EVADING MOTHERHOOD.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1060, 22 June 1912, Page 4

EVADING MOTHERHOOD.

WOMEN WITH NO MATERNAL INSTINCT

(“Eileen,” in the Taranaki News.)

There seems to be a strange and unnatural type of young woman growing up in our midst. She belongs, as a rule, to the educated and well-to-do classes, but she is to be found among the seif-suppurtiug and labouring people, also. This is the young woman who objects strenuously to motherhood, and who does not hesitate to make her ideas known to young men when she is sought in marriage. She will consent to being a wife only as she is assured she need not bear children.

One can understand how a very poor girl, obliged to work daily for a living, might feel that she could unite her fate with a man she loved, even if he were able to give her Ireedom from the toil and the comforts of a home ; and one can understand how in this situation she would wish to avoid the responsibilities of motherhood until better days came. But it is not the working girl, mated to the labouring man, who most frequently fights against motherhood.

It is the young wife who has comfort, and even luxury, who strenuously objects to bringing children into the world.

There is much said by our religious people and our missionaries of the destruction of female children in China and India.

Among the very poor and ignorant of those lands it is still a common event for the new-born girl to be immediately smothered' and told “to go back and bring her brother.”

This is all very dreadful ; but there is a practice quite common in America and other Christian lands which is almost as dreadful. It is the destroying of incipient life, to avoid the cares of motherhood. Were all the wives who have committed this crime summoned before the courts it would make an appalling army. One such wife, twenty-five years ago, was always violent when the subject of children was mentioned in her hearing. She ' declared nothing could induce her to give up her freedom, her good looks, and her time to the care of a child.

Yet now in advancing years she is living in loneliness, seeking everywhere for some new distraction, and borrowing other people’s children to brighten her life, besides bearing the brand on her face of the woman who has fought motherhood at any cost —an unmistakable brand to one who has seen much of the world.

Any young man should pause well before he thinks seriously of marrying a girl who has no maternal instincts.

There are two qualities which a womanly woman must possess : She must love children and she must have love and reverence for the Creator of the universe. She need not be orthodox.

She does not need a special creed or great knowledge of dogmas or aggressive piety, but she does need faith and reverence to make her a lovable and lovely woman.

She must possess the humility and the intelligence to be conscions of the wonderful power which formed this universe, or she can never be an agreeable and sympathetic companion for a man through all life’s vicissitudes. A reverent faith in a woman is what fragrance is to a flower.

And the woman who does not care for children and who has no maternal instincts is abnormal; she lacks the finer feminine qualities, and a certain hardness and selfishness will be displayed in her nature as time passes.

It is a wise woman who objects to motherhood—-if there is a taint in the blood of either family. Children, like Iruit, should come from good soil. Where there is a combination of ignorance and poverty, children should not be born. But the woman who objects to offspring because she wants her treedom, or because she does not like children, is a woman to distrust. She lacks the large, wholesome, moral qualities which God gave as a touadaliou for her nature.

Benjamin Franklin was the sixteenth child in a family of a poor tallow chandler Abraham Iffncoln was born of poor parents. Both mothers loved children, and made no effort to destroy the unborn infant.

Any wife who is conscious that she bears another lire under her heart wants to think of the great possibility that she may be the chosen medium of Destiny for

giving the world a useful being ; a statesman, a philanthropist, a genius or leader of men or a great woman to better the race.

Instead of allowing criminal thoughts to occupy her mind toward ridding herself of this life, let her fill her mind with good and great and tender thoughts, and so make her child what she desires it to be.

Napoleon’s mother read Roman history before his birth, and she was tided wiln admiration of

powerful warriors. No one admires warriors to-day, and the world does not want another Napoleon. But it wants great men and great women, and the mothers of the children to be must come into a realisation of their power to make children vvhat they desire, through parental iufluence. It is the highest privilege lite can offer a human being —this privilege of motherhood. Nothing else can compare with it. How dare women become criminals to escape it?