Single mother

“ Should exposure or peril result in the death of the mother, the child must not be left without a natural guardian and caretaker. This young life is too precious to be exposed to possible peril. Its care, its nurture, its education is too important even to be risked with a single parent. The mother might "forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb," and it was important that the child should then have another, who is bound by natural and moral obligations, and by bonds of personal interest and tenderest affection, to care for it. ”

“ Is the maternal instinct waning in intensity in this period of feminization? There have always been some bad, careless, selfish mothers; has their number increased? Probably not, yet the maternal instinct now has competition in the heart of the modern woman. The desire to participate in the world's activity, the desire to learn, to acquire culture, engenders a restless impatience with the closed-in life of the mother-housewife. This interferes with single-minded motherhood, brings about conflict, and so leads to mental and bodily unrest. ”

“ If a wronged girl becomes a mother, if she is turned away from her home, if she desires to be a true mother to her own child, she will find it impossible to find honorable employment as a single girl with a baby and to avoid immoral solicitations from vicious men, unless she assumes the title of “Mrs.” ”

“ An unmarried woman is able to secure better conditions of life to a nation of children who are neglected or abandoned, by devoting herself to public duties, to furthering their education, or to enlightening the public on the laws affecting them. Their happiness and welfare become hers, their improved condition is essentially the product of her life, as a mother a woman may benefit two or three, as a single woman she benefits thousands. ”

“ And I have always been struck by the attitude of the women who have discussed it—an attitude which, judged by the conventional or Raphaelesque standard. might be described as typically unfeminine and unmaternal—since their sympathies were invariably and unreservedly on the side of the erring mother, and I cannot remember having heard a single woman's voice raised in defence of the right to its life of the unwanted child. On the contrary, mothers of families, devoted to their own children and discharging their duties to them In a manner beyond reproach, have. ”

“ For this reason, it is peculiarly important, that a woman’s education should furnish her with abundant resources for employment and amusement. I do not say that an unmarried woman can be as happy as one who forms, with proper views and feelings, a union, which is unquestionably the most blessed of all human relations; but I am very certain that one properly educated need not be unhappy in single life.
The great difficulty at the present day is, that matrimony is made a subject of pride, vanity, or expediency ”

“ It is a part of the mother's duly, then, and one to which especial attention should be paid, to see that a spirit of exclusiveness does not find place among her children; and this can only be done effectually by inspiring them with comprehensive, generous, and affectionate feelings toward each other, so that no single member of the family shall esteem any happiness as complete, in which the others do not partake. ”

“ Should a woman only exclusively through marriage be able to come to her right—to the full awakening of the best gifts of her soul? because the highest and most sacred glory of woman is motherhood. But then must a woman be obliged to have a child of her own in order to be a true mother—a being who is all love and sacrifice? ”

“ But woman cannot be entirely happy in maternity alone, without the presence and sustaining power of her husband. If she is a true wife, she desires to be more to her husband than merely the mother of his children. ”

“ In this way, but not through the employment itself, many a woman has lost her chances of motherhood.
Thus the conflict does not commence until marriage; and for the exceptionally gifted, as we have already said, it may be tragic. For the majority it will not become so unless the wife is obliged to earn her living outside the home and at the same time wishes fully to perform her duties as mother, or when she wishes to attend to her personal business but is prevented by a large family from so doing. ”

“ Seeing the young girl move thus about the house the mother’s heart would melt within her and she suffered for what fate might befall this young thing when she must wed her somewhere. For wed she must be somehow, lest after the mother died there be not one to care for the maid nor one to whom she truly could belong, since a woman belongs first to the husband’s house and not to that house where she was born. Often and often the mother thought of this and she wondered who would have a maid who was blind, and if none would have her then what would happen to her in the end. ”

“ But how crushed, intellectually and socially, must that wife become, on whom an ignorant, a thoughtless, or a brutal husband, is ever imposing a maternity from which her soul recoils! Her intellect becomes dwarfed and her social nature dead. How can it be otherwise, especially when driven to the deed of ante-natal murder, to escape the horror of giving birth to children accursed by the mother that bore them? Hope becomes extinct, and the light of her soul goes out in utter darkness! ”

“ It is the bearing of the burden of life that makes a wife, and when we have "something to work for" we begin to live. Love is the explanation. We don't want the home for ourselves. We want it for those we love, we want those we love in the atmosphere, which I, as mother, will make in "our home." It is the elemental mother that speaks,—the motherhood spirit that pours out eternally in self-sacrifice and keeps no debit account. ”

“ Have you never seen the sweetest ties existing between father and daughter, or brother and younger sister, when the wife has been removed by death, or, through some fatal fault, is no mother to her child? What love, what devotion, what watchful care, what sympathy, what strength of attachment! The little unmothered daughter calls out all the motherhood in the great, brawny man, and they walk hand in hand, blest with a great content. ”

“ The three years from the 14th to the 17th is such a critical time for most girls, and should be passed under the care of the mother and under her care alone, and every mother ought to try to become the best friend of her daughter, not the stern mother who has forgotten that she herself was young once, and who finds it too much trouble to listen to her daughter’s little tales, by which she alone is able to guide her child, and save her in many instances from eternal destruction. ”

“ All that we have just spoken of binds the woman for months or years to each of her children, and we can understand that her whole soul is adapted in consequence to maternity. Even when birth has detached the child from the maternal body, it remains attached to its mother by a hundred bonds, not only during the period of suckling, but long afterward when the conventions do not violate natural laws. Little children are deeply attached to their mother, and while the father is impatient with their cries and the embarrassment which they cause, the mother takes a natural delight in them. ”

“ In that period of their lives, on the point, so grave for their sex, of becoming maids, they are assailed by unaccountable fears, by a vague sense of sadness, by an imperious demand for solitude where to give a loose rein to languorous reveries, novel sensations at which their chaste instincts take alarm, symptoms of the awakening of the virginal heart, first and shadowy aspirations of the maid for the sweet pleasures and austere duties of the wife and mother—the sacred destinies of woman. ”

“ Since we have been discussing unmarried motherhood, we may appropriately begin our consideration of these disabilities by examining the status of motherhood in marriage. The married mother, particularly in modern times, is the object of a sickly pawing and adulation and enjoys a certain formal respect—not, however, as a mother, but as a mother of legitimate children. While she continues to live with her husband, she may exercise considerable supervision over the rearing of her offspring ”

“ To-day, alas, many women cannot find the perfect and sensitive mate their hearts desire and they hope in any marriage to get children which will mitigate the consequent loneliness of their lives. Sometimes they may, to some extent, succeed, but far less often than they imagine, for that strange and still but little understood force “heredity” steps in, and the son of the tolerated father may grow infinitely more like his physical father than he is like the dear delight his mother dreamed he might be. ”

“ If I must be a mother-in-law (horrid name) , I want to be a nice one and be loved. I shall do my best. Only it is the giving you up. O Rob, darling! What shall I do without you—without my blessed son? Breakfast alone, luncheon alone, dinner alone, everything alone! Ah, I can't bear the thought of it! No! No! I don't mean that! But of course I can't and won't live with you—it's very kind and like you, dear, to say I must, but I don't believe in that. You'll see enough of me, I'm sure, as it is. And I shall have my memories. Baby and boy, you are mine alone. ”

“ Only during these brief sacred months can the three be united in such exquisite intimacy, and during all these months when the child is forming, it is only in the few infrequent embraces of subdued passion that the husband and father-to-be can come truly close to his child, that he can, through additions to her system from his own, assist the mother in her otherwise solitary task of endowing it with everything its growth demands. ”

“ How could it possibly be but that maternity should be highly honoured amongst us? Surely it is a matter of course that the natural and necessary pains which the mother must go through form a bond of union between man and woman, an extra stimulus to love and affection between them, and that this is universally recognised. For the rest, remember that all the artificial burdens of motherhood are now done away with. A mother has no longer any mere sordid anxieties for the future of her children. They may indeed turn out better or worse ”

“ The father will then be, in the real sense of the word, the educator, when the care for the maintenance of the family does not press him down to the ground. A woman will then, as mother of the family, not be in dependence on the man,—a position she feels as humiliating, if as a girl she earned her own living. People are bound to return to this new form of matriarchy, when they begin to consider care of the new generation, as the great business the mother takes over for society. ”

“ Not that I am so selfish as to exclude my friends from my affection or society. I feel interested in their concerns, and enjoy their company. I must own, however, that conjugal and parental love are the mainsprings of my life. The conduct of some mothers, in depriving their helpless offspring of the care and kindness which none but a mother can feel, is to me unaccountable. There are many nameless attentions which nothing short of maternal tenderness and solicitude can pay, and for which the endearing smiles and progressive improvements of the lovely babe are an ample reward. ”

“ How beautiful, then, in its adaptation to the situation in which she is placed, and the duties she has to perform, is that instinct of maternal love, which, from its intensity and depth, its all-pervading and inextinguishable vitality, so lives and breathes through every act, thought, word, and look of the fond mother, that sooner would her infant doubt its own existence, than question that of her untiring love! ”

“ Her mind was in a state of perpetual anxiety, often deeply wounded by the neglect, or unkind looks and expressions of those who once professed the utmost degree of affection—with the near prospect, too, of becoming a mother, without a home, or any provision for herself or child, except by returning to her father's house—a step which she contemplated at present with extreme reluctance. ”

“ The theme of this novel is the need of sex-fulfilment for the American wife, through motherhood. The wife in evidence, who is her own witness and judge, has grown up, under the example of her own mother’s fate, in the fear of maternity. She dreads marriage for what it threatens, and will not marry until it is understood that she is to have no children. Between herself and her young husband exists a possible basis of friendship as well as that passionate relation which is to go through the inevitable phases. ”

“ Perhaps I have not been so fortunate as to make my ideas fully understood; for—although I still think that, as a wife, woman should place herself, instead of running the risk of being placed, in a secondary position—as a mother, I do not see how it is possible for her to be too dignified, or to be treated with too much respect. ”

“ Who will dare to throw the first stone at that poor woman, the pitiable mother? Who would dare ill treat her if she asked [Pg 199] as a charity the favour that her daughter’s new home should be near hers, if she implored you to allow her to visit her often? Man is egotistic and feels paternity less than woman, but even if only in a slight degree he ought to understand the hidden hell of a mother-in-law who has to watch her daughter leave her own nest.
The marriage of a loved daughter is an event expected and desired, but it is like a birth, a blessing accompanied by tremendous pain. ”

“ A woman need only ask herself if she would like to be the mother of her husband—to exchange the love which she now has for filial affection—for a temporary clearness of her troubled skies. The mother need only ask herself if she would surrender her position for the privilege of being her son’s wife, if she seeks for light on her dark path. ”