MOTHERHOOD

MOTHERHOOD
AND THE
RELATIONSHIPS OF THE SEXES

BY
C. GASQUOINE HARTLEY

Author of “The Truth About Women,” “The Age of Mother-Power,” etc.

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1917

Copyright, 1917, by
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.

Dedication

TO LESLIE

In writing at last this book on Motherhood, which for so many years has had a place in my thoughts, one truth has forced itself upon me; the predominant position of Woman in her natural relation to the race. The mother is the main stream of the racial life. All the hope of the future rests upon this faith in motherhood.

To whom, then, but to you, my son, can I dedicate my book? You came to me when I was still seeking out a way in the futility of Individual ends; you reconciled my warring motives and desires; you brought me a new guiding principle. You taught me that the Individual Life is but as a bubble or cluster of foam on the great tide of humanity. I knew that the redemption of Woman rests in the growing knowledge and consciousness of her responsibility to the race.

CONTENTS

PART I
INTRODUCTORY

It is now a well-established truism to say that the most injurious influences affecting the physical condition of young children arise from the habits, customs and practices of the people themselves rather than from external surroundings or conditions. The environment of the infant is its mother. Its health and physical fitness are dependent primarily upon her health, her capacity in domesticity, and her knowledge of infant care and management. Thus the fundamental requirement in regard to this particular problem is healthy motherhood and the art and practice of mother-craft. Given a healthy and careful mother we are on the high road to securing a healthy infant; from healthy infancy we may expect healthy childhood, and from healthy childhood may be laid the foundations of a nation’s health.

“Education and Infant Welfare.”

Annual Report for 1914 of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER I
A RETROSPECT—THE POSITION OF WOMEN BEFORE THE GREAT EUROPEAN WAR

The overwhelming events of the Great War—Change in my own views—Primitive conception of the relative position of the two sexes—The war divides the feminist struggle into two periods—The demand of woman to live her own life—The merits and demerits of the Suffrage Movement—The vote gospel a drug swallowed to still the craving for something vitally needed—Women swept out of their own interests into a swirling sea of desire—Emotion the strong guide to action—Militancy—A tremendous adventure—The mob spirit—Sowing a crop of feminine wild oats—What has been gained—Much experience and some knowledge—Experience indispensable as a foundation of a broader feminism—Solidarity of women—War came like a thunderbolt from a clear sky—The clamour and deception of meetings and propaganda.

CHAPTER I
A RETROSPECT
THE POSITION OF WOMEN BEFORE THE GREAT EUROPEAN WAR

“There is one profound weakness in your movement towards emancipation. Your whole argument is based on an acceptance of male values.”—Dr. Ananda Coomaraswary.

As I set out to write yet another book on Woman, I find it necessary first to decide whether the primary interest should rest in the eternal instincts, passions and typical character of womanhood, or in women’s actions and characters as affected by the unusual conditions of the time in which my work is undertaken. It is a decision by no means so simple as it would seem.

Always the realisation of what is immediately before us tends by its vivid nearness to give an over-estimation of its significance. But to read life in this way is to understand very little. Something must be done to clear our vision so that we may take a wider view. The present, after all, is but the day at which the past and the future meet.

Yet there are times when some overwhelming event so sharply changes the present as to obscure all the shining wonder of life. And at no period in history has this been more true than it has been in Europe in the last two years. Nowhere and never in the world can there have been a period of deeper or more rapid change. War came upon us without warning, like a thunderbolt from a clear sky; and in a day the outlook of life was changed.

Now, this thought of surprising and quick-coming change brings me to something it is necessary for me to say. My book should have been begun many months back, at the very beginning of the war. But here I have to make a confession. The war caused in my mind a confusion that for some time left me extremely uncertain upon many things about which hitherto I have been sure. It has been a war of miracles in so far as it has made real much that seemed outside the world of possibility. Our sluggard imaginations have been stirred by an appeal that has aroused many primitive emotions.

I recall the opening sentence in the last book that I wrote on Woman.[1] “The twentieth century is the age of Woman. Some day, it may be, it will be looked back upon as the golden age—the dawn, some say, of feminine civilisation.”

Now, as I read this statement, which, when I wrote it, I felt to be true, it appears so wrong as to be almost ridiculous. That sort of dream is over.

What a fantastic picture it was that Suffrage militancy made for itself before the outbreak of the war. We pictured a golden age which was to come with the self-assertion of women; an age in which most of those problems that have vexed mankind from the dawn of history were to be solved automatically by a series of quick penny-in-the-slot reforms, that would follow on the splendour and superiority of woman’s rule. Militants, aflame for the reformation of man, discussed prostitution, the White Slave traffic, and all sex problems with a zeal that was partly pathological and partly the result of a Utopian dream.

Then, at the most crucial hour in the history of women’s struggle for power and political recognition, all this dream was arrested. In the stress of war, the promise of an accumulating betterment was swept down, even as a too-bright dawn that passes into storm; the ugly aspects of life sprang upon us with intensifying urgency. Yes, the sudden events of war seemed, for women, to have blotted out the present and the past, and to have made all action uncertain.

So it is always when life is stirred at its depths. The change was almost staggering. Women have had to learn many new and strange lessons; they are more changed than perhaps they themselves know.

There had come a time when, without any preparation, we women were brought back to the primitive conception of the relative position of the two sexes. Military organisation and battle afford the grand opportunity for the superior force capacity of the male. Again man was the fighter, the protector of woman and the home. And at once his power became a reality. The striking and praise-demanding work was done by men. And at the first violent change there seemed to be nothing for women beyond the patience of waiting and the service of sacrifice. Later, women have been called to step in to take the places of men, and there has been work for them to do of all kinds and in ever-increasing amount. But of this work, and the new conditions that have thereby arisen, I propose to speak in the next chapter. Here I am considering only the events that rushed upon women at the oncoming of war. And inevitably they were pushed aside into obscurity; they had to be content with unnoticed work that not infrequently was futile.

It is hard to step so suddenly out of the limelight. And women were acutely aware of this change in their prospects, and many of them expressed the situation with engaging frankness. Let me give a small illustration. I had occasion in the late summer of 1914, a few weeks after the war had started, to visit a friend. Some months had passed since I had previously seen her. At that time she was actively engaged in the suffrage campaign. Now, I found her knitting woollen comforters for the soldiers, and she was knitting them very badly. I expressed my surprise. Her answer to me was, “It is all that there is to do.” She then added this significant statement, “We women have had to learn our place.”

There was, of course, exaggeration in her remark. But it does, I believe, picture what happened in the thoughts of many women with the sudden ceasing of their active struggle for political recognition. It was a state of resigned surprise.

And may it not be that women had need of some lesson?

In the curious phases witnessed before the war, in that struggle which was but a more violent expression of the eternal effort at adjustment between the sexes, there were many strange signs to give pause and fear to all who think. Women did not, as I believe, realise the possible results of their sex rebellion. They did not sufficiently distinguish between those limitations and hardships which could comparatively easily be removed and those limitations and hardships which are due to the nature of their sex. Old traditions, without any discrimination, were cast aside in a violent seeking, and women broke out in unexpected ways, to fight nervously, carelessly, yet hungrily, as if they were trying to force the pace of progress.

Women are possessed of great elasticity and cleverness; they are, and possibly will always remain, more imitative than creative. And from this follows a very real danger, plainly arising from the quick feminine receptiveness which is at once the strength of women as well as the cause of their pitiable weakness. In every direction the new independence and work capacity of woman was proved in following and imitating men. Thus it was easy for women to externalise their life in every way, and to gain success in many different kinds of work. But the question has never been—could women do this, or do that, kind of work? rather it is—what work is it most worth while for them to do?

Wounded by the narrowness of their lives, women spent immense energy out of which much that is good has been gained. Much that was false has crumbled into ruins, but also much that was fine. What was wanting most was this: the complete absence in the entire programme of reform of any kind of feminine idealism.

Did women forget? I think that they did. The realm of woman was still splendid, still vast. Why, then, this rage against all restrictions? Why this continuous effort to obliterate the wise differences of sex?

In their violent seeking for life, women were ready to spend all to gain something which may well prove to be absolutely unnecessary to them. And to many it must have seemed that they wasted the whole of themselves only to lose something within themselves. There was much heroic fighting. Women robbed life for the sake of what they believed was freedom; yet may it not prove that they have been in love with that which is unattainable for women?

The demand of woman to “live her own life” brought, as it seems to some of us, a slavery not less strong or less evil than that from which an escape was sought. Women, however unconsciously, were suppressing themselves in new ways, and still doing things alien to themselves. This restless seeking was but a further foolish forgetting of the truth that the only freedom worth having is the freedom to be one’s self. All that women had promised themselves in a new order of existence must depend on their acceptance of the responsibilities and limitations of their womanhood. And by this I mean a full and glad acceptance of those physical facts of their organic constitution which make them unlike men, and should limit their capacity for many kinds of work. It can never be anything but foolishness to attempt to break down the real differences between the two sexes.

This may be a hard saying to some women: I believe that it is true.

It is necessary to emphasise this fact again, and yet again, because it is the almost complete disregard by women of their own sexual nature and its special needs that is the grave evil that is robbing us of life; this was also the inherent weakness in the Women’s Movement, which, so far from fulfilling the promise of its earlier period, had ceased, even before war brought us back to realities, to exert any widely representative or serious influence.

The predilection for wild pranks, which in this country marked the later efforts of women to gain political recognition, may, I think, be traced back to causes bent on crushing and levelling the sex characteristics. Women had not sufficiently valued themselves, and thus they ceased to care to be essentially feminine. Instead there was an insatiable desire to enjoy experience, arising from lack of disciplined culture and from excess of energy and idleness. It is manifest that militancy gave to women excitement and occupation.

And this avidity to know and feel and shine, to establish new contacts with life and affairs, was coupled also with that deeper seeking of the spirit which has robbed peace from the modern woman. Possibly such defects are essential to such a movement, a mere destructive phase in the process of renewing—a clearing of the ground. But the way to gain freedom is long and toilsome; it is a way that permits of no such energetic short cuts as the militant Suffragists would have achieved. Mixed up with all that was fine in their movement was an infinity of glitter and tinsel, vanity and restlessness. There was present always an intense and theatrical egotism, a yearning to make an impression and force applause at any cost.

There was, of course, another side—a side which most gladly I acknowledge. No movement that was founded merely on excitement would have overcome difficulties as the Suffrage movement did, nor could its members have worked and suffered as they did for a common end. There was always much even in the most mistaken militancy that was generous, ardent and wholesome. But these useful qualities were deformed by a want of proportion and sanity; by feelings run riot that made women impatient of all restraints, overweeningly sure of themselves, and incapable of facing troublesome facts or foreseeing the most certain consequences of their own actions. There is nothing here that should surprise us.

In many cases, perhaps in all, emotion is the sole and strong guide of our actions. At least, I am sure this is true of women. What we do is to invent reasons to justify acts to which we are impelled by some emotion arising from an instinctive need. I do not see how this can be avoided, nor do I at all regard it in itself as evil. Reason by itself too often is an excuse for doing nothing; it is the excuse of all those who take infinite care not to see in case they may come to feel. Reason alone never does anything; it is too reasonable. The necessary thing is first to feel. And the only possible method of guiding emotion is to realise its force and to use it successfully; not to take cover fearfully in avoidance of feeling.

There is, indeed, a very deep reason for this human need for emotion. The springs of our actions may be traced back in almost all cases to certain excitements arising from some need or desire of whose existence in ourselves we are in nine cases out of ten quite unconscious, but which (unless dammed up when the fear of an escape is always great and imminent) will find an expression in characteristic instinctive acts. And the most forcible human excitements are fear and anger: these exercise an energising influence on body and mind often leading to the accomplishment of quite extraordinary acts. Periods of intense excitement will yield a consciousness of overwhelming strength, so that the individual reaches a state of self-forgetfulness in which almost anything may be done. Almost every one must at some time have experienced this super-strength. And what is important to note is that at an opportunity for exercising these emotions, the most peaceable people have felt the stir of the primitive instincts of hate and fear, of anger and the desire to destroy and to hurt. They have developed—often to their own surprise—the destructive capacities of the fight-loving, danger-braving animal. And when such emotions seize on individuals in groups, their effect is greatly intensified and is felt by many who would be only slightly susceptible to such emotions when isolated.

This explains, I believe, the surprising revolt of women and how it was they broke out in such unexpected ways. There is in the sex an immense and unrecognised capacity for adventure, due to the surplus of energy unused that was so painfully present in the lives of many women, and to the expression of which the narrowness of their lives had afforded little opportunity. The danger here was strong for women, because in their lives, to a far greater extent than in the lives of men, there had been so many dammed-up channels of emotion. It is the things they might not do that had mattered for women, and not the things they had been allowed to do. Then the fever of this anger caught hold of them, and they became conscious of an obscure travail in their souls. Here, indeed, were causes of unrest; here were the first shadows of some subtle decay.

The suffrage movement was a search—yes, a wild search—for something to bridge the gap, for something to do that mattered, something to open the gates to adventure. The militant revolt to many women proved an exciting game. This may appear strange; but what I want you to mark is that such violence was a necessary thing for women. They felt impelled to get into their lives something that meant movement, excitement, joy, and the stinging of adventure.

And they have been happy.

To many people, and especially to men, it seemed that in adopting militancy women were departing entirely from their womanhood. But it is just here they were mistaken; they did not grasp the fact that women had felt injured, and that this injury aroused in them an excitement of anger forcing wild action. Women, too, I think, have not themselves understood the real causes of their actions. It was impossible to follow the procession of excuses by which the militant apologists attempted to justify their often senseless outrages on the law without realising how erroneously they comprehended their own movement. They honestly thought that they were espousing the cause of Woman’s freedom; it never struck them that they were not working for this, at least that this was not the motive which impelled their actions of violence. They did not know that they were taking the quickest way to fill lives left empty, and to express in action the clamorous excitement that surged within them. It is never easy for women to be quite honest even to themselves.

Manifestly this violent seeking was but an outgrowth of woman’s fierce race-protecting passion; an unconscious expression of that instinct to give life which rules not only in the body but in the spirit of woman. Many women fought without truly wanting to fight, and merely because their deep hidden instincts demanded something on which to expend themselves.

There was in the Suffrage movement a wise policy of action. And this using of women’s stored-up energy, however wastefully it may have been expended, inflamed in them a gladness that made easy all their payments of imprisonment, of forcible feeding, and even of death. In militancy women gained an object and a satisfaction: they were the centre of something that depended on them. Their movement, with all its absurdities, was a live thing in their hands. Thus the members gave to the cause their labour and their enthusiasm, and, because they had given it so much, they came to love it. Their energetic organisation came to stand above them like a big, greedy child, grabbing at anything and everything. It robbed from them the flying hours of life, little by little devouring them. But in so doing new fuel was thrown on the dead flames of women’s passions. For they gained that for which they were seeking. A new, strange opportunity for sacrifice was here, supplying the need which, however unrecognised and denied, is the fundamental desire of woman. This was the joy that was gained by the Suffrage martyrs—something vivifying, flooding dead lives with colour, action and emotion. Yes, these women yielded themselves to their movement with joy, just as a woman yields herself to her lover that she may give life to his child.

And then all this audacious, hardly understood movement was brought to an end by war. Militarism put a swift close to militancy. As far as women were concerned, their hope of forcing political recognition fell to confusion. The war came like a great shadow across the whole bright complex problem of the future. So much was this so that writing of militancy now feels almost like referring to a forgotten event that happened in the very far past. It would be easy to pass over the whole Suffrage movement in silence. And, indeed, I should have done this if I did not believe that its inner effect on women had been more lasting than the outward gain.

I wish to emphasise the change that came to women in the period immediately before the war. The Suffrage movement was a collective movement in which the individual had to win honour in self-forgetfulness and in group work. And this co-operation for the gaining of the Vote carried with it also a co-operation of service and a great development of mutual helpfulness. And from this it has followed very directly that many women have turned their backs for ever on petty interests and disloyalties to one another, and have recovered a quite fresh sense of honourable emulations and loyalty.

This concord and unity in duty had much the same quality of joy that sends the soldier to face death. It stirred something very deep in women’s nature. Militancy brought a rare chance of happiness: it made women aware of their souls. Through it they first found escape from the deadness of sterile lives and gave up separate little aims that made conflicts between woman and woman. The petty strifes of no issue and no importance were changed into one struggle that must be won; and by expanding from an existence of aimlessness and stagnation into one of common purpose and advance, women gained the chance they were seeking of adventure and sacrifice for body and spirit. No wonder, then, that they gave themselves up to a great holiday of the emotions. This may have expressed itself basely in the wrecking of property and much that was useless, but it was not all base. In the lives of numberless women it has meant something much more than hatred and vanity, or self-deceiving work.

Militancy has been a great as well as a very little thing. As a movement it was foolish and morally perverse, no doubt, but its members were morally passionate. The disorder of purpose, the spectacle of wasted effort and folly, which filled many of us with anger—all this did bring gladness and liberation of spirit to the women themselves. They felt that their fighting was noble and glorious, which it was not, but they felt this with a power that came from the perverse conviction of their whole nature. And we shall need a conviction as passionate as this, but not perverse, before women can in the same way be won again to an equal passion of sacrifice and service.

And this very rapture of escape from an aimless existence was in itself the sign of the failure in women’s lives, a proof that there was, indeed, something to be escaped from. We may not claim more than this for the Suffrage movement.

War, such war as is now loose upon the world, came to accomplish its miracles, acting swiftly and almost without women knowing what was being done. The reality of life and of death has shaken up everything, and the quick pressure of events is changing all the conditions of life.

Let us try to see a little more clearly.

It has been a common mistake that amongst civilised peoples intellectual views and peace interests have superseded the primitive fighting instincts. But the cultural period in which wars have been exceptional and peace the normal state has been short, and is, indeed, only a span when compared with the long history when men had to fight in order to live. This violence was a necessary phase in human, as in all animal, development. War is only an organised and specialised replacement of this indiscriminate and blind struggle for life. It is probable that the instinct of battle was once for all developed and fixed; and the question arises, as to whether we shall ever get far away from this deeply rooted stimulus to action. It may even be a condition of life that we should not get too far away from it.

We have had a striking example of the enthusiasm and interest evoked by situations of conflict and danger, in the intense and primitive emotions revived in all of us by the war. War is the thunder and voice of the trumpet without which the wisest moral and political ideas never attract sufficient attention to lead to difficult action. For the world will not listen to a truth until bloodshed and violence have awakened its sluggard imagination.

And in these new circumstances we all, women as well as men, have been caught by a powerful excitement. The war has us in its grip, there is no other thought, no other remedy, no other interest. In many ways war is the most uniting of all forces. We are all joined in one work of service and co-operation. No man or woman can turn away, skulk in the individual garden of their own petty interests, because they do not want to be bothered. Something fresh has come, something that had to come, and all that went before is changed.

We see thus that war has brought to all of us a succession of disturbing revelations of reality. And the lesson has come most severely on those whose lives have been most unreal. Here is a force against which there is no argument. We are involved in a struggle of the most momentous dimensions. No one as yet can mark the limits of destruction, and in the harshness of the war’s lesson the struggle of women for sex mastery at once became uninteresting.

For hundreds of centuries and myriads of generations the life of fighting has gone on for men. But women’s opportunity waits upon leisure and peace. The savagery of war brings the two sexes back to primitive values. And the truth is forced upon us; we realise the gulf which lies between the man and the woman.

All our days we women have been denying this separation, and, enslaved by male ideals, have sought to break through the barriers of sex. We have been pursuing power, wrapping ourselves up in one garment after another, calling these coverings romance, adventure, work, individual development, and what not; now we have come in our hearts to know the falsity of it all. Somewhere in the confusion of war stark facts awaited us. We had to face life as a reality, not as theories, or movements, or sex development.

For many of us women the lesson has been sharp and sudden. War leapt upon us as it were a beast out of some hidden darkness; leapt upon us, holding us powerless, tearing our illusions into shreds with its blood-stained claws.

And on a sudden women were held by a new, quick-striking, absolute realisation of the truth. They had not seen it nor felt like this before. But this beast of war crouching in front of them said to women, “Always I have been beside you waiting for this hour. I have waited for a long time. You have struggled; you have fought; you have played; you have come to think yourselves important in strange ways, meddling in all the affairs of the world. This you have done, and you have learnt much of the means of life, but you have everything yet to re-learn about life itself.

“In all your struggles for political recognition and in all your work reality has not touched you. You have feared to be yourselves. You have been ashamed of your sexual differentiation. You have gathered power around you to pretend that you were the same as men, your strength as their strength, that your work was the same as their work. You have mocked at those qualities that were your own, that set you apart from men, denying your womanhood. You have suffered. But you will not suffer less by any such efforts to escape. Who can wonder that you have been dissatisfied? For you have wasted in haste the power that is your own. And conscious of, though not understanding, the want in your own lives, you have been deeply conscious of the discords in the rest of the world. The instinct of motherhood has been strong within you, and wasted, it has not ceased to torment you.

“You have gained excitement and applause, much work you have done and had many triumphs. It has seemed a big thing. Yet, after all, has the gain been worth the payment? Have women indeed escaped from their prison? Think, do you not know deep in your hearts that its bars have not been broken?”

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER II
THE POSITION OF WOMEN AS AFFECTED BY THE WAR

The new conditions brought by the war—Seriousness of the position—My object in writing a book on motherhood—The Annual Report of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education for 1914—The condemnation of motherhood shown by the facts of this Report—The greatness of the evil that we are permitting—Women ill-trained as women and incapacitated for their supreme duty—The inquiry into the conditions of working-class motherhood made by the Women’s Co-operative Guild—The miserable health of the mothers of our working classes—This one of the greatest dangers and social crimes of the day—The health of women must be safeguarded—The problem greatly increased by the special war conditions—Report issued by the Health of Munition Workers Committee on “Employment of Women” and “Hours of Work”—The danger of overworking women—Woman sows in her flesh for the race—She needs to store energy, not to expend it—The confusion and failure in efficient motherhood—We have got to find what this failure is.

CHAPTER II
THE POSITION OF WOMEN AS AFFECTED BY THE WAR

“To be mothers were women created and to be fathers men.”—Sayings of Manu.

I have spoken in the last chapter of the changes that came in the thoughts and attention of women in the first few months of the war. We saw how war spoke with a more powerful voice, and the women who had been snatching at power felt the quickening of a quite new spirit of humbleness. That uplifting was the great opportunity. Women discovered something stronger and more important than themselves.

Our inquiry now is this: What has happened since then? what fresh conditions is war developing or likely to develop? And first it is well to note the strange power of war to stir us into action. Two years ago it would have seemed impossible to feed the hungry and clothe the ragged and to turn all the wasters and slackers into vigorous heroes. Now these things have been done; and much that in peace time seemed a far-off possibility has become a present fact.

War has a terribly effective way of dealing not only with men but with their problems. And one result is that a quite new interest is being taken in motherhood and child welfare.

England can no longer afford to be wasteful of the lives of her citizens. She has been wasteful in the past, and her new mood of caring must be made a conviction and a purpose.

As a result of this world war there has been and will continue to be an immense sacrifice of men, much in excess of any wars in the past history of nations, and it is evident that every belligerent country must lose from her best male stock; and it is not only the physically fittest, but the mentally and morally fittest, that are sacrificed.

For years to come the birth rates will be lowered throughout the greater part of Europe. In our own land the situation is one that must give fear. Our death rate has been very high in numbers and in quality, while at the same time our birth rate has been the lowest on record. Even the civilian death rate has risen; and, worst and most menacing of all, the infantile mortality rate has risen two per thousand above the average of the last two years.

Put these grave facts together, and, with even a fraction of realisation of their meaning, it becomes clear that we have to face a wastage of life unparalleled in the annals of our race. What are we going to do?

Now, I am not one who believes in the advantage, or even in the possibility of any forced excess in procreative activity. Numbers are of less importance to a nation than the moral, mental, and physical superiority of its men. The wholesale waste of these qualities in war is just what must be of such enormous menace to the future. The nation that does nothing to meet this and to ensure as far as possible the superiority of the next generation of her children will gain nothing even from victory, for it will mean only defeat in the future.

The issues of life and death have by the lurid war-light been forced upon our attention. And again I ask, What are we going to do?

The answer is plain. This terrible loss of life and of the forces of life abroad in war must be made good by a more intelligent and efficient care of the young lives at home. This we must do, and we must do it quickly. It is possible for a nation by such increased care of the rising generation of its children to compensate itself for the loss of lives during the war within a comparatively short period after the close of war. Indeed, if we have the will, as we possess the means, we can make it true that because of the war there will be more people—yes, and healthier and happier—in this land of ours in ten or fifteen years’ time than if the war had never happened.

This is what we can do. Shall we do it? The answer is with women. We can, within limits, do almost what we please. There has come to us a great opportunity, and out of the gates of death itself we may snatch life.

Much waits to be done, not only in the actual saving of infantile life, but further, by providing effective and prompt remedies to all bad conditions of living, so that the health and the mental capacity and moral character of the children dependent upon these conditions, or related to them, may be raised and maintained at a right standard of efficiency. Then we have to realise that more even than this is needed, and that all our efforts will fail of their full effect unless we go further back than the child, and the problem of the mother be frankly faced. The question of infantile mortality and child welfare is really the question of motherhood. And there is now no ultimate need of the State greater, more imperative, than this of securing a more enlightened motherhood.

This need is the reason for my book. I know that the days of war are not a time suitable either for the writing or reading of long books. Yet I offer no apology, so convinced I am of the urgency of this matter of saving motherhood that I had to write.

The object of my book is twofold. First, to put forward a fresh plea for assigning that high value to motherhood in practice which at present it receives only in words. This would ensure at once right conditions for all mothers and all children; it would also serve better than anything else to do away with many age-old mistakes, misunderstandings and disorder. In the second place (or rather in connection with all that is said), I wish to set forth what seem to me to be the chief causes that hitherto have hindered motherhood and bound my sex from the full enjoyment of life; and to suggest that the reason of this bondage is not, as is so often stated, the aggressive selfishness of men, but is due much more to women’s own actions, to their absurdly wrong education and entire misunderstanding of the sexual life; a misunderstanding which has decided the direction in which they believed the freedom they have been so ardently, yet wastefully seeking, was to be found.

So that we may understand our present failures better, I have attempted to seek causes and to suggest reasons. My inquiry reaches back before human parenthood and examines the parental instinct in its making; it shows the way and for what reason this instinct of caring for the young became fixed and stronger in the mother than in the father. It sets out from this beginning, and, after a short chapter on primitive motherhood, passes to the consideration of women and the home, marriage as it affects parenthood, the unmarried mother and sexual relationships outside of marriage, as well as other allied questions. It tries to offer a practical solution to some of the problems involved, in particular the problem of education and new ideals of conduct and sexual health for all girls. It recommends a revolution in our schools and methods of training; changes that must, as I believe, be made, unless we are prepared to accept as inevitable the decay of motherhood, as well as an increasing failure of happiness in marriage, with its resulting antagonism between sex and sex.

But to return to this present introductory chapter. I have upon my study table two documents. The one is that from which I have taken the quotation placed before this opening section of my book. It is the Annual Report for 1914,[2] of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education. The second consists of two pamphlets on the Health of Munition Workers, treating of the Hours of Work and Employment of Women, both prepared by the command of Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, and published in connection with the important illustrated Report, which shows and explains all the numerous and different engineering operations on which women are now engaged in munition work. The object of the Report is to attract more women workers; but it is with the two pamphlets I am concerned. For the present, however, I shall leave them, returning to them later in order to show how closely they are connected with the other Report, which treats of infant mortality, child disease and neglect, and all the wastage of motherhood. It is on the shameful significance of the facts given in this Report that we must now fix our attention.

It would be difficult to find a more complete condemnation of motherhood. The Report is full of condemning facts. For, let us not disguise it from ourselves that, in spite of much that has been done, many efforts and real improvements, motherhood remains very evil; about the lives of little children lurk cruelties, disease, dirt, and neglect that ought not to be permitted.

Let me take one group of facts from this Report; facts that cry out to us all how urgently wrong things are. In the year 1914, 92,166 children died in England and Wales under one year of age. Think of the wanton wastage: in every thousand children born one hundred and five have died. Their number of the year’s toll of new lives reaches close up to the recorded deaths for the first fifteen months of war![3] And the evil does not end here, for the bad conditions which kill these babies act also in maiming and disabling, or at least in lowering the health standard, of many of the children who live, and thus add to the number of those who die in the early years of childhood, or survive only with enfeebled bodies and defective minds. And, further, no account is taken here of the lives that are lost before birth takes place: I mean the still births and abortions, the ante-natal deaths of which no record is kept. Our tendency is to assume that life begins at the birth, whereas the life of each child starts at the moment of its conception. Thus the birth rate is really the survival from the conception rate. And the destruction of life before birth from adverse ante-natal conditions is probably larger than the death rate in the first post-natal year.

You will see that the problem is sufficiently grave. And this unnecessary waste—for it is unnecessary—is going on every year, and will go on until we begin to feel it strongly enough to take action to prevent it. It can be prevented. The chief causes of infant mortality are briefly two—

(1) Poor physique of the mother or inheritable disease in one or other parent, causing premature births with weakened constitutions and congenital defects in the children.

(2) Ignorance of mothers in appropriate infant care and low standard of home life; bad feeding and insanitary conditions are accountable for the greater number of child deaths.

We find the infantile death rate is much higher in urban communities than it is in rural England. It is well to give a table to show this—

Consider the reason for this difference in the death rates—114 deaths per 1000 in the great towns, 104 in the smaller towns, and 93 in the country districts. Does not this prove that children are killed by the conditions into which they are born. It is obvious that urbanisation, with all that it means of unhealthy living, with factory work and the employment of women, exerts a profound effect on the lives and health of little children.

A portion of infant and child mortality represents, I well know, the removal from life of diseased children who ought never to have been born, and would not have been born under different sexual conditions, for this, above all, is a question of instructed motherhood. I am not forgetting this side of the problem. But these children, doomed to death from the time they are conceived, represent a fraction only of our infant mortality. The vast majority of babies are born healthy; it is we who kill them. Though the fact of the falling birth rate is being shouted aloud with an ever-increasing fear and insistence, the plain, simple fact is neglected; it is absurd to go on having more babies if we can’t first care enough to keep alive the babies that we have. There are still too many births for our civilisation to look after; we are still unfit to be trusted with a rising birth rate.[4]

Let us consider now how our neglect acts on the children who fight through the first years of infancy. I can take a few facts only chosen almost at hazard from the mass of similar evidence in the Educational Report. In London, out of 294,000 children medically examined, 101,000 or nearly half, were found to be in need of treatment. In England and Wales 391,352 children of school age were medically attended. A summary of the returns shows a wide prevalence of verminous uncleanness, the percentage being 18.1 per cent. for the heads and 11.8 per cent. for the bodies of the children. Again the figures show unclean conditions to be most prevalent in the towns, in some instances the percentage rising as high as thirty unclean children out of each hundred children examined. I ask you to think what this implies.

The nutrition of the children is equally bad, the different counties varying in percentage between five and twenty. Stockton-on-Tees has the unenviable distinction of standing the highest—thirty out of each hundred of its children showing signs of malnutrition. The same Report shows the fatal prevalence among the children of rickets, eye disease, discharging ears, and diseases of the throat and nose.[5] The proportion of defective teeth is higher than any malady and often exceeds seventy and eighty per cent. of the school entrants.

We should note that insufficient or unsuitable food is the chief cause of malnutrition and illness in children, and investigations seem to show that wrong feeding is the more prevalent. Thus Dr. Gould, writing of the children he examined in Bolton, says, “it is obvious that defective nutrition is due to dietetic ignorance on the parents’ part or to parental neglect.” Dr. Macdonald of Northampton, reporting on 448 cases examined in 1914, corroborates this view, stating in the course of his report of adenoidal children, “Many are suffering, not from insufficiency of food (that, I think, far from common in Northampton), but from bad food and badly prepared food.” Again, Dr. Orr of Shrewsbury writes, “The subject of unsuitable food is a very important one. The women of the working classes often show a surprising ignorance of the proper methods of cooking for family requirements, a want of knowledge of the value and suitability of food stuffs, and too often a general incompetence respecting household management.”[6] I may add as corroboration an instance from my own knowledge; one that would be comic, if it were not so piteous. A party of poor workings girls were invited to a meal; they were asked what they would like to have to eat. They answered, “Bread and pickles,” and added, “Pickles are so sustaining!”

Who can doubt the greatness of the evil that is going on? I could add many more facts at least equally impressive with the few that I have given, all witnessing to weakness in the constitution of our children, to disease and dirt, and every other painful result of ignorance and neglect. And does not all this speak of unfit motherhood; of women ill-trained as women and incapacitated for their supreme duty? There is failure somewhere. We have to find out where that failure is.

For I wish to make it very clear that I am not blaming the individual mother. What I do blame are the conditions of our civilisation that have called her into being. I have before me the admirable but infinitely distressing book, Maternity: Letters from Working Women. They are the outcome of an inquiry into the condition of working-class motherhood made by the Women’s Co-operative Guild. Nothing that I can say, or that any other writer could say, can have the reality and the bitter vividness of these letters written by the women themselves. I am able to quote only scattered sentences taken from a few letters just as they come and without special selection.

(1) Mother Injured in Girlhood

“Through being left without a mother when a baby—father was a very large farmer and girls were expected to do men’s work—I, at the age of sixteen, lifted weights that deformed the pelvis bones, therefore making confinement a very difficult case. I have five fine healthy girls, but the boys have all had to have the skull-bones taken away to get them past the pelvis.… I wish more could be done to train growing girls to be more careful.”

(2) A Wage-Earning Mother

“I myself had some very hard times, as I had to go out to work in the mill. I was a weaver and we had a lot of lifting to do. My first baby was born before its time, from me lifting my piece off the loom onto my shoulder.… If I had been able to take care of myself I should not have had to suffer as I did for seven weeks before the baby was born, and for three months after, and then there was the baby suffering as well, as he was a weak little thing for a long time, and cost pounds that could have been saved had I been able to stay at home and look after myself.”

(3) A Mother’s Injury To Her Daughters

“I am very pleased to say that, having one of the best of husbands, I suffered nothing during pregnancy, only ailments of my own caused through my mother having to work in the brickyard during her pregnancy with me. That, I am sorry to say, is the cause of my own and my sister’s illness … and that thing will go on until women give up hard work during pregnancy.”

(4) Worked too Hard as a Girl

“My third child was born nine years after the second.… She lived six hours, and was convulsed from birth. The doctor’s opinion was that I had worked too hard as a girl lifting heavy weights, therefore weakening the whole system.”

(5) The Results of Poverty

“I think a great deal of suffering is caused to the mother and child during pregnancy by lack of nourishment and rest, combined with bad housing arrangements. The majority of working women before marriage have been used to standing a great deal at their work, bringing about much suffering which does not tell seriously until after marriage, particularly during pregnancy.… I believe that bad housing arrangements have a very bad effect on mothers during pregnancy. I know of streets of houses where there are large factories built, taking the whole of the daylight away from the kitchen, where the woman spends the best part of her life. On the top of this you get the continual grinding of machinery. The mother wonders what she has to live for; if there is another baby coming she hopes it will be dead when it is born. The result is she begins to take drugs.… All this tells on the woman, physically and mentally; can you wonder at women turning to drink?”

(6) Another Case of Poverty and Overwork

“The first part of my life I spent in a screw factory from six in the morning till five at night, and after tea used to do my washing and cleaning. I only left two weeks and three weeks before my first children were born. After that I took in lodgers and washing, and always worked up till an hour or so before baby was born. The results were that three of my girls suffer with their insides. None are able to have a baby. One dear boy was born ruptured on account of my previous hard work.”

(7) The Evil of Sexual Ignorance

“Judging from my own experience, a fair amount of knowledge at the commencement of pregnancy would do a lot of good. One may have a good mother who would be willing to give information, but to people like myself your mother is the last person you would talk to about yourself or your state.… I have learnt the most useful things since my children grew up. The idea that you impress the child all through with your habits and ways, or that its health is to a great extent hindered or helped by your own well-being, was quite unknown to me.”

(8) Another Case

“When I was married, I had to leave my own town to go out into the world, as it were, and when I had to have my first baby, I knew absolutely nothing, not even how they were born. I had many a time thought how cruel (not wilfully, perhaps) my mother was not to tell me all about the subject when I left home.… When my baby was born I had been in my labour for thirty-six hours, and did not know what was the matter with me.… It was only a seven-months baby, and I feel quite sure if I had been told anything about pregnancy it would not have happened. I carried a heavy piece of oilcloth, which brought on labour.… I knew very little about feeding children, when they cried I gave them the breast. If I had known then what I know now my children would have been living. I was ignorant, and had to suffer severely for it, for it nearly cost me my life, and also those of my children. I very often ponder over this part of my life. I must not say anything about my mother now, because she is dead, but I cannot help thinking what might have been if she had told me.”

(9) Healthy Motherhood, Given as a Contrast

“Although I have had eight children and one miscarriage, I am afraid my experience would not help you in the least, as I am supposed to be one of those women who can stand anything. During my pregnancy, I have always been able to do my own work.

“With the boys labour has only lasted twenty minutes, girls a little longer. I have never needed a doctor’s help, and it has always been over before he came.… My idea is that everything depends on how a woman lives, and how healthy she was born. I had the advantage of never having to work before I was married and never have wanted for money, so when the struggle came I had a strong constitution to battle with it all.”

(10) Another Fortunate Case

“I must be one of the fortunate ones. I have always had fairly good health during pregnancy and good times at confinements and getting up.… I owe my good health to being well nourished and looked after by my mother when I was a growing girl. I think if all young girls of to-day are properly cared for, it will make all the difference to the mothers of the future, and save much suffering during pregnancy and after.”

I should like to quote further from these letters, which have filled me with a passion of protest and pity. But why should I go on bringing fresh arguments to prove what already is sufficiently clear?

Give but a moment’s attention to the facts that stand out in these eight summarised cases, and at once you will grasp what is wrong. These mothers have not been equal to their task of child-bearing; we have demanded from them too much. We have permitted the weakening of their constitutions from girlhood with unsuitable and too heavy work, and we have allowed them to grow up and marry sexually ignorant. What wonder that so many have failed in their supreme work of motherhood. The women bitterly feel this failure; many of them are convinced of the evils that have resulted to themselves and their children from their own overstrain through work and their ignorance of sexual hygiene and mother-craft.

Take now a few briefly summarised results of all these three hundred and forty-eight examined cases of motherhood. We find the following figures: Total number of live births, 1,396, 80 still-births and 218 miscarriages. These figures speak for themselves. It is probable all miscarriages are not given, but even those that are stated show a pre-natal death rate of 21.3 per 100 deaths. And we have no record of abortions, which, without doubt, are very numerous. According to some medical authorities the frequency of abortion “is believed to be about 20 to 25 per cent. of all pregnancies.” Consider the following facts: two of these women each had ten miscarriages; one woman had eight miscarriages and no living child, while a second woman, after suffering seven miscarriages, consoled her motherhood by adopting an orphan boy; another woman gave birth to five dead children; the record of still another woman is three still-births and four miscarriages. The last of these mothers writes: “I had to work very hard to do everything for my little family, and after that I never had any more children to live. I either miscarried or they were still-born.”

The post-natal deaths are also numerous. Of the three hundred and forty-eight mothers, eighty-six (or 24.7 per cent.) lost children in the first year of life. The total number of deaths rises to 122, or 8.7 per 100 live births, and it should be noted that 50 per cent., or one half of these deaths, occurred during the first month of infantile life or were due to wrong birth conditions when death was after the first month.

It seems useless to comment further upon these facts; the figures speak with sufficient clearness for themselves. I would ask you, however, to remember them; I would ask you to try to understand all that they mean of our deplorable neglect of motherhood.

For long we have been persistently assuming that the characteristics of the child at birth are genetic or hereditary and therefore can be but slightly affected by a favourable or an adverse nurture. This is a monstrous error. Very few indeed are the defects and the diseases that are inevitable and part of the birth-inheritance, rather they are traceable directly to malnutrition or poison in the mother, and by this means the fresh life is weakened or infected before it is born. So much the greater is the importance of ante-natal nurture. The child can be saved only through the mother. Inferior mothers must result in inferior children. And what we need now for the future maintenance and welfare of our race in adequate numbers and quality, is a speedy and practical recognition of the truth that nothing will avail us if we so educate, train, and work our women that as mothers they fail in their creative hour.

Let us now consider briefly how these matters stand in our land at the present time, and let us examine them in the light of these facts we have established of an over-burdened and, therefore, unfit motherhood. And the first thing we find is that the special conditions brought about by the Great War have greatly increased the problem we have to solve. I have already referred to the Report issued by the Health of Munition Workers Committee on “Employment of Women” and “Hours of Work.” They give summary accounts of the conditions of women’s labour and what is actually going on. I confess that what is stated has filled me with the gravest fears. I will give a few of the facts as they are set down.

“The engagement of women in the manufacture of munitions presents many features of outstanding interest. Probably the most striking is the universal character of their response to the country’s call for help; but of equal social and industrial significance is the extension of the employment of married women, the extension of the employment of young girls and the revival of the employment of women at night.”

With regard to the class of women employed we learn—

“The munition workers of to-day include dressmakers, laundry workers, shop assistants, university and art students, women and girls of every social grade and of no previous wage-earning experience, also, in large numbers, wives and widows of soldiers, many married women who had retired altogether from industrial life, and many again who had never entered it. In the character of the response lies largely the secret of its industrial success, which is remarkable. The fact that women and girls of all types and ages have pressed and are pressing into industry shows a spirit of patriotism which is as finely maintained as it was quickly shown.”

The prodigious efforts of war are employing energies that have never been employed before. And there is something fine in the obdurate courage and determination of women to go through with their work. The spirit of woman does not easily resist. Ah! there is the danger. It is so difficult to induce any woman to recognise the limits of her physical powers. I am certain, too, that this danger of reckless overstrain is greater in England than in many other lands where women are working, for here custom and our habits of curious prudery force a woman to treat her sexual life as if it did not exist. This is the deep root of the danger. Thus, just as I should expect, the report goes on—

“Conditions of work are accepted without question and without complaint which, immediately detrimental to output, would, if continued, be ultimately disastrous to health. It is for the nation to safeguard the devotion of its workers by its foresight and watchfulness, lest irreparable harm be done to body and mind both in this generation and in the next.”

The necessity of war has revived, after almost a century of disuse, the night employment of women in factories.[7] The report shows the deterioration in the health and energy of the women, due partly to overstrain from want of sleep and proper rest, but also to the difficulty the workers find in eating at night. We read—

“In one factory visited at night the manager stated that fatigue prevented many of the women making the effort to go from there to the mess room, though in itself the room was attractive. In another, visited also by night, several women were lying, during the meal hour, beside their piles of heaped-up work; while others, later, were asleep beside their machines, facts which bear additional witness to the relative failure of these hours. A few women of rare physique withstand the strain sufficiently to maintain a reasonable output, but the flagging effort of the majority is not only unproductive at the moment, it has its influence also upon the subsequent output, which suffers as in a vicious circle.”

The report shows plainly the destruction that is taking place in the home life of the workers. It states—

“While the urgent necessity for women’s work remains, and while the mother’s time and the time of the elder girls is largely given to the making of munitions, the home and the younger children must inevitably suffer. Where home conditions are bad, as they frequently are, where a long working day is aggravated by long hours of travelling, and where, in addition, housing accommodation is inadequate, family life is defaced beyond recognition.”

Again, take this passage—

“Often, far from offering a rest from the fatigue of the day, the home conditions offer but fresh aggravation. A day begun at 4 or even 3.30 a.m., for work at 6 a.m., followed by fourteen[8] hours in the factory and another two or two and a half hours on the journey back, may end at 10 or 10.30 p.m., in a home or lodging where the prevailing degree of overcrowding precludes all possibility of comfortable rest. Beds are never empty and rooms are never aired, for in a badly crowded district the beds, like the occupants, are organised in day and night shifts. In such conditions of confusion, pressure and overcrowding, home life can have no existence.”

The overstrain of the women is increased by their difficulty in obtaining living accommodation near to the factories.

“It is far from uncommon now to find some two or three hours spent on the journey each way, generally under the fatiguing conditions of an overcrowded tram or train, often with long waits and a severe struggle before even standing room can be obtained. The superintendent of a factory situated in a congested district stated that the women constantly arrive with their clothes torn in the struggle for a train, the satchel in which they bring their tea being sometimes torn away. The workers were of an exceptionally refined type, to whom such rough handling should be altogether unfamiliar, but they bore these conditions with cheerful resolution.”

What are the results going to be? Women have no right to bear such conditions with cheerful resolution. And it is just this acceptance of so many things that never ought to be accepted that fills me with apprehension. You see, I believe there is a much deeper cause than the urgencies of the war which is causing women to spend their strength in industrial work. Did I not think this, there would be little need for me to write.

I know that women’s labour at the present crisis is a matter of necessity. How the work is to be done with the least possible injury to the workers is the question of the present. For it is equally momentous to the future that the standard of health and well-being of the country should be maintained. The problem is, how much work and of what kind can women do combined with perfect health. The health we must have, for it is requisite for the life of the race.

No doubt Nature is prodigal in her gifts of energy to women and provides enough for high-pressure work. But what we forget is this: the total amount of energy is strictly limited, and if women use up in work the energy that ought to be stored for child-bearing, they are preparing the way for an enfeebled race. Thus the problem of women’s labour will not be solved until her work no more unfits her to be a mother than man’s work unfits him to be a father. Woman sows in her flesh for the race, and because the demands of sex are stronger upon her she has to store more for the future than the man; she cannot expend so much in work in the present.

I have tried now to show in this and the preceding chapter the present and urgent need of an inquiry into the conditions of motherhood. The facts we have considered give, I feel, sufficient proof of our immense failure. Our attempt must be to bring order where we have had confusion. We have got to end this disastrous squandering of women’s energies; a bankrupt expenditure which must result in wholesale waste in health and the lives of little children.

And I do not allude here only to the obvious immediate remedies. These will have to be made. The efforts for reducing infantile mortality must be such as will have lasting and substantial effect. Feeble tinkerings with such a question are the deepest foolishness. England can be indifferent to the health and well-being of women no longer, for she cannot afford to lose children by tens of thousands and to let the survivors be maimed and weakened by the million.

This, however, is not all; no legislation or social reconstruction—not any outward change, can accomplish alone what needs to be done. I am very certain of this. The wretched confusion and failure in efficient motherhood, which repeats itself everywhere, again and again, and in all classes of women, must be due to something more than industrialism and the hideous, ugly pressure of work for women, now so startlingly increased by the urgencies of war; it must be due to something stronger and more fundamental, to some inward cause. We must, I think, look to find some general and essential failure in women themselves—some unsoundness in their desires and their ideals, and in the principles they have set down for the conduct of their lives.

We have got to find what this failure is.

Note.—The Annual Report for 1915 of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education has been issued since this chapter was written. The conditions have not materially changed since the previous year. Ten per cent. of all the children attending the Elementary Schools suffer from malnutrition, due largely to unsuitable and insufficient food. There is still a large amount of uncleanliness—the returns show about 16 per cent. of the children have dirty heads, and 15 per cent. dirty bodies.

A further evil has arisen from the greatly increased employment of children of school age; during one year 45,000 children have left school before the usual age, and 15,000 are temporarily employed in agriculture. In addition, more children are working as “half-timers” and as workers out of school hours. This wasteful employment of the young life of the future must, as the Report states, lead to physical and mental deterioration.

PART II
THE MATERNAL INSTINCT IN THE MAKING

“But what is the use of this history, what is the use of all this minute research? I well know that it will not produce a fall in the price of paper, a rise in that of crates of rotten cabbages, or other serious events of that kind, which cause fleets to be manned and set people face to face intent on one another’s extermination. The insect does not aim at so much glory. It confines itself to showing us life in the inexhaustible variety of its manifestations; it helps us to decipher in some small measure the obscurest book of all—the book of ourselves.”—Henri Fabre.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER III
INSECT PARENTHOOD

The necessity of beginning the investigation of motherhood before human parenthood—The instinct not fixed but dependent on circumstances and the conditions of life—Experiments in family life—Bewildering diversity in strength of parental instinct—Numerous cases of insect home makers—Domestic economy of bees and ants—Does the word “instinct” explain—Parental devotion of the scarabee beetles—Fabre’s account—Important to note (1) connection between form of union or marriage of the sexes and parental devotion, (2) connection between degree of intelligence in the parent and amount of care devoted to the young.

CHAPTER III
INSECT PARENTHOOD

“There can be few people alive who have not remarked on occasion that men are the creatures of circumstances. But it is one thing to state a belief of this sort in some incidental application, and quite another to realise it completely.”—H. G. Wells.

This statement of Mr. Wells that I have placed at the head of the chapter will explain the reason why I find it necessary to go back to the grey primeval dawn of life to start my inquiry into motherhood. I want to establish that the instinct of caring for the young is not fixed, that it does not always develop in the same way or in the same parent, but rather that it is a quality, fluid and of indeterminate possibilities, that can be set and shaped by the conditions of life as wax is shaped by a mould. And I know no other way to make this clear. The few scattered facts that I have been able to gather together tell the miracles of the parental instinct. They must, I think, teach us humility. Let us throw aside the garments of conceit and false learning, and recognise that in reality we know almost nothing about anything, if things are probed to the bottom.

In the widest treatment of the maternal instinct it will not suffice to narrow our attention to the function of human motherhood, or to take up our study of the conditions relating to the mother and the child as we find them amongst us to-day. Were I to do this and to attempt at once to bring forward my own views, with the reforms that I wish for in this matter, my work would be as a building without a firm foundation, more or less uncertain, and for this reason valueless.

To get a proper grip of all that is here concerned we must understand that the maternal instinct is the deepest and strongest instinct in woman. It is in the emotions and actions either directly arising from or connected with motherhood that we find the real difference between the sexes. In its essence the parental instinct belongs to woman alone. The male may be infected with its energy—we witness this among birds, as well as in humbler animals, where the duties of caring for offspring are shared and, in some cases, carried out by the male alone; but man possesses, as yet, its faint analogy only. It is the most primary of all women’s qualities.[9]

Now, why is this? Why is woman’s being so much more strongly infected with motherhood than the man’s with fatherhood?

It is a question not so readily to be answered as it might appear. If we find the explanation in the intimate connection between the mother and the child we have not, I think, exhausted the matter. We must not forget that other questions remain behind unanswered, all centring round the one question to which an adequate answer is so difficult to find: How has this arisen? The fact has to be explained that the sharp separation in the parental impulse and the parental duties, so strong amongst us, has not always existed; that there are many examples in the history of life which show an exactly opposite condition.

To find the clue it will thus be necessary to turn our attention to the earlier stages of life where, in particular among insects, reptiles, fishes, and birds, we find the widest possible range of difference in the expression of the parental instinct and the most varied relations existing between parents and offspring. Here indeed, among these pre-human parents, we can study the maternal instinct in the making. There are many new and strange facts for us to learn.

I know well the dangers of such an inquiry. To many, who will allow its interest, it will yet appear as being profitless. There is perhaps some justification for this view. Certainly any attempt to establish the conditions of human motherhood from examples in natural history must be far from conclusive. All comparisons of our own habits and impulses with their earlier expression as we see them in the animals are somewhat unsatisfactory. The lines on which human motherhood has developed and the conditions which have so largely helped to shape its expression, differ vastly from many of the other needs and circumstances which govern the activities of parents in the lower forms of life. Chief among these differences is the more complex character of the human brain, which is correlated with the far greater length of time that the human infant is dependent on its mother.

Yet, allowing for all this difference, I believe that there is much for us to learn from the life-histories of these pre-human parents. At least we find wonderful agreement prevailing between the conduct which we think reason dictates to us and that which we hold instinct dictates to the animals. And the question will be forced upon us: How far back in the record of life did the fierce mother-instinct exist? We shall find many unheeded examples, alike of its operation and of its failure to operate, which, if we consider them, in the light they may possibly cast forward on our own problems, will not fail to bring us to some unexpected conclusions. Life is full of surprises, and this matter of the care of the young affords not the least of them. Nowhere are the links between the present and the past more fascinatingly represented.

I am far indeed from being able to explain many facts I have come to know. I have been puzzled often, and the suggestions I offer I know may be wrong. The early stages in the growth of parental care, even among the animals whose habits are known to us, are often enshrouded in mystery, baffling the penetration of the most patient and careful inquirers. Nevertheless, during recent years a host of facts have been gathered together which throw much new light not only on the theme of pre-human parenthood, but also on the probable action of the parental instinct as it has slowly developed through the ages.

But apart from such more speculative considerations there are yet other aspects to be considered, such as the effect of the environment, the conditions of the home, and the type of union between the male and the female, all of which have their influence on the duration and kind of care shown by animal parents to their offspring. Some explanation must be sought for the almost bewildering diversity which we find in this relationship; for while the young of some animals (and often among low types where least we should expect it) are jealously guarded and cared for by at least one of the parents, in others there is no trace of such sacrifice and solicitude, and the young are thrown on to the world, orphaned before they are born, and left to live or die as chance decrees. Why is this? Why is the parental instinct so actively strong in some cases, so absent in others? Can we, indeed, hope to find the answer? If we can do this, we shall learn much to surprise and also to instruct us.

In the higher types of animals, with the longer period of infancy, some amount of care for the young is always shown by the mother. All the mammals, without exception, nurse their offspring for a longer or shorter period. Among the birds the young in many species are tended by both parents, and we find many beautiful examples of parental fosterage and protection. But we find also species, like the cuckoos, which thrust the parental duties on to others; and there are others, such as the megapodes, where the mother trusts the incubation of her eggs to natural agencies, and after placing them in a position to get the heat generated by decaying vegetation or that derived from hot springs, leaves them, and exhibits no apparent care for the future welfare of the family.

Here is something to give us food for thought. And the same surprises meet us as we descend the scale of life. The reptiles show little or no parental care, but strangely enough the toads and frogs, and many fishes, furnish us with examples of remarkable forethought, or apparent forethought, for their offspring; and, let it be noted, this solicitude is in most cases shown by the father and not by the mother. Even more remarkable are the insects, among whom, though still lower in the scale, we find the most wonderful cases of parental sacrifice to be met with anywhere in life. Some of these little creatures, indeed, seem to be endowed with a devotion to their young so insistent, that their lives can be described only as a passion of sacrifice. In truth they live but to give life and die. And accompanying this parental sacrifice, first in supplying food for embryonic development, and also, in some cases, affording fosterage and protection during the early stages of growth, we meet the most varied and wonderful behaviour which seems to prove an intelligence that thinks and plans; and, whatever explanation we try to find for these acts of devotion, we still are far from understanding them. Life has its secrets, and we shall probably fail to penetrate these mysteries. All that is possible to us is to inquire humbly that we may learn a few truths.

But for the sake of clearness, let me cease from generalising and direct our attention to certain definite examples. I will select first the model household of the Minotaurus Typhæus in the order Coleoptera—

“The female digs a large burrow which is often more than a yard and a half deep and which consists of spiral staircases, landings, passages and numerous chambers. The male loads the earth on the three-pronged fork that surmounts his head and carries it to the entrance of the conjugal dwelling. Next he goes into the fields in search of harmless droppings left by the sheep, he takes these down to the first storey of the crypt and, with the aid of his trident begins to reduce them to flour, while the mother, right at the bottom, collects and kneads it into huge cylindrical loaves, which will presently become food for the little ones. For three months, until the provisions are deemed sufficient, the unfortunate husband, without taking any nourishment of any kind, exhausts himself in this gigantic work. At last, his task is accomplished. Feeling his end is at hand, so as not to encumber the house with his wretched remains, he spends his last strength in leaving the burrow, drags himself laboriously along and, lonely and resigned, knowing that he is henceforth good for nothing, goes and dies far away amid the stones.”[10]

Here we have exactly the kind of example we are in search of, and the most important thing to observe is the co-operation of the father with the mother in the work of providing for the family: such male devotion is undoubtedly exceptional.

Some measure of parental solicitude is almost universally common, and even among the lowliest creatures we find convincing proof of this. Among the species of limited resources, where the least care is bestowed and the young are left to look after themselves, the eggs are placed by the mother in a suitable environment so that the young can be sure of a sufficiency of food until they can feed themselves. The numerous caterpillars offer a well-known illustration of this primitive care, where it is common for the eggs to be attached to the food-plant by means of some adhesive covering. More striking is the case of certain weevils, which, in order to endow their young with a suitable home, possess the art of rolling a leaf in which the eggs are laid, thus forming a nursery, which serves as board and lodging in one.

Fabre, in a wonderful account of the most skilful of these workers, the Poplar weevil, states that not far from the scroll, made and laboriously rolled by the mother, we almost always find the male. But do not make a mistake. The weevil father is not moved by devotion to the family interests as was the father in the last case we examined. No, rather he is filled with the egoistic desire of the male. But I must give the history as Fabre relates it, fearing to spoil his beautiful account by my own halting description—

“What is he doing there, the idler? Is he watching the work as a mere inquisitive onlooker? From time to time I see him take his stand behind the manufacturer, in the groove of the fold, hang on to a cylinder and join for a little in the work. This is a means of declaring his flame and urging his merits. After several refusals and notwithstanding advances made by a brief collaboration at the scroll, the impatient one is accepted. For ten minutes the rolling is suspended. The male still looks on. Sooner or later a new visit is paid to the worker by the dawdler, who, under pretence of assisting, plants his claws for a moment into the rolling piece, plucks up courage and renews his exploits with the same vigour as though nothing had yet happened. And this is repeated four or five times during the making of a single cigar.”

Here, it may be remarked in passing, we seem to see the first faint expression of the father’s interest in the family, which, if I may hazard a guess, may have started in this way as a means of gaining his desire with the female. The correctness of this surmise will receive considerable confirmation as we proceed with our inquiry. And if analogies with animal conduct were not so apt to be misleading, I would venture to suggest the persistence of the same egoistic factor among many human fathers. But for the present I must leave this question.

From the very beginning of life parental sacrifice is more common in the mother; it is in exceptional cases that her devotion is shared by the father. But such good fathers are of special importance to our inquiry. Even more interesting are those species among which the father takes all charge of the young, while the mother spends her time away from the family. Nor is this departure from what we may call the normal order of the family so surprising as at first sight it may seem, if we can account for the necessity under which probably it arose and seek to explain it.

The welfare of the young is a matter of vital urgency; instinct dictates to the animals what reason dictates to us. Nature, as if to show her resourcefulness, her love of successful experiments, is always discovering contrary ways of attaining the same end. And what I wish to make clear is this: when, for some reason that we do not know, the family cares are neglected by the mothers, the work of tending and feeding the young is undertaken by the fathers. I shall have much more to say on this question at a later stage, and I ask you to keep it persistently in the focus of your attention. I desire to emphasise it at once. Whatever groups of animals we survey, we shall find examples of this replacement of the mother by the father, new aspects of the family, which may afford us a better grip of some problems that at present elude us.

The reality of the mother’s regard for the young is proved among many insects by the building of a nest to safeguard the family. The Anthidium, or tailor-bee, and the Chalicodoma, a species of wild bee, afford illustrations of this maternal forethought. In the former case the eggs, when laid, are placed in the ground, protected in cotton-felt satchels made by the mother from fibre which she scratches with her mandibles from the cobwebby stalks of the yellow centaury; the Chalicodoma works with cement and gravel carefully selected from some ruined building, and with such difficult material she fashions her nursery. Even more remarkable is the home of the Magachilles, or leaf-cutting bee. The mother bee, using her mandibles as scissors, cuts pieces from the leaves of the trees, wherewith she forms thimble-shaped wallets to contain the honey and eggs; the larger oval pieces which she cuts make the sides and the floor, and the round pieces the lid or door. These leaf-formed thimbles are placed in a row, one on top of the other, sometimes as many as a dozen being used. The cylinder thus formed is fitted into the deserted home of some other insect, such as the tunnels of fat earth-worms, the apartments bored in the trunks of trees by the larvæ of the Capricorn beetles, or, failing these, a reed stump or crevice in the wall is selected. But the choice of the home is always carefully made, it would seem, according to the tastes of the mothers. This structure, in part made and in part borrowed, forms the leaf-cutter’s nest.[11]

Numerous cases of home-making might be recorded, and the difficulty rests in the selection. Many spiders and the book scorpion carry their eggs in a silken bag attached to the under surface of the body. There is a case recorded that shows heroic devotion on the part of one spider mother. She was placed (in order that her behaviour might be watched) in the pit of an ant-lion. At once the enemy seized the eggs and tore them from her charge. Then the mother, though she was driven out of the pit, returned and chose to be dragged in and buried alive rather than desert her charge.[12]

A regular process of incubation is practised by the mother earwig, and the young, when hatched, keep close to her for protection. Special food for the young is prepared by many mothers, as, for instance, among the apidæ, who prepare a disgorged food in the form of a sweet milk juice. The Hymenoptera mothers, upon whom the cares of motherhood devolve in their fulness, provide board and lodging for their family. Stores of insects are caught and preserved in the nursery larder, being cunningly paralysed so that live food may be ready when needed by the children. These clever mothers, as Fabre has shown us, become masters of a host of arts for the benefit of a family which their faceted eyes will never see.

Of the domestic economy of the bees and ants whole volumes might be, and have been, written. The habits of the termites, the so-called white ants, are less widely known, although they show one of the most remarkable developments of the family that I have met. Each colony is really a patriarchal family, in which the members, all the descendants of a single pair, live in a community, and work in different ways. All the individuals are at first true males and females. Some of these develop slowly, but grow up perfect insects able to form new families. But the workers and the soldiers have to pass a period of youthful servitude in the community. These develop quickly, and grow up blind and wingless, and their reproductive organs remain in a condition of arrested development. Some of these are workers, and carry out the duties of the community; others at the same time develop jaws and heads of enormous size. It is their duty to defend the colony. And from this has come about the strange condition of their being so altered and trained for their special work that they cannot pass on to the normal life and normal duties of perfect individuals.

Among the bees and some social wasps there is a further step, and only females are selected to do household work, and modified so that they lose the ordinary personal instincts and devote themselves entirely to working for the community, while the males develop only the instincts and capacities of sex. In some species of wasps, however, the males do some work, chiefly domestic, for which they are fed by their foraging sisters. In the communities of ants, as in the termites, there are individuals modified to serve as workers and as soldiers; but here again they are all arrested females, and the males are used only for the purpose of sex. The colonies of ants last much longer than those of the bees and wasps, which are annual, and this has given the possibility of the elaboration of a very complex and extraordinary community.[13]

We are always being surprised by new experiments in family life which show the ready adaptation of habits to special circumstances. A bald statement of these facts seems to tell very little. I leave untouched a whole series of devices and wonderful behaviour—so much that I should like to record. In all these cases we see the maternal instinct in the making. But so varied and so fitting to the needed purpose are the actions of these lowly parents that much which they do gives an impression of the inexplicable—even the magical.

It is common to explain everything by the word “instinct.” But does this explanation take us very far? An elaborate instinctive capacity is probably the result of adding on one contrivance after another to a simpler common habit. And this is surely the same as saying that these little creatures have the power of learning through experience. A beginning of the instinct of caring for the young is exhibited when the mother insect chooses a favourable food position wherein to lay the eggs. Nor is it difficult to imagine how this maternal forethought may have grown out of an earlier habit, for it is but a step, though a great one, from collecting food for self—an instinct that may be traced back and back—to the habit of providing and collecting food for others. Then, this instinct of caring for the future being strongly fixed, it, in some cases and under certain favourable conditions, leads on and on to the specialised maternity and climax of parental sacrifice and devotion, such as may be illustrated by the admirable scarabees, or dung-beetles, of the Mediterranean region and elsewhere.

I have given one case of perfect parents, the Minotaurus Typhæus; but I wish to review such conduct more fully. The family qualities of the dung-beetles are so devoted and so striking, they will repay our study.

The late M. Fabre describes in his inimitable way the nursery which makes the centre and life of the scarabees’ home. These dung-workers edify us with their morals. Both sexes co-operate in making the burrows which serve as a larder for food and a nursery for the young. They are cavities dug in soft earth, usually in sand, shallow in form, about the size of one’s fist, and communicating with the outside by a short channel just large enough for the passage of the balls of dung-food. Both parents work with equal zeal to found a household. “The father is the purveyor of victuals and the person entrusted with the carrying away of rubbish. Alone, at different hours of the day he flings out of doors the earth thrown up by the mother’s excavations; alone he explores the vicinity of the home at night in quest of the pellets whereof his sons’ loaves shall be kneaded.

“A most careful choice of material is undertaken, and often the devoted husband and father is compelled to search long and far for pellets freshly dropped, for whereas coarse bread crammed with bits of hay is good enough for his own and his wife’s food, he is always more careful where the children are concerned. Legful by legful, with slow and most patient labour, the material is heaped up and rolled into a ball. Then the food-ball has to be carried to the burrow; no easy task. Even then the father’s labours are not ended; on reaching the burrow, it is his work to shred the dung-food into flour, which he pours down to the mother for her to knead into the children’s bread. Finally, when the last task is accomplished, the dung-father goes out alone to die. He has gallantly performed his duty as a paterfamilias; he has spent himself without stint to secure the prosperity of his kith and kin.”

The devotion of the dung-father is equalled by that of the dung-mother. More skilled than her spouse in domestic matters, she is occupied always in the home, where she works in the lower floor of the burrow, which she has prepared for the nursery. Here she kneads and forms the cylindrical loaves in which the eggs are placed. In some cases she does more, and we find several species of the dung-mothers anticipating the suckling of the young, the supreme expression of maternal solicitude. These mothers chew the dung-food, and out of it prepare a frothy pap or cream, with which they cover the walls of the nest to form a special first meal for the emerging grub. Throughout her working life the dung-mother never leaves the home. It should be noted that her family is always a very small one: does this, perhaps, explain the parental devotion? From the first fortnight in May, when the eggs are laid, the mother mounts guard over her children. Never does she eat herself, as she will not touch the food prepared and needed for them. She watches through the long months until the coming of the autumn rains in September. Then, when the day of release comes at last, she returns to the surface, accompanied by her family. At once her children leave her; unmindful of her devotion, they go off to find food and begin life for themselves. Thereupon, having nothing left to do, she dies, and ends her sacrifice.[14]

Before I leave this fascinating record of the dung-beetle parents, space must be found wherein to note further certain of their characteristics and habits, which are of special interest to my inquiry as they would appear to be directly connected with the highly developed family qualities of these insects. Fabre tells us that there is no outward difference between the two sexes among the dung-beetles. I call attention to this fact, which I am not able to explain. The scarabees are among the most beautiful of all insects, and the female and male share the same glory. It is my belief that the secondary sexual characters are directly dependent on the occupational activities of the species, as also on the form of union or marriage which pertains and the strength of the parental emotions. Thus, when the male and the female are equally devoted to each other and to the family and its care, many cases among these pre-human parents seem to prove that such devotion and occupational union tends to lessen the ornamental sexual differences in the secondary physical characters. This is a question of profound interest, and demands more attention than it has yet received.

The second fact is of even greater importance to us. The form of union or marriage common among the dung-beetles would appear to be an unusually strict monogamy. These insects, as we have seen, associate in couples, and there is strong evidence that the male remains faithful to his spouse. Such admirable conduct is the more remarkable when we remember that the mother is held in the nursery by her duties during the greater period of the marriage; and meantime the father has to wander far in search of food, making frequent excursions outside the home, but he resists the temptations to which these outings are likely to lead, and always he returns to the home, where he wears himself out for his family.

To test the strength of this conjugal fidelity Fabre made an experiment with the dung-beetles of whose habits I have before spoken, the Minotaurus Typhæus. He placed two couples of these beetles in an enclosed space, marking one of the couples. He allowed them to begin the making of their burrows or homes, then he separated the couples and destroyed the half-made burrows. Once, twice, and a third time he did this, causing confusion among these peaceful workers. But on each occasion the couples came together in the same order; the right male and female knew each other, and, taking little notice of the tumult, each time again they began their work of home-making.

Five more times Fabre separated them and broke up their homes. The result I will give in Fabre’s own beautiful words—

“Things are now spoilt, sometimes each of the four that are experimented on settles apart, sometimes the same burrow contains the two males or the two females, sometimes the same crypt the two sexes, but differently associated from what they were at first. I have abused my powers of repetition. Henceforth disorder reigns. My daily shufflings have demoralised the burrowers, a crumbling home always requiring to be begun afresh has put an end to lawful associations. Respectable married life becomes impossible from the moment when the house falls in from day to day.”

I have now said enough, I think, to show that at many different levels in the insect kingdom the parental instinct is already developed. Pre-eminent in virtue is the behaviour of the dung-beetle parents. And this is all the more interesting as it proves how closely related good parenthood is with the conditions of the home and the form of marriage.

A few more words may here be added to what has been said already concerning the influence of intelligence on instinct. It is a difficult question, but, speaking roughly, intelligence may be said to act in two opposite ways; that is, it may aid both in the making and the unmaking of instincts.[15] Thus the dung-beetles frequently change their conduct, and they do this by modifying their instincts through intelligent adaptation. It is scarcely too much to say that with them intelligence reaches its highest form of originality. Why is this? Fabre gives us the answer. “The more the maternal instinct asserts itself, the higher does instinct ascend.”

It would be better probably if the word instinct were used in a more restricted sense: it should not be regarded as being able to explain everything. This mysterious impulse is held to direct all pre-human parents in their conduct to their young. Very well; but what of the directing force behind? The evidence is strong that even the lowliest creatures have their own problems, and are able to solve them. Can we explain otherwise the wide difference in conduct between parent and parent? Do we know what it is that gives a special direction to the instinctive activities in the accomplishment of a design greater than any of these parents know? We cannot answer fully. But instinct has its twin brother in intelligence, and, acting together, they are the guardians of life.

When real things are so wonderful, what can we do but note them and try to understand? Not elsewhere in the insect world do we meet with a devotion more complete than that of both the dung-parents; not elsewhere do we find a finer development of intelligence. These two things are related and closely dependent, the one upon the other. It is this fact that now I am seeking to establish. Sacrifice in the parent does not lead to limitation, but to expansion.

At this early stage of life the care of the young is as a rule very slight, and often is confined, as I have shown, to the laying of the eggs in a favourable position, where the grub can find food. “The higher inspirations of the intellect are banished among these insects.” I quote again from Fabre, whose opinion on this question so strongly confirms all that I wish to make clear. He asserts further: “The mother neglects the gentle cares of the cradle, and the prerogatives of the intellect, the best of all, diminish and disappear, so true is it that for animals, even as for ourselves, the family is the source of perfection.” And again: “Placed in charge of the duration of the species, which is of more serious interest than the preservation of individuals, maternity awakens a marvellous foresight in the drowsiest intelligence.… The more maternity asserts itself, the higher does instinct ascend.”

We cannot get away from this; it is one of the unalterable laws of life.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER IV
PARENTHOOD AMONG THE REPTILES AND FISHES
A CHAPTER ON GOOD FATHERS

The parental impulse not always fixed in the mother—Among reptiles and fishes, such care as is afforded by parents is given most frequently by the father—Suggested reason for this—Primitive hatching nurseries—Parental care among frogs and toads—Many examples of exemplary fathers—The devotion of the male stickleback—The unnatural conduct of the female stickleback—The emotions of the fish—Fish fathers who guard the nest—Perpetual variety in the actions of even the lowliest parents—Summary—No continuous line of development of instinct in scale of animals—Much baffles our explanations—Suggestions important to my inquiry—Reversal of sex labours—Is it due to failure on the part of the mother—Devoted parents are of high intelligence.

CHAPTER IV
PARENTHOOD AMONG REPTILES AND FISHES
A CHAPTER ON GOOD FATHERS

“Nature is a riddle without a definite solution to satisfy man’s curiosity.”—Maurice Maeterlinck.

In this chapter I shall consider certain examples, which I think are important to establish what we have learnt in our examination of the insects, that the parental impulse was not always fixed in the mother. Among the reptiles and fishes the reverse is true, and what care is afforded to the young is given most frequently by the father.[16]

The bond between the mother and her young is directly dependent on their helplessness and the duration of time during which they require her care and attention. Young reptiles are from birth independent, and, as a consequence, there has been no stimulus to develop maternal solicitude. Between mother and offspring there are no ties of affection save in one or two exceptional cases.

Young alligators, for example, are guarded by their mothers and owe more to her than they can ever know. She prepares a hatching nursery by scraping together a large mound of leaves, twigs, and fine earth, and upon this mound the eggs are placed about eight inches from the surface. Then the mother digs a hole in the river bank, close by, and here she waits and watches to protect her children.

A more advanced form of nursery building is practised by the tortoise, who prepares a sort of nest with considerable care, which she afterwards cunningly conceals. But when once the eggs are safe she shows no further interest in the safety of the nest.[17]

Most snakes bury their eggs and then leave them. But a more enduring maternal interest is felt by the mother python; she coils her body around her future family and jealously guards them during the period of incubation, refusing all food and never leaving her duty.

A similar guardianship is shown to young crocodiles by their mothers. The home is prepared by digging a deep hole in the sand in which the eggs are placed, and during the period of incubation each mother sleeps in guard above her family. The naturalist Voeltzkow, to prove the reality of one mother crocodile’s solicitude, built a fence around the nest just before the hatching time. Each night on her return, the mother broke down the fence, though each time it was made stronger than the last. Finally the nest was found to be deserted, and then it was discovered that this intelligent and persecuted mother had dug a hole beneath the fence and thence had led her brood away to safety.

It is impossible to admire sufficiently such a case as this one, where we see so clearly the driving power of maternal solicitude in quickening the intelligence of even the lowliest mothers. Such cases are, however, few in number out of the 2,600 species of reptiles of whom the majority are unnatural parents.

But again surprises await us. Many frogs and toads, both the mothers and the fathers, show a really marked development of the familial instincts.[18] An illustration of this care is furnished by a large tree-frog (Hyla faber) of Brazil, commonly known as the Ferreiro, “the smith,” from its strange voice resembling the mallet of a smith, slowly and regularly striking on a metal plate. This frog prepares a nursery in the shallow waters of the ponds, where a basin-shaped hollow is dug in the mud. The building is done by the mother, the material removed being used to form a wall, circular in shape, which is carried up to the surface of the water. In this cavity the eggs are placed, protected against the attacks of aquatic insects and fishes. A Japanese tree frog (Rhacophorus schlegelii) builds a similar nest, but here the mother lines the walls of her nursery with a secretion, a kind of milk food, from her own body, which by rapid movements of her feet is worked into a froth, and in the midst of this foamy mass the eggs are laid. More remarkable is the nursery building of the “Wollunnkukk” frog (Phyllomedusa hypochondrialis) of Paraguay, whose habits were noted by Dr. Budgett during the exploration of the Paraguayan Chaco. “Whilst sitting near the water’s edge he saw a female carrying a male upon her back. At last she climbed up the stem of a plant, reached out and caught hold of an overhanging leaf and climbed on to it. Both then caught hold of its edges and held them together; and into the funnel thus formed the female poured her eggs, the male fertilising them as they passed. The jelly surrounding the eggs served as a cement to hold the edges of the leaves together. Then, moving up a little further, the process was repeated until the leaf was full, and about a hundred eggs had been enclosed.”[19]

A similar leaf nest is made by a Brazilian frog, known as Ihering’s frog (P. Iheringí), while a home of more elaborate construction, in which several leaves are used, is prepared by Savage’s leaf-frog (P. Sauvagii).

It should be noted that in these cases the care of the parents is confined to the providing of a nursery; when once this is done the young are abandoned. But many frogs and toads do much more than this, and one or other parents, most often the father, guard their offspring with jealous care. A Papuan frog-father, for instance, takes up the duties of a nurse; and when the eggs are laid, he sits upon them, holding the mass with both hands. And this vigil he keeps during the whole time while the young are undergoing growth, passing through the larval and tadpole stage.

We must own that such a father acts with singular devotion. It should be noted that seventeen eggs only are laid by the mother, a much smaller number than is common among the species where neither parent affords any kind of guardianship. This is what we should expect. Nature has different ways of gaining the same end. Life must be carried on, that is all that matters—an incessant renewal, an undying fresh beginning and unfolding of life. But a species is maintained sometimes by the prodigality of production and sometimes by the expenditure of care and sacrifice on the part of the parents. And here we find again a lesson waiting for us to learn. For it is hardly necessary to point out that the same facts are true of human births; just as the family is unregulated or considered, do we find waste and many births with parental neglect in the first case and restricted births with parental devotion in the second. There seem to be no problems of the family that these pre-human parents have not had to face and solve.

But to return.

“The celebrated Midwife toad (Alytes obstetricans) gives us a further delightful example of the father nursing the young. The mother-toad lays her eggs attached to one another by threads so that they form a long chain. The father-toad then twines this chaplet of his wife’s eggs round and round his thighs. He has the strange appearance, it has been said, of a gentleman of the court of the time of James I, arrayed in puffed breeches. His devotion is very complete. After having encumbered himself with the coming family, he retreats to a hole in the ground. Here he stays with admirable patience by day, stealing forth at night to feed, and to bathe his egg-burdened legs in dew or, when possible, in water. When his period of service is past and the young are ready for quitting the eggs, he seeks the water. Here before long the young burst forth and swim away, whereupon the father, now free from his family duties, makes himself tidy (cleans himself of the remains of the eggs) and resumes his normal appearance.”

With some frogs, as, for example, in certain S. American and African species, the parents take up the burden of caring for the young only after they have reached the tadpole stage. The German naturalist Brauer recently found in the Seychelles islands a small frog (Arthroleptis Seychellensis) undertaking the guardianship of the young family. An adult frog (it is not stated whether it was the father or the mother) was carrying nine tadpoles on its back, to which they were attached by a sucker on the belly. Unfortunately, little is known of the habits of these frogs. It is believed that the eggs are laid in some shallow pool, and that later one or other parent returns to the nursery to take up the care of the young tadpoles.

A further remarkable case of care exercised by the father is that of Darwin’s frog, the Rhinoderma darwini, where the eggs are guarded in a great pouch under the throat, and opening by two slits into the mouth. During the courtship this pouch is used as a voice organ to charm the female, with sharp ringing notes like a bell. But the love-calls end with the birth of the family. There is now serious work to be accomplished. The father takes his wife’s eggs into his pouch, which now enlarges and extends backwards under the belly to the groin, and upwards on each side almost to the backbone. In the warm chamber thus formed, the tadpoles live until they become young frogs. They then make their way up through the doorways into their father’s mouth, and from that living nursery they swim out into the wide world.

Well, what can we say of this case? We have heard of some animal fathers eating their progeny, but here the father’s mouth is turned into the hatching nursery. Did I not tell you we should find very much to astonish us?

I could give many more examples of reptile parents whose family habits are more or less singular. There are the little-known “Cœcilians,”[20] the strange, snakelike amphibians of S.E. Asia and Ceylon; where the mother, with her limbless body, yet contrives to dig a nursery for her eggs, which she jealously guards. I should like to write of the families of the newts and salamanders, among whom the young are never completely abandoned, and whose parental habits present many features of interest. But to tell their life stories with all the vivid facts would take more space than I can allow to this one chapter of my book; and to give a bald record of their habits would afford little interest. I must, however, recount two instances of marked solicitude for the family, shown in each case by a different parent. Take the case of a mother’s care first. A captive mother-salamander, of the species known as Oregon plethodon, was placed with her eggs in a jar. She at once took possession of them, forming a loop around them with her tail. But, displeased with this unfamiliar house, she moved the eggs repeatedly from place to place till at length she was satisfied, and all the time using her tail for the work of transportation as a kind of maternal arm. In the second case the father most faithfully guards the eggs. A giant salamander in the Zoological Gardens of Amsterdam kept watch over a clump of his wife’s eggs for a period of ten weeks. This careful father was seen every now and then to crawl among the eggs and lift them up, apparently for the purpose of aerating them.

From the foregoing examples it may, I think, be taken as established that among the reptiles there are many exemplary fathers. If the question is asked as to why in some species the care of the young is undertaken by the father and in others by the mother, I can only answer that I do not know. It would seem almost that at this early stage of life Nature was making experiments as to which was the better parent. I would suggest that possibly such a reversal of the family duties was started by chance, possibly by the loss of the mother, or even by a specially energetic father, and on being found successful the arrangement was continued and became fixed as a habit. I have not sufficient knowledge to know if this is possible. At any rate, it appears to be plain that, where for any reason the family duties are neglected by the mother, and where the maintenance of the species demands protection being given to the young, the father steps in to take the place of the mother; and by his care and devotion he becomes a truly constituent part—a working member—of the family group. I would ask you to keep this fixed in your attention, as I shall have to refer again and again to this fact that is here suggested.

What obtains among reptiles with regard to the father’s care for the young is even more frequent among fish-fathers. The common stickleback of our ponds and streams affords an admirable illustration of intelligent and devoted fatherhood. In this species the rôle of the two sexes is completely reversed; when once the eggs are deposited by the mother, the whole task of guarding them is undertaken by the father. His labours begin with the construction of a nest. This is formed of bits of weed, of fibre and dirt, collected with much care, the whole being held together by a cement produced by the clever father out of a secretion from his kidneys. Having prepared the nursery, the stickleback sets out to find a wife heavy with eggs. His love choice apparently is decided by the capability of his spouse for her maternal function. By means of much persuasion and passionate courtship he woos her and induces her to deposit her burden of eggs in his nest.

I must wait to impress upon you the wonder of this fact. These love-antics of the stickleback, which are unique among fishes, would seem not to be exercised for the gratification of male desire, but for the purpose of inducing the female to lay her eggs,—to do her part in giving him offspring. Vainly do I ask myself the reason of this quite unusual sexual altruism. This is very extraordinary. The father woos the reluctant mother with passionate dances and his glad excitement is apparently intense. At this season the stickleback is transformed and glows with brilliant colours, his scales make silver look dim, his throat glows with flaming vermilion, he literally puts on a wedding garment of love.[21] And did I not fear being tedious by again waiting to point a moral, I should ask attention to this further proof given by the stickleback’s love joys to the truth which stands out in these life histories of pre-human parents. I mean this: the parent—the mother or the father—lives in the offspring. You will see how deep is the truth here. The parent is, after all, only the transitory custodian of the undying gift of life.

The conduct of the mother stickleback is in sharp contrast with the devotion of the stickleback father. At once, having rid herself of her eggs, her desire would seem to be to escape any further responsibilities. She forces her way out of the nest by wriggling through the wall opposite the entrance. True, by doing this she renders a service to the nursery, as she thereby furnishes a channel through which a continuous supply of fresh, cool water can be driven, thus keeping the eggs bathed. This is the only work the stickleback mother does for the family. The male, after the first laying, may persuade her to add still further to the deposit of eggs. Sometimes, wearied with her one effort, she refuses. Thus forced, the stickleback seeks a second wife, driven into polygamous conduct through his desire for offspring. I know of no other case that is parallel with this. And the stickleback’s action has often been misrepresented. He is instanced as a polygamist; such is the fate that ever awaits self-sacrifice!

When the nest is full the father stickleback mounts guard over the entrance of the nursery for nearly a month, and he watches by day and by night, defending his precious charge against all comers.

And here another curious fact must be noted: the most dangerous assailants to the safety of the nursery are his own wives; these unnatural mothers would, if they were permitted, devour every single egg. Is it this conduct of the female sticklebacks that explains the devotion of the male? Again I do not know. Certain it is, however, that the safety and care of the young is the stickleback father’s constant occupation—the duty to which he sacrifices his life. From time to time he changes the position of the eggs; he is a master in sanitation and keeps them constantly bathed with fresh water. This he does by driving a stream through the nest by means of a fanning motion of his breast, fins and tail. Through all the hatching period he works with unceasing care.

When at length the fry are born, the father’s vigilance is even further taxed. The children, vigorous and venturesome, have to be watched by day and by night and protected. Around and across and in every direction the father, as guardsman, continually swims. He drives off all comers with splendid courage. On one occasion a stickleback father was watched while his nest was attacked by two tench and a golden carp; he seized their fins and struck with all his might at their heads and eyes. Truly the stickleback’s care of his children is extraordinary. His vigilant eye is everywhere. If any members of the young brood stray too far from the nest for safety, he immediately swims after them, seizes them in his mouth, and brings them back to the safe playwater in the vicinity of the nursery. This continuous watchfulness lasts for about six days after the hatching.[22]

Well, what do you think now of the common view of the parental instinct being stronger always in the mother than in the father? Have we not been taking too much for granted and accepting theory for truth? In the light of our knowledge gained from these examples of the father’s extreme devotion, it seems impossible to refrain from thinking that the most intelligent and fit parent is the one who cares for the young. No doubt it is difficult, or even impossible, to decide the circumstances that have contributed to this strange result of the father taking the mother’s place in the family. We do not know whether these acts of his sacrifice to the children’s welfare imply the presence of the mind element—that is, whether they can be regarded as conscious as distinguished from unconscious adaptation, but this is altogether a separate matter and has nothing to do with the question we are considering.

Fish display, according to Romanes,[23] emotions of fear, pugnacity, social, sexual and parental feelings, anger, jealousy, play and curiosity. Such emotions, he states, correspond with those that are distinctive of the psychology of a child of about four months.

In many diverse species there is clear evidence of some form of parental solicitude. The spotted goby, or pole-wing, for instance, a fish which is found in the Thames, is a nest-builder. An old cockle-shell is skilfully utilised to form the nursery. The shell is placed with its cavity turned downwards, beneath it the soil is removed and then the earth-walls are cemented together with a secretion from the skin of the parents. Access to the nest is gained by a cylindrical tunnel, and the whole nursery is covered and concealed by loose sand. Again it is the father who mounts guard over the eggs; his vigil lasts for about nine days.[24]

There are many instances of nursery building undertaken by fish parents. Agassiz[25] records a case in which an elaborate nest formed of knotted weeds is made by a certain fish, known as Chironectes. This rocking fish-cradle is carried by both parents and is a kind of arbour, affording protection and afterwards food for its living freight.[26] A remarkable nest is built by the American bow-fin (Amia calva), found in the eastern states of North America. Both the mother and the father work together to construct the nursery, which is formed by a large circular area cleared among the weedy shallows; these intelligent parents actually bite through the stems of all the plants that they cannot break or push aside. In the pool that is thus made the eggs are placed by the mother and fertilised by the father; the young develop with remarkable rapidity and hatch out in about eight days from time of laying. The family is then jealously guarded by the father, who herds the children—often numbering as many as a thousand individuals[27]—by circling around and above them in untiring watchfulness. Another remarkable nest is that of the eel-like gymnarchus of the Nile; a huge floating nursery is made of grasses, measuring some two feet long and a foot broad. Within this nest some thousand eggs are laid, and as soon as they are deposited by the mother, the father mounts guard, defending them, and afterwards the young, with great ferocity.

Some fishes’ nests, like those made by the frogs, are constructed of foam. M. Carbonnier gives the case of a Chinese butterfly fish in his private aquarium in Paris. The male fish constructed a large nest of froth, fifteen to eighteen centimetres horizontal diameter and ten to twelve centimetres high: this he did by a curious sucking and expelling air which formed the mucus in his mouth into a white foam. When the nest was thus prepared the female was induced to enter. I do not know whether the father’s duty was continued after this point.[28]

Even where no nest is made, the eggs and young are sometimes guarded by one or other of the parents, but generally the father. Schneider saw several fishes at the Naples Aquarium protecting their eggs; in one case the male mounted guard over a rock where the eggs were deposited, and swam with open mouth against all intruders. Again, the butter-fish (Pholis) of our coasts lays a mass of eggs, and around this future family the father coils his body, just as does the python among the reptiles. Some fishes, as for instance the cat-fishes (siluridae), have the curious habit of carrying the eggs in their mouth.

A further interesting case of paternal solicitude is furnished by the male fish of the common lump-sucker. The eggs are deposited in large clumps, and the father’s first care is to secure their proper oxygenation. This he does by pressing his head into the centre of each clump, an action which not only prevents the eggs from being too closely crowded, but serves also to press the spawn firmly into the crevices of the rock on which it is always laid. As soon as this is done this fish-father mounts guard over his family. All would-be enemies, such as star-fish and crabs, who make ceaseless efforts to rob the nursery, are driven off. The work of oxygenation is still carried on, and streams of fresh water, so necessary for the young lives, are driven by the careful father into the masses of the eggs. When the young appear new family duties await him, for the fry at once attach themselves to his body and are carried about by him.[29]

There are other instances where the young are attached to the body of the parent. Sometimes it is the mother who gives this protection, and bears her eggs attached to the under surface of her body. The lophobranchiate fish incubate their eggs in pouches in the same way as some frogs, and they show elaborate parental feelings. When the young are hatched out, one or other parent, usually the father, carefully guards them, and the pouch then serves as a place of shelter or retreat from danger.

Dr. Reinhold Hensel states of a little-known Brazilian fish (Geophagus scymnophilus) that one of the parents—he does not say which—keeps careful guard over the family, which numbers from twenty to thirty. At a distance he watches his children. When alarmed for their safety, he takes a swift swim towards them, and they, as if at his word of command, collect around his mouth. Suddenly, if the cause of alarm is not removed, the mouth is opened, and the whole family is engulfed. In an adult which was captured while thus laden, the young were seen to be crowded together in the mouth with their heads towards the gills. Here the family is safe, and when the cause for alarm is passed, the youngsters are probably suddenly expelled from their living cavern. Another extraordinary case is recorded by M. Carbonnier, which certainly appears to show anxiety on the part of fish-fathers to have offspring. The males of the grotesque telescope-fish (a variety of Carassius auratus) have the curious habit of acting as accoucheurs to the females. On one occasion three males were watched pursuing one mother heavy with spawn. They rolled her like a ball upon the ground for a distance of several metres, and this process they continued, without rest or relaxation, for two days. Then the exhausted mother, who had been unable to recover her equilibrium for a moment, at last evacuated her eggs.

There is perpetual variety in the actions of even the lowliest parents. I might add many further examples more or less extraordinary, of the habits of fish and reptile mothers or fathers; but, even did the limit of my space permit this, it is not, I think, necessary: I have proved the existence low down in the scale of life of marked solicitude for the young, and shown that such care and sacrifice is shown frequently by the father.

Let me summarise now what we have learnt in this and the preceding chapter, so as to establish the lessons that seem to me may be taken from these pre-human parents. The diversity in the expression of the parental instincts must first be grasped. There is no fixed order, nor does there seem to be any continuity of development in this matter of care for the young. We have to give up quite the evolutionary idea of a certain and uninterrupted progress. Throughout our inquiry we have been met with surprises. These things baffle our attempts to find an explanation. What is it that decides and develops the strong instinct of parenthood? A parent in a species that is lower in the scale will often have more parental feeling than a parent in a higher species. Why, for instance, is the stickleback such a devoted father; more self-sacrificing than any other fish-father? and why is the stickleback mother without regard for her children? Why among the dung-beetles is the same parental sacrifice shown by both parents? Again, why is a nursery made in some cases and not in others? why are the young guarded sometimes by the mother and sometimes by the father? We may say that all this wide diversity in habits has arisen through adaptation; the circumstances that have conditioned the life of the species have been different, and this has necessarily caused variety in their behaviour. This is, of course, true, but does it really teach us very much? No sooner do we begin to apply our reasons to any particular case of family behaviour than we find ourselves at a loss. Our reasoning suddenly breaks down, either because our knowledge is incomplete, or because one set of facts we possess seem to be contradicted by other facts of which we are equally sure.

Let us at once acknowledge our ignorance; there is much that cannot be explained.

If, however, we speculate at all on the matter, certain general ideas may be suggested. We are led to the view that when the father undertakes the care of the young, this reversal in the family duties must be primarily due to some failure on the part of the mother in performing the work in the nursery and home which customarily is hers. It is as if the father steps into her place in order that the species may escape the nemesis of elimination. The facts we have learnt are of no little importance. They tend to minimise, in the beginning of the family at least, the importance of the mother in relation to the young as compared with the importance of the father. It is this that I wish to establish.

And what we have learnt suggests the further interdependence, that does seem to exist among all species, between intelligence and good parenthood. Fabre, out of his wisdom and as a result of his great knowledge, says that the duties of caring for the young are the supreme inspirers of the intellect. Wherever we find devoted parents there also do we find lofty instincts. This is the second idea I ask you to accept. I think that we have proved its truth.

I may not stay here to point out the immense importance of these suggestions to the inquiry we are making as to the action of the maternal instinct, nor shall I pause to indicate the lessons that seem to me to await us from the curious transformation found in so many species in the duties of the two sexes. These considerations must wait until we know more. We have, I trust, extended somewhat, as well as rendered more exact, our knowledge on this complex and difficult question of motherhood. In the next two chapters I shall endeavour to extend it still further by a brief consideration of certain striking habits I have met with of parenthood among the birds and higher animals.

I am well aware that there are many people who cannot bring themselves to believe in, or even listen without impatience to, any comparison between the conduct of animals and that which prevails among ourselves. It is absurd, they will say, to try to explain the conditions of human parenthood by references to animal parents. I have no hope of convincing, nor do I much desire to convince, those who thus object. I would merely advise them to leave out this section of my book altogether.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER V
PARENTHOOD AMONG BIRDS
WITH FURTHER EXAMPLES OF GOOD FATHERS

Recapitulation of facts established—Reversal of sex attributes—Courting females and nursing males among certain birds—Attempt at explanation—Are sex-hunger and parental affection in conflict—A high standard of family life among birds—Few birds who are bad fathers—Examples of varying division of family work—A few birds who are bad parents—Where the mother takes sole charge of the eggs the father as a rule takes little interest in the family—The polygamous gallinaceous birds—Conduct affected by habits of the home—The Adélie penguins—Their co-operative child-rearing—The great emperor penguin—Scrimmage of childless mothers and fathers for possession of chickens.