OUR BABIES

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 95, 15 January 1921, Page 5

OUR BABIES

(By

“Hygeia.")

Published under the auspices of the Koyal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children; "It is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom." BOOKS ON BABIES. How wonderfully sane and sensible was the advice on infancy given by Florence Nightingale 60 years ago in her "Notes on Nursing.”' She summarised the main essentials which must be attended to by the mother or nurse as follows:— Minding the Baby. 1. Fresh air. 2. Proper warmth. 3. Cleanliness for its little body, its clothes, its bed, its room, and lior.se. 4. Feeding it with proper food, at regular times. 5. ‘Not starting it or shaking either its little body or its little nerves. 6. Light and cheerfulness. 7. Proper clothes in bed and up. And management tn all these things. If Florence Nightingale had included in her list the stimulus of outing and exercise, tho need for proper rest and Bleep, and the need of regularity in regard to ■ all habits, she would have drawn attention to all the main factors for normal growth and development, and for the prevention of disease and death in early childhood. However, one wonders, not at her omissions, but that she, should have expressed so clearly and sensibly 60 years • ago what no one summed up equally well throughout the Victorian era. Printed advice on the care of the m-tl. , dren was extremely scanty until quite recently. As Mr. F. 1). How says in fits charming little "Book of the Child,” published 14 years ago, "Not only was literature on children extremely scanty, but those people who did from time to time write on the subject, seemed to have been ashamed of , doing so, and their works, appearing once or twfcr-in e, century, aro for the most part anonymous.” In spite of this, Mr. How unearthed a very piquant and helpful little treatise which had been issued by the printer to the University of Cambridge in the year 1616. under the title:— "The Office of Christian Parents." This little book, printed over 300 years ago, set out to show "How children are to be governed throughout all ages and times of their life," and contained "a brief ndmonitorie unto children to answer to dutie to their parent’s office." Personal Care by the Mother. “The parent ’is put in trust to govern the chiefest creature under Heaven, to train that which is called the generation of ■ God." . '■ This old writer of 1616 made a strong point of the child being cared for by the parents from birth onwards. As Mr. How says, he did not even approve of the interference of the grandmother Interference of the Grandmother. "In some places there comes in the child-wife’s mother. She will not have her daughter troubled with the nursing, and the father cannot abide, the crying of the child; therefore a nurse is sent for in all haste”—a course of action of which he entirely disapproves. When the child is a older he still thinks that its commital Io the care of a servant should be avoided. "When a child beginneth to know his mother from another, there groweth two absurdities, either the mother's fondness maketh it a crying child and restless, or else her careless committing it to a servant spoils it.” Disciplining the Child. The old writer held strong views as to the need for firmness, but he was opposed to the great severity common, at the time. He says: “Here cometh in the cockling of the parents to give the child the sway of his owne desires to have whatsoever it pointeth to, and so it maketh the parents and ail the house slaves,' and there is no end of noyse, of crying, and wraling; or els there is such severitie as the heart of the child is utterly broken. . . . When parents 9 do either too much cockle their child- . iron, or by home example do draw them to worse things, or els neglect the due discipline and good order, what I pray you can come to passe? but as we see in trees which beeing neglected at the first are crooked and unfruitful: contrary, they which by the hand and art of the husbandman are proined, stayed up, and watered, are made upright, fair©, and fruitfull.” z Te insists that tho parent i» tho proper person.to bring, up a child, saying: “The eggs are badly hatched when the bird is away; and the children arc unluckily nurtured whose parents are made careless, being absent through pleasure.” Tho Miracle and Responsibility of Parenthood. Stephen Paget, the gifted London surgeon, whose contributions to the thought and literature of our time are always arresting, emphasises the sacred duty of parents to offspring as follows, in “The New Parents’ Assistant": Of the countless miracles which wo take for granted, this surely is tho most bewildering, that we have children. Neither science nor religion can measure thio wonder of wonders. . . . ■ But to be a parent is to incur grave responsibilities. . . . The 'problem presents itself io m© thus: Wo two, man and wife, who are the efficient cause of our children's being, are thereby-tho sole agents, not only of their joy and happiness, but of every fqlse step they take, every pain they suffer. . . . But for us they would not have been hero at all. We have called not ...animals but spirits from the vasty 'deep, and they came when we did call for them; by which net wo are the cause of all their distresses.