1908. This Act represents, in England, the national inauguration

of a scheme for the betterment of the race, the ultimate results of which it is impossible to foresee. When this Act comes into universal action every baby of the land will be entitled--legally and not by individual caprice or philanthropic condescension--to medical attention from the day of birth, and every mother will have at hand the counsel of an educated woman in touch with the municipal authorities. There could be no greater triumph for medical science, for national efficiency, and the cause of humanity generally. Even on the lower financial plane, it is easy to see that an enormous saving of public and private money will thus be effected. The Act is adoptive, and not compulsory. This was a wise precaution, for an Act of this kind cannot be effectual unless it is carried out thoroughly by the community adopting it, and it will not be adopted until a community has clearly realized its advantages and the methods of attaining them. An important adjunct of this organization is the School for Mothers. Such schools, which are now beginning to spring up everywhere, may be said to have their origins in the _Consultations de Nourrissons_ (with their offshoot the _Goutte de Lait_), established by Professor Budin in 1892, which have spread all over France and been widely influential for good. At the _Consultations_ infants are examined and weighed weekly, and the mothers advised and encouraged to suckle their children. The _Gouttes_ are practically milk dispensaries where infants for whom breast-feeding is impossible are fed with milk under medical supervision. Schools for Mothers represent an enlargement of the same scheme, covering a variety of subjects which it is necessary for a mother to know. Some of the first of these schools were established at Bonn, at the Bavarian town of Weissenberg, and in Ghent. At some of the Schools for Mothers, and notably at Ghent (described by Mrs. Bertrand Russell in the _Nineteenth Century_, 1906), the important step has been taken of giving training to young girls from fourteen to eighteen; they receive instruction in infant anatomy and physiology, in the preparation of sterilized milk, in weighing children, in taking temperatures and making charts, in managing crêches, and after two years are able to earn a salary. In various parts of England, schools for young mothers and girls on these lines are now being established, first in London, under the auspices of Dr. F.J. Sykes, Medical Officer of Health for St. Pancreas (see, e.g., _A School For Mothers_, 1908, describing an establishment of this kind at Somers Town, with a preface by Sir Thomas Barlow; an account of recent attempts to improve the care of infants in London will also be found in the _Lancet_, Sept. 26, 1908). It may be added that some English municipalities have established depôts for supplying mothers cheaply with good milk. Such depôts are, however, likely to be more mischievous than beneficial if they promote the substitution of hand-feeding for suckling. They should never be established except in connection with Schools for Mothers, where an educational influence may be exerted, and no mother should be supplied with milk unless she presents a medical certificate showing that she is unable to nourish her child (Byers, "Medical Women and Public Health Questions," _British Medical Journal_, Oct. 6, 1906). It is noteworthy that in England the local authorities will shortly be empowered by law to establish Schools for Mothers. The great benefits produced by these institutions in France, both in diminishing the infant mortality and in promoting the education of mothers and their pride and interest in their children, have been set forth in two Paris theses by G. Chaignon (_Organisation des Consultations de Nourrissons à la Campagne_, 1908), and Alcide Alexandre (_Consultation de Nourrissons et Goutte de Lait d'Arques_, 1908). The movement is now spreading throughout Europe, and an International Union has been formed, including all the institutions specially founded for the protection of child life and the promotion of puericulture. The permanent committee is in Brussels, and a Congress of Infant Protection (_Goutte de Lait_) is held every two years. It will be seen that all the movements now being set in action for the improvement of the race through the child and the child's mother, recognize the intimacy of the relation between the mother and her child and are designed to aid her, even if necessary by the exercise of some pressure, in performing her natural functions in relation to her child. To the theoretical philanthropist, eager to reform the world on paper, nothing seems simpler than to cure the present evils of child-rearing by setting up State nurseries which are at once to relieve mothers of everything connected with the production of the men of the future beyond the pleasure--if such it happens to be--of conceiving them and the trouble of bearing them, and at the same time to rear them up independently of the home, in a wholesome, economical, and scientific manner.[17] Nothing seems simpler, but from the fundamental psychological standpoint nothing is falser. The idea of a State which is outside the community is but a survival in another form of that antiquated notion which compelled Louis XIV to declare "L'Etat c'est moi!" A State which admits that the individuals composing it are incompetent to perform their own most sacred and intimate functions, and takes upon itself to perform them instead, attempts a task which would be undesirable, even if it were possible of achievement. It must always be remembered that a State which proposes to relieve its constituent members of their natural functions and responsibilities attempts something quite different from the State which seeks to aid its members to fulfil their own biological and social functions more adequately. A State which enables its mothers to rest when they are child-bearing is engaged in a reasonable task; a State which takes over its mothers' children is reducing philanthropy to absurdity. It is easy to realize this if we consider the inevitable course of circumstances under a system of "State-nurseries." The child would be removed from its natural mother at the earliest age, but some one has to perform the mother's duties; the substitute must therefore be properly trained for such duties; and in exercising them under favorable circumstances a maternal relationship is developed between the child and the "mother," who doubtless possesses natural maternal instincts but has no natural maternal bond to the child she is mothering. Such a relationship tends to become on both sides practically and emotionally the real relationship. We very often have opportunity of seeing how unsatisfactory such a relationship becomes. The artificial mother is deprived of a child she had begun to feel her own; the child's emotional relationships are upset, split and distorted; the real mother has the bitterness of feeling that for her child she is not the real mother. Would it not have been much better for all if the State had encouraged the vast army of women it had trained for the position of mothering other women's children, to have, instead, children of their own? The women who are incapable of mothering their own children could then be trained to refrain from bearing them. Ellen Key (in her _Century of the Child_, and elsewhere) has advocated for all young women a year of compulsory "service," analogous to the compulsory military service imposed in most countries on young men. During this period the girl would be trained in rational housekeeping, in the principles of hygiene, in the care of the sick, and especially in the care of infants and all that concerns the physical and psychic development of children. The principle of this proposal has since been widely accepted. Marie von Schmid (in her _Mutterdienst_, 1907) goes so far as to advocate a general training of young women in such duties, carried on in a kind of enlarged and improved midwifery school. The service would last a year, and the young woman would then be for three years in the reserves, and liable to be called up for duty. There is certainly much to be said for such a proposal, considerably more than is to be said for compulsory military service. For while it is very doubtful whether a man will ever be called on to fight, most women are liable to be called on to exercise household duties or to look after children, whether for themselves or for other people. FOOTNOTES: [1] It is not, of course, always literally true that each parent supplies exactly half the heredity, for, as we see among animals generally, the offspring may sometimes approach more nearly to one parent, sometimes to the other, while among plants, as De Vries and others have shown, the heredity may be still more unequally divided. [2] It should scarcely be necessary to say that to assert that motherhood is a woman's supreme function is by no means to assert that her activities should be confined to the home. That is an opinion which may now be regarded as almost extinct even among those who most glorify the function of woman as mother. As Friedrich Naumann and others have very truly pointed out, a woman is not adequately equipped to fulfil her functions as mother and trainer of children unless she has lived in the world and exercised a vocation. [3] "Were the capacities of the brain and the heart equal in the sexes," Lily Braun (_Die Frauenfrage_, page 207) well says, "the entry of women into public life would be of no value to humanity, and would even lead to a still wilder competition. Only the recognition that the entire nature of woman is different from that of man, that it signifies a new vivifying principle in human life, makes the women's movement, in spite of the misconception of its enemies and its friends, a social revolution" (see also Havelock Ellis, _Man and Woman_, fourth edition, 1904, especially Ch. XVIII). [4] The word "puericulture" was invented by Dr. Caron in 1866 to signify the culture of children after birth. It was Pinard, the distinguished French obstetrician, who, in 1895, gave it a larger and truer significance by applying it to include the culture of children before birth. It is now defined as "the science which has for its end the search for the knowledge relative to the reproduction, the preservation, and the amelioration of the human race" (Péchin, _La Puériculture avant la Naissance_, Thèse de Paris, 1908). [5] In _La Grossesse_ (pp. 450 et seq.) Bouchacourt has discussed the problems of puericulture at some length. [6] The importance of antenatal puericulture was fully recognized in China a thousand years ago. Thus Madame Cheng wrote at that time concerning the education of the child: "Even before birth his education may begin; and, therefore, the prospective mother of old, when lying down, lay straight; when sitting down, sat upright; and when standing, stood erect. She would not taste strange flavors, nor have anything to do with spiritualism; if her food were not cut straight she would not eat it, and if her mat were not set straight, she would not sit upon it. She would not look at any objectionable sight, nor listen to any objectionable sound, nor utter any rude word, nor handle any impure thing. At night she studied some canonical work, by day she occupied herself with ceremonies and music. Therefore, her sons were upright and eminent for their talents and virtues; such was the result of antenatal training" (H.A. Giles, "Woman in Chinese Literature," _Nineteenth Century_, Nov., 1904). [7] Max Bartels, "Isländischer Brauch," etc., _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1900, p. 65. A summary of the customs of various peoples in regard to pregnancy is given by Ploss and Bartels, _Das Weib_, Sect. XXIX. [8] On the influence of alcohol during pregnancy on the embryo, see, e.g., G. Newman, _Infant Mortality_, pp. 72-77. W.C. Sullivan (_Alcoholism_, 1906, Ch. XI), summarizes the evidence showing that alcohol is a factor in human degeneration. [9] There is even reason to believe that the alcoholism of the mother's father may impair her ability as a mother. Bunge (_Die Zunehmende Unfähigkeit der Frauen ihre Kinder zu Stillen_, fifth edition, 1907), from an investigation extending over 2,000 families, finds that chronic alcoholic poisoning in the father is the chief cause of the daughter's inability to suckle, this inability not usually being recovered in subsequent generations. Bunge has, however, been opposed by Dr. Agnes Bluhm, "Die Stillungsnot," _Zeitschrift für Soziale Medizin_, 1908 (fully summarized by herself in _Sexual-Probleme_, Jan., 1909). [10] See, e.g., T. Arthur Helme, "The Unborn Child," _British Medical Journal_, Aug. 24, 1907. Nutrition should, of course, be adequate. Noel Paton has shown (_Lancet_, July 4, 1903) that defective nutrition of the pregnant woman diminishes the weight of the offspring. [11] Debreyne, _Moechialogie_, p. 277. And from the Protestant side see Northcote (_Christianity and Sex Problems_, Ch. IX), who permits sexual intercourse during pregnancy. [12] See Appendix A to the third volume of these _Studies_; also Ploss and Bartels, loc. cit. [13] Thus one lady writes: "I have only had one child, but I may say that during pregnancy the desire for union was much stronger, for the whole time, than at any other period." Bouchacourt (_La Grossesse_, pp. 180-183) states that, as a rule, sexual desire is not diminished by pregnancy, and is occasionally increased. [14] This "inconvenience" remains to-day a stumbling-block with many excellent authorities. "Except when there is a tendency to miscarriage," says Kossmann (Senator and Kaminer, _Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage_, vol. i, p. 257), "we must be very guarded in ordering abstinence from intercourse during pregnancy," and Ballantyne (_The Foetus_, p. 475) cautiously remarks that the question is difficult to decide. Forel also (_Die Sexuelle Frage_, fourth edition, p. 81), who is not prepared to advocate complete sexual abstinence during a normal pregnancy, admits that it is a rather difficult question. [15] This point is discussed, for instance, by Séropian in a Paris Thesis (_Fréquence comparée des Causes de l'Accouchement Prémature_, 1907); he concludes that coitus during pregnancy is a more frequent cause of premature confinement than is commonly supposed, especially in primiparæ, and markedly so by the ninth month. [16] "Infantile Mortality: The Huddersfield Scheme," _British Medical Journal_, Dec., 1907; Samson Moore, "Infant Mortality," ib., August 29, 1908. [17] Ellen Key has admirably dealt with proposals of this kind (as put forth by C.P. Stetson) in her Essays "On Love and Marriage." In opposition to such proposals Ellen Key suggests that such women as have been properly trained for maternal duties and are unable entirely to support themselves while exercising them should be subsidized by the State during the child's first three years of life. It may be added that in Leipzig the plan of subsidizing mothers who (under proper medical and other supervision) suckle their infants has already been introduced.