I have been reading Ellen Key's "Century of the Child," reviewed in this number, and am moved to add, in connection with that review, a "brief" for the New Motherhood.
Agreeing with almost all of that noble book and with the spirit of the whole of it, I disagree with its persistence in the demand for primitive motherhood—for the entire devotion of each and every mother to her own children—and disagree on the ground that this method is not the best for child service.
Among animals, where one is as good as another, "the mother"—each one of them—can teach her young all that they need to know. Her love, care and instruction are all-sufficient. In early stages of human life, but slightly differentiated, each mother was still able to give to her children all the advantages then known, and to teach them the few arts and crafts necessary of attainment. Still later, when apprenticeship taught trades, the individual mother was still able to give all the stimulus and instruction needed for early race culture—and did so, cheerfully.
But we have now reached a stage of social development when this grade of nurture is no longer sufficient, and no longer found satisfying either by mother or child. On the one hand, women are differentiating as human beings: they are no longer all one thing—females, mothers, and NOTHING ELSE. They are still females, and will remain so; still mothers, and will remain so: but they are also Persons of widely varying sorts, with interests and capacities which fit them for social service in many lines.
On the other hand, our dawning knowledge of child culture leads us to require a standard of ability in this work based on talent, love, natural inclination, long training and wide experience. It is no longer possible for the average woman, differentiated or undifferentiated, to fulfill the work of right training for babies and little children, unassisted. Moreover, the New Motherhood is belying to-day the dogma of the high cultural value of "the home" as a place of education for young children—an old world assumption which Miss Key accepts without question and intensifies.
The standards of the New Motherhood are these:
First: The fullest development of the woman, in all her powers, that she may be the better qualified for her duties of transmission by inheritance.
Second: The fullest education of the woman in all plain truths concerning her great office, and in her absolute duty of right selection—measuring the man who would marry her by his fitness for fatherhood; and holding him to the highest standards in his duty thereto.
Third: Intelligent recognition that child culture is the greatest of arts, that it requires high specialization and life service, and the glad entrance upon this service of those women naturally fitted for it.
Such standards as these recognize the individual woman's place as a human being, her economic independence, her special social service; and hold her a far more valuable mother for such development, able to give her children a richer gift by inheritance than the mothers of the past—all too much in femininity and too little in humanity.