THE UNWELCOME CHILD.[1]
1. TOO OFTEN THE HUSBAND thinks only of his personal gratification; he insists upon what he calls his rights(?); forces on his wife an unwelcome child, and thereby often alienates her affections, if he does not drive her to abortion.
Dr Stockham reports the following case: "A woman once consulted me who was the mother of five children, all born within ten years. These were puny, scrofulous, nervous and irritable. She herself was a fit subject for doctors and drugs. Every organ in her body seemed diseased, and every function perverted. She was dragging out a miserable existence. Like other physicians, I had prescribed in vain for her many maladies. One day she chanced to inquire how she could safely prevent conception. This led me to ask how great was the danger. She said: 'Unless my husband is absent from home, few nights have been exempt since we were married, except it may be three or four immediately after confinement.'
"'And yet your husband loves you?'
"'O, yes, he is kind and provides for his family. Perhaps I might love him but for this. While now—(will God forgive me?)—I detest, I loathe him, and if I knew how to support myself and children, I would leave him.'
"'Can you talk with him upon this subject?'
"'I think I can.'
"'Then there is hope, for many women cannot do that. Tell him I will give you treatment to improve your health and if he will wait until you can respond, take time for the act, have it entirely mutual from first to last, the demand will not come so frequent.'
"'Do you think so?'
"'The experience of many proves the truth of this statement.'
"Hopefully she went home, and in six months I had the satisfaction of knowing my patient was restored to health, and a single coition in a month gave the husband more satisfaction than the many had done previously, that the creative power was under control, and that my lady could proudly say 'I love,' where previously she said 'I hate.'
"If husbands will listen, a few simple instructions will appeal to their common sense, and none can imagine the gain to themselves, to their wives and children, and their children's children. Then it may not be said of the babes that the 'Death borders on their birth, and their cradle stands in the grave.'"
2. WIVES! BE FRANK AND TRUE to your husbands on the subject of maternity, and the relation that leads to it. Interchange thoughts and feelings with them as to what nature allows or demands in regard to these. Can maternity be natural when it is undesigned by the father or undesired by the mother? Can a maternity be natural, healthful, ennobling to the mother, to the child, to the father, and to the home, when no loving, tender, anxious forethought presides over thee relation in which it originated?—when the mother's nature loathed and repelled it, and the father's only thought was his own selfish gratification; the feelings and conditions of the mother, and the health, character and destiny of the child that may result being ignored by him. Wives! let there be a perfect and loving understanding between you and your husbands on these matters, and great will be your reward.
3. A WOMAN WRITES:—"There are few, vary few, wives and mothers who could not reveal a sad, dark picture in their own experience in their relations to their husbands and their children. Maternity, and the relation in which it originates, are thrust upon them by their husbands, often without regard to their spiritual or physical conditions, and often in contempt of their earnest and urgent entreaties. No joy comes to their heart at the conception and birth of their children, except that which arises from the consciousness that they have survived the sufferings wantonly and selfishly inflicted upon them."
4. HUSBAND, WHEN MATERNITY is imposed on your wife without her consent, and contrary to her appeal, how will her mind necessarily be affected towards her child? It was conceived in dread and in bitterness of spirit. Every stage of its foetal development is watched with feeling of settled repugnance. In every step of its ante-natal progress the child meets only with grief and indignation in the mother. She would crush out its life, if she could. She loathed its conception; she loathed it in every stage of its ante-natal development. Instead of fixing her mind on devising ways and means for the healthful and happy organization and development of her child before it is born, and for its post natal comfort and support, her soul may be intent on its destruction, and her thoughts devise plans to kill it. In this, how often is she aided by others! There are those, and they are called men and women, whose profession is to devise ways to kill children before they are born. Those who do this would not hesitate (but for the consequences) to kill them after they are born, for the state of mind that would justify and instigate ante-natal child-murder would justify and instigate post-natal child-murder. Yet, public sentiment consigns the murderer of post-natal children to the dungeon or the gallows, while the murderers of antenatal children are often allowed to pass in society as honest and honorable men and women.
5. THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXTRACT from a letter written by one who has proudly and nobly filled the station of a wife and mother, and whose children and grandchildren surround her and crown her life with tenderest love and respect:
"It has often been a matter of wonder to me that men should, so heedlessly, and so injuriously to themselves, their wives and children, and their homes, demand at once, as soon as they get legal possession of their wives, the gratification of a passion, which, when indulged merely for the sake of the gratification of the moment, must end in the destruction of all that is beautiful, noble and divine in man or woman. I have often felt that I would give the world for a friendship with man that should show no impurity in its bearing, and for a conjugal relation that would, at all times, heartily and practically recognize the right of the wife to decide for herself when she should enter into the relation that leads to maternity."
6. TIMELY ADVICE.—Here let me say that on no subject should a man and woman, as they are being attracted into conjugal relations, be more open and truthful with each other than on this. No woman, who would save herself and the man she loves from a desecrated and wretched home, should enter into the physical relations of marriage with a man until she understands what he expects of her as to the function of maternity, and the relation that leads to it. If a woman is made aware that the man who would win her as a wife regards her and the marriage relation only as the means of a legalized gratification of his passions, and she sees fit to live with him as a wife, with such a prospect before her, she must take the consequences of a course so degrading and so shameless. If she sees fit to make an offering of her body and soul on the altar of her husband's sensuality, she must do it; but she has a right to know to what base uses her womanhood is to be put, and it is due to her, as well as to himself, that he should tell beforehand precisely what he wants and expects of her.
Too frequently, man shrinks from all allusion, during courtship, to his expectations in regard to future passional relations. He fears to speak of them, lest he should shock and repel the woman he would win as a wife. Being conscious, it may be, of an intention to use power he may acquire over her person for his own gratification, he shuns all interchange of views with her, lest she should divine the hidden sensualism of his soul, and his intention to victimize her person to it the moment he shall get the license. A woman had better die at once than enter into or continue in marriage with a man whose highest conception of the relation is, that it is a means of licensed animal indulgence. In such a relation, body and soul are sacrificed.
7. ONE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTIC of a true and noble husband is a feeling of manly pride in the physical elements of his manhood. His physical manhood, as well as his soul, is dear to the heart of his wife, because through this he can give the fullest expression of his manly power. How can you, my friend, secure for your person the loving care and respect of your wife? There is but one way: so manifest yourself to her, in the hours of your most endearing intimacies, that all your manly power shall be associated only with all that is generous, just and noble in you, and with purity, freedom and happiness in her. Make her feel that all which constitutes you a man, and qualifies you to be her husband and the father of her children, belongs to her, and is sacredly consecrated to the perfection and happiness of her nature. Do this, and the happiness of your home is made complete Your body will be lovingly and reverently cared for, because the wife of your bosom feels that it is the sacred symbol through which a noble, manly love is ever speaking to her, to cheer and sustain her.
8. WOMAN IS EVER PROUD, and justly so, of the manly passion of her husband, when she knows it is controlled by a love for her, whose manifestations have regard only to her elevation and happiness. The power which, when bent only on selfish indulgence, becomes a source of more shame, degradation, disease and wretchedness, to women and to children than all other things put together, does but ennoble her, add grace and glory to her being, and concentrate and vitalize the love that encircles her as a wife when it is controlled by wisdom and consecrated to her highest growth and happiness, and that of her children. It lends enchantment to her person, and gives a fascination to her smiles, her words and her caresses, which ever breathe of purity and of heaven, and make her all lovely as a wife and mother to her husband and the father of her child. Manly passion is to the conjugal love of the wife like the sun to the rose-bud, that opens its petals, and causes them to give out their sweetest fragrance and to display their most delicate tints; or like the frost, which chills and kills it ere it blossoms in its richness and beauty.
9. A DIADEM OF BEAUTY.—Maternity, when it exists at the call of the wife, and is gratefully received, but binds her heart more tenderly and devotedly to her husband. As the father of her child, he stands before her invested with new beauty and dignity. In receiving from him the germ of a new life, she receives that which she feels is to add new beauty and glory to her as a woman—a new grace and attraction to her as a wife. She loves and honors him, because he has crowned her with the glory of a mother. Maternity, to her, instead of being repulsive, is a diadem of beauty, a crown of rejoicing; and deep, tender, and self-forgetting are her love and reverence for him who has placed it on her brow. How noble, how august, how beautiful is maternity when thus bestowed and received!
10. CONCLUSION.—Would you, then, secure the love and trust of your wife, and become an object of her ever-growing tenderness and reverence? Assure her, by all your manifestations, and your perfect respect for the functions of her nature, that your passion shall be in subjection of her wishes. It is not enough that you have secured in her heart respect for your spiritual and intellectual manhood. To maintain your self-respect in your relations with her, to perfect your growth and happiness as a husband, you must cause your physical nature to be tenderly cherished and reverenced by her in all the sacred intimacies of home. No matter how much she reverences your intellectual or your social power, if by reason of your uncalled-for passional manifestations you have made your physical manhood disagreeable, how can you, in her presence, preserve a sense of manly pride and dignity as a husband?
Footnotes edit
- ↑ This is the title of a pamphlet written by Henry C. Wright. We have taken some extracts from it.