Maternity: Letters from Working-Women

by Unknown

Writers on infant mortality and the decline of the birth-rate never tire of justly pointing to the evils which come from the strain of manual labour in factories for expectant mothers. Very little is ever said about the same evils which come from the incessant drudgery of domestic labour. People forget that the unpaid work of the working-woman at the stove, at scrubbing and cleaning, at the washtub, in lifting and carrying heavy weights, is just as severe manual labour as many industrial operations in factories. It is this labour which the mother performs often up to the very day on which the child is born, and she will be at it again perhaps six or eight days afterwards. The Factory Acts make it an offence for an employer knowingly to employ a woman within four weeks after confinement. “In Switzerland a total absence from employment in factories of women during eight weeks before and after childbirth must be observed, and on their return to work proof must be tendered of an absence since the birth of the child of at least six weeks.” In Germany four weeks’ absence is compulsory, and “must be extended to six weeks unless a medical certificate is furnished approving of employment at the end of four weeks.”

We propose to deal now shortly with the causes of those conditions, then with the results, and finally with the methods of cure and prevention of the resulting evils. The main causes seem to be three:

(1) Inadequate wages.

(2) Lack of knowledge regarding maternity and of skilled advice and treatment.

(3) The personal relation of husband and wife.

We have already dealt to some extent with the first cause. Thirty shillings a week for a manual worker is reckoned to be “good wages,” and there are, of course, thousands of men earning far less than that. Now, what most people do not realise is that 30s. a week is itself a wage utterly inadequate for rearing a large or even small family. It is inadequate because the whole burden is placed upon the woman who has to bring up a family on 30s., and that burden is excessive. She can only do it at all by incessant labour which inevitably cuts her off from every higher human activity except one. That one which is left to her is maternal affection, and the wonder is that even that endures as it does the strain of poverty, overwork, and illness.

The second cause, the lack of knowledge on the part of the women, receives remarkable testimony in these letters. Again and again the writers come back to this subject. They are convinced of the evils that resulted to themselves and their children from their own ignorance of the functions and duties of motherhood. And there can be no doubt that they are right. Much of the suffering entailed in maternity, much of the damage to the life and health of women and children, would be got rid of if women married with some knowledge of what lay before them, and if they could obtain medical advice and supervision during the time of pregnancy and motherhood. It is not the women’s fault that they are ignorant, for the possibilities of knowledge have not been within their reach.

The personal relation of husband and wife is a subject as difficult as it is delicate. Reading these letters one is often struck by the fact that that relation remains so good under the most adverse circumstances. But despite the extraordinary loyalty of the writers, there is clearly a consciousness among them that the position of a woman not only impairs the value of that relationship, but is directly responsible for some of the evils we are considering. In plain language, both in law and in popular morality, the wife is still the inferior in the family to the husband. She is first without economic independence, and the law therefore gives the man, whether he be good or bad, a terrible power over her. Partly for this reason, and partly because all sorts of old half-civilised beliefs still cling to the flimsy skirts of our civilisation, the beginning and end of the working woman’s life and duty is still regarded by many as the care of the household, the satisfaction of man’s desires, and the bearing of children. We do not say that this is the case in every working-class home, or that there are not hundreds of husbands who take a higher view of married life and practise it. What we do say is that these views are widely held, often unconsciously, and are taken advantage of by hundreds of men who are neither good men nor good husbands and that even where there is no deliberate evil or viciousness, these views are responsible for the overwork and physical suffering among women and for that excessive child-bearing, of which more will be said later.

The effects of the conditions we have described and of the causes which produce them can be conveniently grouped under three heads. They concern, first the woman herself, secondly the children borne by her, thirdly the children that remain unborn of her. So far we have deliberately insisted only upon the evil effects upon the women themselves, and it still remains to insist upon them. The disastrous results of maternal ill-health and overwork upon the children cannot be exaggerated, but in the contemplation of them, people are too apt to forget that the mother herself is an individual with the right to “equality of opportunity,” which is the right as a human being to be given the opportunity of understanding and enjoying those things which alone make life tolerable to humanity.

It was perhaps inevitable that the mother should have been publicly overlooked, for the isolation of women in married life has, up to now, prevented any common expression of their needs. They have been hidden behind the curtain which falls after marriage, the curtain which women are now themselves raising.