Our Babies

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XLV, Issue XLV, 19 October 1917, Page 4

Our Babies

(By Hygeia).

Published under the auapices of tue Society for the Health of Women and Children.

"It is wiser to pat up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain »t» imbalance at the bottom."

Save-Tfee-Babies Week.

Our Foreign Correspondent, Mr William Jenkins, has sent ma the following article, which- was published in the Sunday at Home, an English magazine, at the time of the National Baby Week recently held in England. Although New Zealand is held up in tbis magazine as an example to the world so far as Infantile Mortality is concerned, we have nj> excuse for rest inj| on our oars when there is still so much to be done. "The Greatest Economy of All." "It may be," says John Ruskin, "discovered that the true veins of -wealth are purple—and not in i*ock, bat in flesh,—perhaps even that the final outcome and consummation of all health is in" the producing of as manyaß possible full-breathed, brighteyed, and happy human creatures." In this country the younger the child the less assured is its mortal stride.

Out of every 1000 boys who are born 30 die within the first week of life, - also another 30 before tbree months are out, and yet 60 moreby the end of the first year. But betw»en the ages of one and two only another 30 drop oat of the race, so that the first week of life is as fatal as the whole of the second 12 months. Should a boy reach the age of five, bis chances of living <* at least to 25 are 40 times greater " than are the chances' of the new-born babe becoming a one-year-old. When everything is taken into account, perhaps the wonder should be, , not that so many babies die, bat that so many live. Tnere must be some tremendoas vitality in every fresh instalment of the human stock which enables it to fight as successfully as it does the spiteful foes of infancy. * The death-rate among infants in Russia, according to a Russian medical man, is similar to that of the soldiers on the battle-field. Every baby is enfiladed from entrenchments laid deeply in it 3 own environment, in its inherited constitution, and in the ignorance of its parents. Its very feeding bottle (of coarse, no feeding bottle should be needed) may prove a traitor, the flannels swathe it may work * it mischief, and the mother's hand that rocks the cradle may Bign its death warrant. Instruction in Mothercraft Essential. The disorder which carries off the ' greatest number of infants is not diarrhoea or pneumonia, but parental ignorance, fhis is not the same as parental indifference. A. larger number of little lives are shortened by too much comforting and cuddling than by drliberate neglect. The number of children who die by starvation is not to be compared with the number of those who die of overfeeding or improper feeding, due as often as not to the foolish indulgence of the mother. What is wanted is mothercraft—a word not to lie found in the dictionary, but one which, is fairly self-explana-tory. The solatiop of the problem of of infant mortality is 80 per cent the care and training of the mother. ' It is strange incited that we should have bepn so slow to learn the art whieh Mother Eve introduced into human society. The very creatures of field an- forest shame us. The main reproach should not be leveUed against either the mothers or the fathers, but rather against tbe community and the State.. The quickening of public conscience on this matt' r has been wofulty tardy. No Recognition of Babies' Rights in the Victorian Era.

At the end of the nineteenth century the rate of infant mortality had 'fallen very little, if at all, below that which prevailed in the thirties, when civil registration began. ■ The long reign of the Mother Queen was a time of reform and scientific development and grekt productive capacity. The franchise was extended, political economy was studied as iti bad never Been studied before, and t men began to conjure up imperial visions. Bat one searches,, in vain, even for the note of regret, let alone r the call to action, at the annual Hero- : dian massacre, The number of in- 1

fants who died in the United Kingdom m in 1900 was 170,000, aDd the rate was 1 almost as high as it had ever been daring the Victorian era. The modern movement towards the conservation of infant life stands for a new social consciousness. Example of New Zealand. For the most startling instance of results we may go to the other side of the world. Tt>n yeais ago the infant mortality rate of New Zealand was remarkably low compared with that of England, bat in the interval it has been actually brought down to only 5 per cent, mainly as ihe result of the activities of a Society for the Health of Women and Children. To-day the infant mortality rate of New Zealand is little more tban half that of Batb or our most favoured towns. The work already accomplished by infant welfare centres dependent upon local public spirit and in tiative has proved up to the hilt that at least half our English infant mortality is preventable. To safeguard infant life is more important than to keep up the gold reserve in the Bank of England. All the facts go to show that a low infant mortality always co-exists <vith a high standard of general health I and fitness. If no steps are j taken to reduce infant jportality we not merely eliminate the weaklings, but enfeeble those who survive. The same causes that kill 10 or 12 babies out of every hundred leave a more or less permanent mark on almost the whole of the babies who manage to keep this side of tbfe dead line. Modern Infanticide not Voluntary, but Lo/g Drawn Out and Infinitely More j Cruel. were, it otherwise, a policy of laisses faire would be unsupportable to to the Christian conscience. A public spirit enlightened by Christianity is the only thing that opposes infanticide. The greatest civilisations the world has ever Been, the Greek and Soman, sanctioned infanticide, equally with the Bushmen of Africa and the unregenerate South Sea Islanders. All the non-Christian religions, with the notable exception of the Jewish, have countenanced it. Mohammedanism sanctions it. Only British rale in India has checked it among the Hindus and the Brahmans. It is one of the commonest practices in China; it has a considerable footing in Japan. And, let it be remembered for our own profit, there is no clear line of division between the deliberate slaying of infants and passive acquiescence in the local evils which make a huge infant mortality possible. The exigencies of race preservation are now coming to reinforce the Christian position. We are all beginning to see that it is a condition of Zion that, as the ancient. prophet said, "the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof." We are\ getting a new vision of [ Mothercraft as being not only an individual but a communal interest. The 1 children in the street are our children. Someone has said witb regard to another great reform that the only way i to get it accomplished is to Yellowjournalise it—to pick out its «alient 1 point*' and" scream about them. Then > let this consideration be given the ® fortissimo of italics: If the infant ' death-rate for the United Kingdom J were as low as it is in New Zealand, 1 th« number of babies thus savdd withc in four years would equal the quarter 2 of a million lives which it is estimated 1 we will lose in the present war. > The saving of the infants would r mean preventing a terrible waste of 1 every kind, not least the unavailing travail of a world of mothers. And by our methods of instruction and re- » forming conditions we shall be making straigbter paths for all the ten million t pairs of tiny feet that will come tripping along in any case before the next 10 years are out.