The Forerunner Part 168

THE PERMANENT CHILD

I sat watching my baby, my little son, who was asleep--a year old child, fair and strong; and it did not seem a day since he was a tiny red creature, helpless and faintly groping.

As I looked and loved, I thought how it would not seem another day till he was a st.u.r.dy boy--a tall youth--a man grown; and I should lose my baby forever!

Then I thought of all the other mothers whose babies were flying from them by day and night--growing up, pus.h.i.+ng away; of how we loved our babies and could not keep them even if we would. And I seemed to see the million babies of mankind all over the earth--black and white and yellow and brown, well-loved little ones of a million mothers--breaking into life like bubbles, blossoming, sprouting, coming into being everywhere, every hour, every minute, every second--this budding glory of babyhood--all over the earth: human life springing up in babies, like the Spring gra.s.s. And they fled as fast as they came. The days flew by--the weeks, the months, the years--and the babies changes and grew like a transformation scene; taking new shape, new size, new power; disappearing as I watched them, and becoming boys and girls, men and women.

But while I watched this millionfold swift flutter of unceasing change, suddenly something happened to it. The million and million all seemed to coalesce and become one--one little child; and the swift flutter of change grew vague and faint around it, so that although there was a soft uncertainty around the child and a half-visible smoke of growing forms arising from it, yet that small, dimpled shape remained, a little uncertain in outline as in a composite photograph, but steady and changeless as to the eyes--the clear, deep, searching eyes of a child.

My whole heart yearned to him: something rose and swelled within me, deeper, wider, stronger than anything I had ever felt before. I loved him as I had never loved my own, as I had never known I could love--and suddenly I felt that I too had changed, and that I was now not only a mother but THE MOTHER; and I saw what it was I loved: it was THE CHILD.

And I longed to feed and guard and shelter and serve that Child as might a million mothers made into one, with all the sweet helplessness, all the glorious promise of a million children made one for her to love.

Then as I watched those deep child eyes: as my heart swelled and ached with that great love: I saw--I felt--I knew--what had been borne, and still was borne, by this; The Child in human history. I saw the savage mother and the savage father caring for the children the best they knew, with all the torture and distortion, all the cruel initiations, all the black, blind superst.i.tions of those old times, to the crowning horror of infant sacrifice when the child went through the fire to Moloch--for his parents' sins!--the living, loving, helpless child, sacrificed by his parents. I saw the bent skull of the Flathead Indian child, the crippled feet of the Chinese girl child, the age-long, hideous life and death of the child-wife and the child-widow of Hindoostan. I saw The Child in Sparta, and The Child in Rome, The Child in the Dark Ages, The Child scourged, imprisoned, starved, its mind filled with all manner of black falsehoods, its body misunderstood, and maltreated; and my heart ached, and I cried out, "Were there no Mothers for those children?"

And then I saw behind The Child, The Mother visible--the vague, composite, mighty form of a million mothers made as one--but her heart was my heart to feel and know.

I said to her--aching for her yet full of awful blame--"Could you not have saved The Child from this?"

And she wrung her hands. "I loved my child," she said.

"Loved? Loved?" I cried. "Could Love allow all this? Could Love not guard and feed, could Love not teach and save?"

"Alas, no!" she said. "I gave Love: it was all I had. I had neither Knowledge nor Freedom, nor Wisdom, nor Power: and I could not guard nor feed nor teach nor save. But I could love and I could serve--and I could suffer."

And the eyes of The Child, steady, clear, deep as all Time, were on me; and I felt his pain.

Then the moving screen of The Past was swept away and The Present spread and widened before me 'till I saw the whole wide range of Earth in all its starlit glory and sunlit joy--and everywhere The Child. Also everywhere The Mother--still loving, still serving, still suffering, still without Knowledge or Wisdom or Freedom or Power, still unable to guard or feed or teach or save.

Disease seized upon The Child, disease planted in his bones and blood by his Father while the Mother, blind and helpless, became partner in this Unnatural Crime. Disease preyed upon The Child, disease from ignorance and disease from poverty and disease from pride; and the Doctors strove with the diseases--and they strove also with the Mothers, but in vain.

Poverty preyed upon The Child: he suffered for lack of life's necessities, for decency and comfort, for peace and beauty and cleanliness. And the Fathers strove with Poverty. But the Mothers remained alone--and loved and served and suffered.

Labor preyed upon The Child. Forced Labor, Premature Labor, hard, grinding, destructive Labor such as wastes the tissues of strong men; and The Child went down before it like gra.s.s before the scythe, for Childhood is meant for Growth and not for Waste and Toil. The Mind of The Child was dulled, the Body of The Child was stunted and crippled and broken: accidents fell upon him, with the Special Diseases of Labor and Premature Death.

And I cried out to The Mother--that mighty figure I saw dimly there behind The Child--to save The Child. But there replied only the faint, piping voices of a million mothers, isolated and alone, each sorrowing one heart-full for one child--and sorrowing in vain.

"My child is dead!" said one, and wept.

"Mine is a cripple!" said another, and wept.

"Mine is an idiot!" said another, and wept.

"Mine is stunted by the mill work!" said another, and wept.

"Mine is ignorant and grows vicious because of our poverty and the vileness wherein we must live!" said another, and wept.

And I cried to them again, "But you are millions upon millions--and you are Mothers! And you can have today--if you will but take it--Wisdom and Freedom and Knowledge and Power, and you can feed and teach and guard and save. And if you do not, the blood of The Child is on your hands! And The Child is The World--the Whole World--a Baby World--and yours!"

But the great picture faded and fled away. The Child disappeared and left first the flickering flight of a million babies like the leaves of a forest, and then but one, my child, asleep before me. That vague and mighty figure of The Mother disappeared, leaving first the sad-eyed faces of a million mothers--loving, serving and suffering--and then nothing but myself and my child.

But in my heart remained an emptiness that nothing could fill. I caught my baby to my heart--but he was not enough! I had seen and I had loved the Child--the Baby World.

"Oh Child of Mine!" I cried, "I will love you and serve you and I will feed and guard and teach and save--but that is not enough! You are but one, oh Child of Mine, and there are millions and millions! There were--there are--and there will be! It is a stream--a torrent. It is everlasting. Babyhood upon earth continuously, always Babyhood, Human Babyhood--and not yet Motherhood to meet its needs!"

No savage Mother is enough. No slavish Mother is enough. No narrow, selfish Mother is enough. No pitiful offered sacrifice of one Mother's life is enough.

The Child does not need sacrifice. It needs Wisdom and Freedom and Knowledge and Power. It needs Social Motherhood--the conscious, united Mother Love and Mother Care of the Whole World.

THE NEW MOTHERHOOD

I have been reading Ellen Key's "Century of the Child," reviewed in this number, and am moved to add, in connection with that review, a "brief"

for the New Motherhood.

Agreeing with almost all of that n.o.ble book and with the spirit of the whole of it, I disagree with its persistence in the demand for primitive motherhood--for the entire devotion of each and every mother to her own children--and disagree on the ground that this method is not the best for child service.

Among animals, where one is as good as another, "the mother"--each one of them--can teach her young all that they need to know. Her love, care and instruction are all-sufficient. In early stages of human life, but slightly differentiated, each mother was still able to give to her children all the advantages then known, and to teach them the few arts and crafts necessary of attainment. Still later, when apprentices.h.i.+p taught trades, the individual mother was still able to give all the stimulus and instruction needed for early race culture--and did so, cheerfully.

But we have now reached a stage of social development when this grade of nurture is no longer sufficient, and no longer found satisfying either by mother or child. On the one hand, women are differentiating as human beings: they are no longer all one thing--females, mothers, and NOTHING ELSE. They are still females, and will remain so; still mothers, and will remain so: but they are also Persons of widely varying sorts, with interests and capacities which fit them for social service in many lines.

On the other hand, our dawning knowledge of child culture leads us to require a standard of ability in this work based on talent, love, natural inclination, long training and wide experience. It is no longer possible for the average woman, differentiated or undifferentiated, to fulfill the work of right training for babies and little children, una.s.sisted. Moreover, the New Motherhood is belying to-day the dogma of the high cultural value of "the home" as a place of education for young children--an old world a.s.sumption which Miss Key accepts without question and intensifies.

The standards of the New Motherhood are these:

First: The fullest development of the woman, in all her powers, that she may be the better qualified for her duties of transmission by inheritance.

Second: The fullest education of the woman in all plain truths concerning her great office, and in her absolute duty of right selection--measuring the man who would marry her by his fitness for fatherhood; and holding him to the highest standards in his duty thereto.

Third: Intelligent recognition that child culture is the greatest of arts, that it requires high specialization and life service, and the glad entrance upon this service of those women naturally fitted for it.

Such standards as these recognize the individual woman's place as a human being, her economic independence, her special social service; and hold her a far more valuable mother for such development, able to give her children a richer gift by inheritance than the mothers of the past--all too much in femininity and too little in humanity.

A mother who is something more--who is also a social servant--is a n.o.bler being for a child to love and follow than a mother who is nothing more--except a home servant. She is wiser, stronger, happier, jollier, a better comrade, a more satisfying and contented wife; the whole atmosphere around the child at home is improved by a fully human mother.

On the second demand, that of a full conscious knowledge of the primal conditions of her business, the New Motherhood can cleanse the world of most of its diseases, and incidentally of many of its sins. A girl old enough to marry, is old enough to understand thoroughly what lies before her and why.

Especially why. The real cause and purpose of the marriage relation, parentage, she has but the vaguest ideas about--an ignorance not only absurd but really criminal in the light of its consequences. Women should recognize not only the personal joy of motherhood, which they share with so many female creatures, but the social duty of motherhood and its unmeasured powers. By right motherhood they can build the world: by wrong motherhood they keep the world as it is--weak, diseased, wicked.

The average quality of the human stock today is no personal credit to the Old Motherhood, and will be held a social disgrace by the New. But beyond a right motherhood and a right fatherhood comes the whole field of social parentage, one phase of which we call education. The effect of the environment on the child from birth is what demands the attention of the New Motherhood here: How can we provide right conditions for our children from babyhood? That is the education problem. And here arises the insistent question: "Is a small, isolated building, consecrated as a restaurant and dormitory for one family, the best cultural environment for the babyhood of the race?"

To this question the New Motherhood, slowly and timidly, is beginning to answer, "No." It is becoming more and more visible, in this deeper, higher demand for race improvement, that we might provide better educational conditions for the young of the human species. For the all-engrossing importance of the first years of childhood, it is time that we prepared a place. This is as real a need as the need of a college or school. We need A PLACE FOR BABIES--and our homes arranged in relation to such places.

A specially prepared environment, a special service of those best fitted for the task, the acc.u.mulated knowledge which we can never have until such places and such service are given--these are demanded by the New Motherhood.