still recognized in law, often to the prejudice of the mother’s; and so, likewise, is his obligation to provide for them. Indeed, the child may be said to be regarded as exclusively the mother’s only while it is young; for it is a general custom among us to speak of Mrs. So-and-So’s baby, but of Mr. So-and-So’s son or daughter. Let us, then, recognize the claim and interest of both parents. Let us also remember that the economic organization has so extensively altered that the traditional division of labour—this division is always profoundly affected by consideration of the young—has been outmoded as far as thousands of families are concerned. Let us also assume that woman has established her right to be considered as a human being rather than a function or a chattel. Then it must seem reasonable to assume that the co-ordination of interests to be brought about concerns both sexes equally; that the problem to be confronted is that of reconciling a normal life of marriage and parenthood not only with the freest possible development of intellectual interest but with the utmost devotion to any chosen profession.
I can not pretend to foretell how this problem will be settled; for its solution will depend upon the general solution of the labour-problem. It may be that the necessary collectivism of modern industry will result in a collectivist system of caring for children. Such a system would by no means be an innovation; it would simply constitute an extension and adaptation of means which already exist—of nurseries for very small children and schools for older ones. Whatever its demerits might be, such a system would certainly represent an enormous economy of effort. The average home is adapted less to the needs of children than to those of adults; hence a mother of young children must spend a great deal of her time in preventing her young charges from injuring themselves with dangerous household implements, from falling downstairs or off of furniture too high for them, and from touching objects which would not be safe in their hands. In a properly equipped nursery, on the other hand, the furniture and all the objects are adapted to the size and intelligence of the children. Children have the advantage of numerous playmates; and one person can supervise the play of a dozen of them with less fatigue than the mother of one is likely to feel at the end of a day in the average home.
The Russians have already taken some steps in this direction by establishing both nurseries and schools in connexion with certain factories. From what I can gather of their policy, it would seem that they regard the care and education of children as being very much the concern of the whole community. They look upon childbearing as a service to the community, but they do not appear to take the view that women should be required to perform this service at the expense of their independence, for they have instituted a system of subsidies for pregnant and nursing working mothers, with rest-periods before and after confinement, and a subsidy during confinement amounting to the daily subsidy multiplied by fifteen.[29]
I have already indicated in the preceding chapter what it seems to me would be the course of a free people in this matter of reconciling the care of children with the greatest possible freedom for both parents. It seems hardly necessary to call attention to the obvious fact that the question is simply that of placing the care of the young in the hands of those who are interested in it and fitted for it, instead of forcing it willy-nilly upon either sex through a traditional expectation and a traditional division of labour. In a free society, those parents who wished to pursue careers incompatible with the actual care of young children would avail themselves of the services of substitutes, as the well-to-do classes do at present; and they might do so with even greater confidence because, as I have remarked, those engaged in caring for and teaching the young would do so as a matter of interest primarily and only secondarily as a means of livelihood. There is another important consideration to be taken into account, and that is, that in a free society the problem of reconciling the occupations of the parents with their personal supervision of their children would be much easier to solve; for their hours of labour would be greatly decreased. It is only where production must support an enormous amount of idleness and waste that it is necessary to overwork producers.
It is possible, of course, that the institution of economic freedom might check the present tendency of women to engage in gainful occupations outside the home. It most certainly would if the vast increase of opportunity which it offered were reserved exclusively for men; but to bring about this result it would be necessary for traditional anti-feminist prejudices to survive much more strongly than they do today. The position of women has too radically changed to admit of their exclusion from direct participation in the benefits of economic freedom; therefore if they resigned the increased economic opportunities that it offered them, and withdrew to the sphere of domesticity, they would do so as a matter of choice. Why should we not expect them to choose the exclusive domesticity which might be rendered possible through the increased earning power of men? They probably would, where it suited their taste to do so; but one of the most powerful incentives to do so would no longer exist, namely: the desire for economic security. Women, to be sure, are not exempt from the characteristic willingness of humankind to live by the exertions of others; but I would remark that there is this difference between the person who does this indirectly, through legalized privilege, and the person who depends directly on the bounty of another: that the former is independent and the latter is dependent. Women are not strangers to the human desire for freedom; and when the fear of want is allayed they are quite likely to prefer an easy and secure self-support to the alternative of economic dependence. Moreover, economic freedom would set domesticity in competition with the interests of women rather than their needs; for it would set all people free to engage in occupations that interested them, whereas at present the vast majority do whatever offers them a living. Under these circumstances it might reasonably be expected that the number of women who would continue in business and in industrial and professional pursuits, even after marriage and the birth of children, would greatly increase.
Indeed, if we postulate an economic system under which every human being would be free to choose his occupation in accordance with his interests, I see no more reason to suppose that women would invariably choose domesticity than to suppose that all men would choose blacksmithing. Under such a régime I doubt that even the power of the expected which affects them so strongly at present, would long continue in an effectiveness which it has already begun to lose. Women, I think, might be expected to choose their occupations with the same freedom as men, and to look for no serious interruption from marriage and the birth of children. There are a good many women at present who very ably reconcile motherhood with a chosen career. I think we might expect to find more of them rather than fewer, in a free society. One thing is certain, and it is the important thing: they would be free to choose. If it be woman’s nature, as some people still believe, to wish to live at second hand, then in a free society they will freely make that choice, and no one can complain of it—unless it be the men on whom they elect to depend. However, to assume from past experience that they do want to live at second hand is to assume that all the social and legal injustices which have been employed to force them to do so, were unnecessary; and when have Governments and communities wasted their power in exercising compulsion where no compulsion was needed?
FOOTNOTES:
[26] Ellis: Man and Woman. 5th ed. p. 14.