Every woman should stay in bed for at least three weeks after confinement and should spend another three weeks convalescing before she assumes any domestic duty. This is a reasonable proposition when one considers the actual situation. There is an enormous amount of readjustment to be undertaken, and there is no way of hastening this process. There is, however, a way to assist nature and to prevent mistakes. That way is to remain in bed a sufficient length of time to allow proper contraction of the womb. While the ligaments and muscles are still lax, to not undertake any muscular effort that will overtax or overstrain them,—a condition that favors displacement by weakening the support of the womb. A woman cannot understand why she should stay in bed when she feels well enough to get up. It is, however, unjust to censure the sex on this account. I am convinced the fault lies with the medical profession who do not take time to explain, in language which a woman may understand, the important reasons why they should stay longer in bed despite the fact that they do feel well.
The Existence of the Average Mother.—In considering this subject it is necessary to give some serious thought to the domestic and financial circumstances of the thousands and thousands of average mothers. Every observing, thinking person knows that the average mother's existence is more or less of a never-ending tragedy. Physically, mentally, and spiritually, they are victims of unalterable economic and social exigencies. They are compelled, because of ignorance, to live an unsanitary and unhygienic existence. The care of home and children, and maybe the unappreciative and inconsiderate attention of a careless and vindictive husband, add to the incidental worries,—fraying her nerves and disposition,—of the ordinary routine of a cheerless, hopeless life. Add to this experience the enormous drain of frequent child bearing upon her vitality, and we have a picture with which every physician is familiar.
Can such a woman possibly observe the essential rules of the hygiene of pregnancy? Has she the time and the means to build up her reserve energy and strength to competently undertake the duties of maternity or motherhood? Is she physically fit to give birth to a child? After it is all over can she devote the time to permit nature to do her share of the physical readjustment? Can she afford, or will she be permitted to remain in bed long enough to allow conditions to be favorable to getting up without "taking a chance"? Inasmuch as her muscular tone is poor, her strength depleted, her vitality wasted, her ambition and hope at a low ebb, nature should be given a longer time, under the most favorable hygienic and domestic conditions, to help in the problem of readjustment, because her whole future, as an efficient machine, as wife, as mother, as home-maker, and as an economic individuality, is dependent upon how this crisis is met. This is the most important problem which an enlightened civilization has before it. It is the supreme eugenic task, and it is the most pressing and the most vital question for statesmen to solve. No man can deny that the permanency of the state is dependent upon the function of motherhood, yet motherhood is conducted by unskilled labor—labor, the quality of which no business would tolerate. We also know that the health of the workman has become an economic problem. Capital finds that labor is of better quality, and consequently more remunerative in every sense, if the environment is conducive to happiness and health. Yet motherhood, the most important labor in the world, upon which the very existence of the state depends, in addition to being performed by unskilled labor, is undertaken by physically unfit and frequently unwilling laborers, in an environment which is a disgrace to civilization and which cannot be duplicated in the whole realm of the brute world. This is the quality of labor, the products of which constitute the state.
If anyone is disposed to believe that this is an over-drawn picture, let him study the facts brought out in the recent patent medicine investigation. It was found that one small, unimportant, quack medical company had under treatment at one time (the day the government closed it up) 200,000 women, suffering exclusively from female diseases. How many similar cases must there be to support the large advertising concerns, whose tentacles reach to the remotest corners of the country and who limit their activity and cater to "diseases of women" only. Let him also give some thought to the fact that no specialty in the whole field of legitimate medical practice has grown with such enormous strides, or is as remunerative to the ordinary physician as the department of "diseases of women."
Female Diseases Are Avoidable.—If, as has been asserted, the great majority of these ailments are traceable to causes which are avoidable, what is the remedy? In one word it is "Enlightenment." We must educate the ordinary mother who is so busy over her wash tubs and babies that she has no time to seek information upon subject which she doesn't even know exist, who does not even know how to feed her baby as well as the scrubbiest cat does her kitten, who does not know what eugenics means and is interested in it even less. We must stop limiting our talks to theorizing in clubs and societies. We must carry the tidings to the firesides of those hundreds of thousands of women who would listen and act, but who do not know what to do or how to correct their faults.
There is another feature of this subject which should be recalled in this connection. It has already been gone into in detail in the article on eugenics. There are many thousands of women who are compelled to fight the battle of life, upon whom an unjust disease has been grafted, which is sapping their strength and vitality, and which they do not appreciate or understand. Husbands infect wives unwittingly, wreck their constitutions, blast their hope of ever having a child, and then heap upon them abuse for an inability for which they are themselves directly responsible. Many homes are desecrated in this way and the real culprit is never suspected. Many women, who begin their married life under the most auspicious conditions so far as physical fitness or temperamental quality is concerned, have their health, and happiness, and success utterly ruined, and after spending a miserable, wretched existence, have their hope of maternity forever blasted on the operating table. The story of "the wife" has never been told. It is God's riddle.
Women Who Don't Want Children.—Sometimes the woman is at fault. Many young wives begin married life with the intention of not having a child for a year or two. They don't want to be tied down too soon. They want some fun themselves. They are willing to become the legal mistress of a man, but they are not willing to assume the responsibilities of married life. It is difficult to understand the ethics of this type of morality. I have always given these young wives credit with simply not knowing what they were doing. Either their education or their common sense is lamentably deficient, or what is still worse, their mother was the wrong kind of a woman. If these unfortunate young wives have no regard for the cultivation of a good conscience, they should at least have some regard for their own health. From a purely selfish standpoint,—the standpoint of efficiency and success,—one would imagine these women would be unwilling to risk their whole future physical welfare on the chance of immunity—and it is a small chance.
Abuse of the Procreative Function.—In order to carry out this programme, various means are brought into requisition. In many cases I have known the wife has compelled the husband to wear devices which rendered conception impossible. This is a highly reprehensible procedure. If continued for any length of time it will seriously affect the husband's nervous system and general health, as this act is simply a form of self-abuse. Any husband who will tolerate such imposition is beginning married life wrong. He will pay a high price for his complacency. Any woman who suggests or acquiesces in such an arrangement is a moral degenerate and is absolutely unworthy of ever becoming a mother.
Some women buy expensive and fantastic syringes and proceed to abuse themselves with strong antiseptic solutions. This will result in killing the sensitiveness of the terminal nerves and end in depriving themselves of the pleasure with which a wise Providence endowed the procreative act. If the element of sexual incompetency enters the home of a young couple, it is the beginning of the end and each chapter of the story will be a worse hell than the one just ended. The wise husband will see that its cause will not be tolerated or begun in his family.
If pregnancy should unwittingly occur they do not hesitate to adopt drastic means to "bring themselves around." They will procure some prescription which may have gone the rounds as a "marvel" but which always fortunately fails when they need it most. Thus they subject their system to the shock of violent medication and lay up for themselves in the future untold miseries. If these means fail, they go to "a woman whom they know" who "brings them around." If these young wives only knew what they were doing they could not be bought at any price to submit to such surgical tragedies. The least probable result will be that when the time arrives and circumstances are opportune to have a baby, and when it is their dearest wish to be a mother, they will discover that they no longer possess the ability to conceive. Many homes have been rendered childless in just this way. You cannot violate the laws of nature without paying the penalty in some way, and it is usually a sad reckoning.