What a Young Husband Ought to Know

by Sylvanus Stall

"Soon after the birth of my child my husband insisted on his accustomed injustice. Without any wish of my own, maternity was again forced upon me. I dared not attempt to get rid of the child—abortion seemed so cruel, so inhuman, unnatural and repulsive. I resolved again, for my child's sake, to do the best I could for it. Though I could not joyfully welcome, I resolved quietly to endure its existence.

"After the birth of this child I felt that I could have no more to share our poverty and to suffer the wrongs and trials of an unwelcome existence. I felt that I would rather die at once, and thus end my life and my power to be a mother together. My husband cast the entire care of the family on me. I had scarcely one hour to devote to my children. My husband still insisted on his gratification. I was the veriest slave alive. Life had lost its charms. The grave seemed my only refuge and death my only friend.

"In this state, known as it was to my husband, he thrust maternity upon me twice. I employed a doctor to kill my child, and in the destruction of it, in what should have been the vigor of my life, ended my power to be a mother. I was shorn of the brightest jewel of my womanhood. I suffered as woman alone can suffer, not only in body, but in bitter remorse and anguish of soul.

"All this I passed through under the terrible, withering consciousness that it was all done and suffered solely that the passion of my husband might have a momentary indulgence. Yet such had been my false religious and social education that, in submitting my person to his passion, I did it in the honest conviction that in marriage my body became the property of my husband. He said so. All women to whom I applied for counsel said it was my duty to submit, that husbands expected it, had a right to it, and must have this indulgence whenever they were excited, or suffer, and that in this way alone could wives retain the love of their husbands. I had no alternative but silent, suffering submission to his passion, and then procure abortion or leave him, and thus resign my children to the tender mercies of one with whom it seemed I could not live myself. Abortion was most repulsive to every feeling of my nature, and at times rendered me an object of loathing to myself.

"When my first-born was three months old I had a desperate struggle for personal liberty. My husband insisted on his right to subject my person to his passion before my babe was two months old. I saw his conduct then in all its degrading and loathing injustice. I pleaded with tears and anguish, for my own and my child's sake, to be spared; and had it not been for my helpless child, I should have ended the struggle by bolting my legal bonds. For its sake I submitted to that outrage and my own conscious degradation. For its sake I concluded to take my chance in the world with other wives and mothers who, as they assured me, and as I then knew, were all around me, subjected to like outrages, and driven to the degrading practice of abortion. But even then I saw and argued the justice of my personal rights in regard to maternity and the relation that leads to it, as strongly as you do now. I saw it all as clearly as you do. I was then, amid all the degrading influences that crushed me, true and just to my womanly intuitions. I insisted on my right to say when and under what circumstances I would accept of him the office of maternity and become the mother of his child. I insisted that it was for me to say when and how often I should subject myself to the liability of becoming a mother. But he became angry with me, claimed ownership over me, insisted that I, as a wife, was to submit to my husband 'in all things,' threatened to leave me and my children, and declared I was not fit to be a wife. Fearing some fatal consequences to my child or to myself—being alone, destitute and far from helpful friends, in the far West, and fearing that my little one would be left to want—I stifled all expression of my honest convictions, and ever after kept my aversion and painful struggles in my own bosom. In every respect, as far as passional relations between myself and my husband are concerned, I have ever felt myself to be a miserable and abject woman. I now see and feel it most deeply and painfully. If I was with a child in my arms, I was in constant dread of all personal contact with my husband lest I should have a new maternity thrust upon me, and be obliged to wean one child before its time to give place to another. In my misery I have often cried out, 'O, God! is there no way out of this loathsome bondage?'

"It was not want of kindly feelings toward my husband that induced this state of mind, for I could and did endure every privation and want without an unkindly feeling or word, and even cheerfully for his sake. But every feeling of my soul did then, does now and ever must protest against the cruel and loathsome injustice of husbands toward their wives, manifested in imposing on them a maternity uncalled for by their own nature and most repulsive to it, and whose sufferings and responsibilities they are unprepared and unwilling to meet."

While we would not for a moment sanction the crime which this mother perpetrated, yet we are not prepared to say that she was the sole author of the crime. Every thoughtful man must admit that her husband was unreasonable, unwilling to govern his passion, cruel and unjust to his wife, and in his beastliness measurably drove her to the commission of the awful crime of which she was guilty.

The proper relation of husband and wife to the question of parenthood can never be properly and satisfactorily adjusted so long as either of these parties occupy extreme positions upon this question. It is absolutely wrong for the wife to take the position that she is to be wholly delivered from maternity and the care of children, and it is equally wrong for the husband to assume that the wife is created for no other purpose than to bear children in as rapid succession as nature renders conception possible. Upon the one hand it is the duty of the wife to arrange her thought and life with reference to maternity and the bearing of such a number of children as can be brought into the world in the highest state of physical, intellectual and moral equipment. Upon the other hand, the husband is to regard himself under obligation to practice such personal self-control and to bear such disadvantages as are incident to the greatest fidelity of the wife in her duties while the body and character of her child are being formed within her, and while it is being nursed, nurtured and cared for after its birth.

It is the grossest of insults not only to woman, but to her Maker, to assert that woman was created solely for reproduction. It is proper for a man in the discharge of certain duties and in the attainment of certain laudable ends to decline to marry and resolve to maintain a pure and celibate life throughout his entire existence; and it is equally right, and even commendable, for a woman with similar purposes and aims to decline marriage in order that she may devote herself with greater efficiency and success to some effort to elevate and bless mankind, if those ends could not be successfully accomplished in connection with the proper discharge of her duties as wife and mother. But when men and women do marry, they greatly mistake the object of this divine institution if they suppose that it was instituted solely for the purpose of producing the largest possible number of children—if they make quantity rather than quality the great purpose. Marriage was instituted for the highest good of the parents; it was instituted for the attainment of their best health and the largest intellectual and moral equipment. Their lives are to be shaped for the acquisition of the largest and best attainments. Unless they attain the best physical, intellectual and moral developments they cannot transmit these valuable qualities to their children. The children cannot inherit from the parents what the parents do not possess. Parents should seek to raise up, not the largest possible number, without regard to whether they are good, bad or indifferent; but there is no objection to their raising up the largest number consistent with the best possible equipment. One man is worth an innumerable number of monkeys, and we should seek to raise up not an innumerable horde of inferior beings, but only so large a number as is consistent with a sincere purpose not to evade the responsibilities and duties of parenthood, and with an earnest effort to raise up a race of superior men and women. There should be no consenting to deterioration, but a sincere desire and effort for the raising up of a new generation that shall be an advance upon all the generations that have preceded.

By what we have said it will be manifest that there is a culpable and criminal limitation of offspring; and there is also a reasonable and right regulation of the marital relation and a limiting of offspring—a designed and deliberate purpose to be self-contained with a view to intelligent, purposed parenthood.