Woman, Marriage and MotherhoodA combination of sentiment and feminism characterizes this discussion of motherhood. However, it weighs most heavily on the side of reality and calls for social reforms to improve woman's position. |
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Common terms and phrases
alcoholism amongst association Austria babies better birth birth-rate born boys cent child-bearing childbirth civilisation classes court crèches death death-rate degenerates disease divorce domestic earn economic efficient England equal eugenics eugenists evolution expectant mothers factory father feeble-minded France Francis Galton Germany girls guardian hospitals human husband hygiene illegitimate children industrial infant mortality infanticide interests Karl Pearson large number lead poisoning legal parent legislation lives marriage married women maternity insurance ment mentally defective milk monogamy moral mother and child mother protection motherhood National necessitous mothers nurse organised parent-teacher associations parenthood penology physical polygamy poor present problem prostitution puerperal fever race racial realise recognised reform responsible scheme schools for mothers Sidney Webb social evil society suffering sweated Sweden teaching tion unmarried mother wage week welfare whilst wife wives woman movement women prisoners workers workhouses young
Popular passages
Page 273 - The woman's cause is man's : they rise or sink Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free : For she that out of Lethe scales with man The shining steps of Nature, shares with man His nights...
Page xv - So it is not the will of your Father in Heaven that one of these little ones should be lost (Matthew 18:12-14 NRSV).
Page 214 - Herself the supreme type of vice, she is ultimately the most efficient guardian of virtue. But for her, the unchallenged purity of countless happy homes would be polluted, and not a few who, in the pride of their untempted chastity, think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of remorse and despair.
Page 242 - As fuel is brought to the fire So I purpose to bring My strength My ambition My heart's desire My joy And my sorrow To the fire Of humankind. For I will tend As my fathers have tended And my father's fathers Since time began The fire that is called The love of man for man The love of man for God.
Page 150 - While this explains the easy labors among the healthy lower classes and confirms Prochownick's conclusion that by dieting the mother the children of rickety women may be so reduced in size as to be viable, it also probably helps to explain the very high infant mortality among the very poor. The infant starts life at a low level and readily succumbs to the hardships to which it is too often subjected.
Page 214 - On that one degraded and ignoble form are concentrated the passions that might have filled the world with shame. She remains, while creeds and civilisations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the people.
Page 155 - It shall be unlawful for the owner, proprietor, manager, foreman or other person in authority of any factory, mercantile establishment, mill or workshop to knowingly employ a female or permit a female to be employed therein within four weeks after she has given birth to a child.
Page 226 - Certainly not: of all functions which the adult has to fulfil, this is the most difficult. Is it that each may be trusted by self-instruction to fit himself, or herself, for the office of parent? No: not only is the need for such selfinstruction unrecognized, but the complexity of the subject renders it the one of all others in which self-instruction is least likely to succeed.
Page 226 - But though some care is taken to fit youth of both sexes for society and citizenship, no care whatever is taken to fit them for the position of parents. While it is seen that for the purpose of gaining a livelihood, an elaborate preparation is needed, it appears to be thought that for the bringing up of children, no preparation whatever is needed.
Page 60 - There are no separate bedrooms; there are not even separate cubicles. The young servant out of place, the prostitute recovering from disease, the feebleminded woman of any age, the girl with her first baby, the unmarried mother coming in to be confined of her third or fourth bastard, the senile, the paralytic, the epileptic, the respectable deserted wife, the widow to whom Outdoor Relief has been refused, are all herded indiscriminately together.