Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Having chosen a profession with a view to the physical limitations of motherhood, and prepared during her plentiful time of waiting such arrangement of hours and substitutes as shall enable her to meet the mother’s duties properly, she takes a complete vacation for the months that need it; and then gradually resumes her work for part of the day, as her hours between nursing the child lengthen. She goes gladly to her work because she loves it, is well trained for it, and by doing it she serves her child. She comes more gladly to the child, the deep primal instinct coming out strongly; and at night the healthy little one sleeps near her in the quiet home.

  Between the hours of nursing, the baby sleeps peacefully or wakes happily, in the beautiful home that his mother — working with the other mothers — have made for their children; and is watched and cared for by the wise and tender women who have proved their fitness for this precious work.

  His mother is not worried about him. She knows that in that home there is no possible danger, in that trained care no least neglect; and that, if any sudden illness smote him, the visiting physician is there daily, and others in instant call. This place was made for babies, and is not in charge of servants. She is at ease about the child. Eagerly she goes to him when work is done. No weariness, no anxious uncertainty, only the glad triumphant mother-love which is content in knowing that the best possible conditions are secured to the child, and a constantly renewed delight in its health and beauty and good progress. Owing to her previous study, she knows enough not to undo the good effects by foolishness at home. She is in daily communication with the teachers, — and nurses and doctors, if necessary. She does not lose touch with the little life. Her untired affection surrounds him always, and to the child she is probably the most agreeable of the several agreeable persons in whose society he finds himself. Unless she falls terribly below the common standard, he will love her the best; for the beautiful background of nursing won and held his dawning affection, and the sweet home-coming every night is a constantly strengthening tie. Any clean, comfortable, human home should be suitable for a healthy child to sleep in; but it is in his impressionable day-time hours that he needs more appropriate surroundings.

  It will be seen that this unnatural mother has her child in her own care for sixteen hours out of the twenty-four, and during the eight hours of a working day she herself places him in what she knows to be better conditions than her own home could offer. If she does chance to possess that degree of educational genius essential to the best care of young children, her eight hours of work will be spent in taking care of them, and the remaining sixteen in still taking care of her own. Thus the exceptional mother, who is also an educator, will have her own all the time; and her unusual ability will benefit many other little ones for part of the time.

  The “natural” mother, of course, believes that her own care of her own child is better than any one’s else. She can give no proof of this, and would be very unwilling to submit to any examination or competition. She simply thinks she is the best educator because she is a “mother.” The sickness and death of her children, or the accidents which happen to them, or their inferior development and disagreeable behaviour, she never takes as proof of her incompetence. Where an experienced teacher could remove half a dozen bad habits in as many months without the child’s knowing it, the mother scolds and spanks along the years, or resignedly lets the small people trample upon the rights of their elders, in serene conviction that her methods must be right; for is she not their mother?

  The unnatural mother, who is possessed of enough intelligence and knowledge to recognise her own deficiencies, gladly intrusts her children to superior care for part of the time, and constantly learns by it herself.

  The mother-love, which is so far strained by the difficulties of rearing children in the home as to frequently give way to irritability, weariness, and even bad temper, would be kept fresh and unworn by the eight-hour rest; and the child would never learn to despise his mother’s irascibility and lack of self-control, as, unfortunately, so many children do. To the child, happy and busy in his day hours of education, the home-coming would be an ever new delight, and the home— “papa and mamma’s house” — a lovely place to respect and enjoy.

  Many will wonder why the mother is described as “working” during eight hours. The able-bodied and able-minded human being who does not work is a contemptible object. To take from the labour of others so large a share of human products as is necessary to our comfort to-day, and contribute nothing in return, is the position of a devouring parasite.

  Most women do work, hard and long, at house-service. The “natural” mother is content to mingle her “sacred duties” of child-care with the miscellaneous duties of a house-servant; but the “unnatural mother,” for the sake of her children, refuses to be the kitchen-maid, parlour-maid, and chamber-maid of the world any longer. She recognises that her real duties are too important to be hindered in their performance any longer by these primitive inconveniences; and, with combined intelligence, she and the others arrange their households on a basis of organised professional service, with skilled labour by the hour, and so each has time to perform some professional service herself, and pay well for the better performance of the “domestic” tasks.

  This subject is treated in a special volume on “Women and Economics,” but here it is sufficient to present the position of the mother, the “unnatural” mother, who would refuse to maintain any longer our grossly defective system of household service (either by herself or by a hired woman), on the ground that it was not conducive to the best development of her children.

  To those who for any reason prefer, or are compelled by circumstances, to pursue the profession of private house-servant, it will, however, be of inestimable advantage to have their children taken out of the dirt and danger, and placed in proper conditions, while the mother follows her profession at home. The natural mother cares only for her own children. She loves and labours without knowledge, and what experience she gains by practising on her own children is buried with her. The unnatural mother cares for Children, — all of them, — and knows that she can best serve her own by lifting the standard of child-culture for all.

  We have urgent need of the unnatural mother, — the mother who has added a trained intellect to a warm heart; and, when we have enough of them, the rarest sound on earth will be that now so pitifully common, — the crying of a little child.

  XV.

  SOCIAL PARENTAGE.

  The mother does her duty by her children as best she can. The father does his duty by his children. But we do not do our duty by our children. The relation of the State to the child is little thought of, much less understood. We have discussed it only as an alternative to the parental relation, involving the removal of the child from the home and family, and the substitution of civic for domestic care. Such a proposal naturally excites the hot opposition of parental love and instinct, and cannot stand. It has been tried more or less thoroughly, as in Sparta, but does not appeal to the human heart or head, and is not in the least what is here under discussion. The true relation of the State to the child includes the parental relation, and in no way controverts the love and instinct of those invaluable public functionaries.

  It is not necessary, or in any way desirable, for the State to remove the child from the parent. Parents are evolved for the purpose of rearing children, and possess highly specialised and urgent impulses in that direction, — far too useful forces to be ignored.

  But the civilised human parent lives as part of an elaborate society, — a State; and, as a member of the State, he holds a new relation to his child — she holds a new relation to her child: they — and they are the State — hold a new relation to their children. This is what we so generally ignore.

  The individual parents do their individual duty fairly well; but the collective parents, who constitute society, fail shamefully in their collective duties. What is a society? It is an organisation of human beings, alive, complex, exquisit
ely developed in co-ordinate inter-service. What is it for? It is for development, growth, progress, like any other living thing. How does a society improve? By combinations of individuals evolving social processes which react favourably upon the individual constituents, and develope in them better social faculties. For instance, early combinations of individuals evolve low forms of legal protection for the citizens of the early State. Under those protective enactments, citizens grow up in comparative peace, and become capable of enacting further and superior laws.

  In recent and particular instance, our American forefathers established a system of public education under which many citizens were developed to a degree of intelligence sufficient to see the need and the means of extending and improving that education. Education is a social process, impossible — in any human degree — among detached individuals.

  The education of children is a distinctly social process. Much of it may be carried on by the parents, but it is for social improvement and as a member of society that they do this. Here is where our parents, who constitute society, fail to see the nature and extent of their work. They have an exaggerated idea of “parental responsibility” to the child, and no idea at all of social responsibility to the child. That social development which has enlarged the mind and soul of the beast-savage to our present capacity for love and service we still imagine to be purely parental, and endeavour to concentrate it all on our own children, failing utterly in our duty to each other’s children.

  No such gross error can work good results. This disproportionate concentration of feeling on the individual child, and neglect of the child in general, produces a world full of people with a congested family life, full of morbid sensitiveness and potential difficulty and suffering, and a weak, anæmic social life, full of mutual neglect and dereliction of duty.

  The well-known illustration of education can be used again still farther to show this. Suppose a small community, wherein the parents are all very anxious for the education of their own children and profoundly indifferent to the education of anybody’s else children. Suppose these parents all labour religiously to buy books, pictures, statues, music, and to have the best of tutors for their own children.

  It can be seen without much mathematical effort how inferior would be the supplies purchasable by the individual parent’s funds compared to those purchasable by their collective funds. Separately, they could not compass a good teacher to each family, nor good pictures, nor many books and instruments, nor any statuary and music to speak of. Collectively and for less money, they could have all these things in far higher degree of excellence.

  It is social parentage, such as we have, which gives us the school as we have it. It is the weakness and irresponsibility of our social parentage which leaves the school as it is, and fails to push on to something far fuller and better. What thought, what care, what service, does the average mother give to other people’s children? None. She does not imagine it to be her duty. She imagines that her duty lies only toward her own children, and that it is no faintest fault of hers if other children suffer. If she sees little ones visibly neglected and injured, she merely blames their individual parents, and gives no further thought to the matter.

  Now, once for all, what is the advantage of living in a society instead of living alone? It is that we do not have to spend all our time and strength in very imperfectly taking care of ourselves, as the separate individual would be obliged to do, but are more and more perfectly taken care of by one another. We all share in the advantages of living together, — the protection not only of numbers, but of our specialised defenders, civil and military; the vast accumulations of knowledge and skill acquired by many and transmitted to all; the increasing measure of mutual love, in which we thrive and grow. The more perfectly a society can distribute these advantages to all its citizens, the more swiftly and healthfully does it advance and improve.

  Public peace and safety, public justice, public education, the public hall, the public road, the public library and gallery and museum and bath, — these are what react so favourably upon the individual, and make better homes and citizens. The father is, to some extent, awake to the duties of social parentage; the mother, hardly at all. The difference is this: the father serves his children by means of serving other people; the mother serves her children personally, with her own hands. Suppose a number of families (we cannot call it a community, because it would not be one), wherein the fathers endeavoured to serve their children personally with their own hands only, each man building, weaving, farming, fishing, blacksmithing, making dishes and tools and instruments, and trying in all ways to meet the family needs himself personally.

  It will readily be seen how little the families of these men would have. The time, strength, and skill of one man do not go far, if he tries to do all things himself. Why do women imagine that their time, strength, and skill severally will serve better than in combination? Why are they content to give their children only what they can do themselves alone, thus depriving them of the rich possibilities of civilised motherhood, combined, collective, mutually helpful?

  The term “city fathers,” and its painful lack of companionship in city mothers, shows the wide gulf between the development of social parentage in men and women. The accidents to little children from electric and cable cars are pitifully numerous. What mother has taken any steps to prevent these accidents? Individually, each tries to protect her own, as does the animal or savage. Collectively, they do nothing; yet it is the lack of this collective motherhood which makes our cities so unsafe for children. The idea that, if each takes care of her own, all will be cared for, is as false for women as it is for men. If each man took care of his own, and not of the others, we should have no soldiers, no policemen, no government, no society, only that social chaos called anarchy.

  Social health and progress demand collective action, the largest mutuality, the care and service of all, which is the only guarantee of safety and prosperity to each. Our fatherhood is to a considerable degree socialised. Our motherhood is flatly anarchistic, refusing all co-ordination.

  An earnest — hotly earnest — woman once disputed this suggestion of mutual service in motherhood, thus: “When I make the bed for my child, I put some of my personality between the sheets. My child sleeps better if I make his bed for him.” I gazed at her calmly.

  “Does your child walk better if you make his shoes for him?” I asked.

  It is a pretty sentiment that the mother’s love in some mysterious way makes all she does for the child superior to what another could do. But apply the test of fact. Can she, with all her love, make as good a shoe as the shoemaker? as good a hair-brush, tooth-brush, tumbler, teacup, pie-plate, spoon, fork, or knife, as the professional manufacturers of these things? Does mother-love teach her to be a good barber? Can she cut her darling’s hair so as to make him happy? Can she make a good chair or table or book or window? How silly it is to imagine that this “personality” inserted between the sheets makes the bed more conducive to healthy sleep than any other clean, well-aired, well-made bed!

  Let the mother put the child to bed by all means, if she wishes. In the last sweet words and the good-night kiss is truly the place for personality. That is a mother’s place, and not a tradesman’s. But there is no more need for maternal personality between the sheets of a bed than between the leaves of a book or the bricks of a wall.

  In our narrow-mindedness we have assumed that to care for any other children would mean to neglect our own. As if the human heart, the mother-heart, could love but one or six, and not more! As a matter of fact, we neglect our own by not caring for others. That is, we fail to take those general measures for the protection and development of all children which would so greatly benefit our particular children. Only to-day, at last, we see in some few advanced communities the mothers’ club and congress, the women’s civic associations, and other forms of union for the improvement of social conditions, all helping to enlarge the application of mother-love, an
d set that great force free to bring on the better day for children. These clubs and societies are jeered at by the majority of mothers, who proudly say that they are too busy taking care of their children to go to a mothers’ congress and learn how.

  Imagine, again, a majority of men, each saying he was too busy teaching his children to go to a school meeting and plan for the education of them all! It is not a shifting of duty that is required, — to cease to take care of one’s own in order to take care of others instead. So ingrained are our primitive habits, so unable are we to conceive of anything but the one-woman method, that our only idea of change is a simple exchange of responsibility. It is not exchanging that is needed, but an enlarging, an embracing of the less in the greater.

  The mothers of the world are responsible for the children of the world; the mothers of a nation, for the children of a nation; the mothers of a city, for the children of a city. We may ignore and deny this claim; but it is there none the less, and, because we do not do our duty as social parents, a corrupt society injures our children continually. The diseases of other children infect ours. What have the mothers ever done to prevent these diseases? They nurse their own sick little ones religiously, and bury them with tears; but what do they do before or after to learn the cause and prevention of these “family afflictions,” to spread their information, and enforce measures to put a stop to them? The bad habits of other children affect ours, — their ignorance, their ill manners, their sins. Our children suffer individually from bad social conditions, but cannot be saved individually.

  When the Philadelphia water supply is so foul as to poison young and old, mothers are responsible for not doing their share to make the city water fit for their families to drink. It is not a private filter on a private faucet that will do it, but public purity in the public works.