FRIDAY, AUGUST 2, 1912. THE CLAIMS OF MOTHERHOOD

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8189, 2 August 1912, Page 6

FRIDAY, AUGUST 2, 1912. THE CLAIMS OF MOTHERHOOD

“We do not think it right that the women of the Dominion performing the high duty of maternity should' have to go to the charitable aid board to expose their poverty.”—Dr Herbert.

A. very much keener student of social philosophy than Hon. B. H. Bhodes has had an opportunity of being or becoming would have been staggered by the suggestion put forth by the Wellington Division of the British Medical ‘Association yesterday. Briefly stated it was that the St. Helens hospitals should be thrown open to the mothers

of the land without money and without price. This proposal opens up_ a broad question of principle, and it inevitably involves a considera tion of ways and moans. The State is becoming more and more the foster mother of the nation, and people are tending to become more and more dependent on the State. The difficulty with society as an organisation is that no matter how philanthropic it may be, and no matter how disposed to help its weaker units in the struggle for existence, it is, as all parents are, ca pablo of succour only so far as its means will allow.

In a society properly constituted the State would begin at the right end by so adjusting economic conditions that it would not be possible for one human being to riot over ten or twenty thousand acres while another lived in a slum. Even then shiftless and thrift less units would always make more oi less havoc with the best laid schemes. Dealing with conditions as they are >1 must bo admitted at once that essentially the first legitimate claimants upon society are the mothers of the race. It is through the pangs and sacrifices of maternity that the society moves along the beaten track of progress.

If they bo dwarfed, small-statured, miserable. How shall men grow ? The problem is not, as we are reminded, confined to the slum. The backblock mother in her intolerable solitude is as deserving of succour and sympathy as her urban sister, not only in hoi supreme hour of trial but in the weary weeks of recuperation.

Another problem none the less serious is that which confronts society in dealing with the problem of illegitimacy. Society has long since masked its detestation of the “woman who has fallen,” but it is only a mask. It is, theoretically, more vindictive towards the male through whom the shame is wrought, but humanity lias never devised and will never discover a method of adjusting the responsibility so that it may be shared by the man co-etjual with the woman. That, after all, is % small matter compared with the relation of the community towards the child. After the mother, the child is the nation’s greatest asset, because in each individual unit is bound up the future of the State. Wo should bo at least as solicitous of the welfare of the children of destiny as of the flocks and herds who wander on the hill-sides and along the pasture-lands. This brings us to earth again, and to an immediate consideration of. the problem which is clamant for solution.

For the life of us wo cannot see how the suggestion of the doctors can be made practicable. To throw open the doors of the St. Helens homes would immediately raise an overwnelming difficulty. Motherhood cannot be man aged on the queue system, and there would at once become a clamorous and overwhelming demand for space. Under such a dispensation the Massey Government would return to the wilderness beneath a cloud-burst of execration. There is only one way out, and that is for New Zealand to follow the example of the Commonwealth and reward the mothers of the nation with it bonus for the habies. We pay emi. grants to come to this land-locked country. If we unlock tbo lands we can by the' same process provide the revenue wherewith to in some sense reward the women who go through the Valley of the Shadow of Death for the rejuvenation of the race. There will then be no talk of "charity” or “ill* : gitimacy.” The money will come not as a dole, a boon, or a sop, but as • right to all mothers; the more so that all will ho contributory according to their means. Under a system of State grants, properly administered, the doctors can insist that pepple living in hovels shall go to hospitals; and the mothers in better circumstances will be able to afford the services of trained nurses in their own homes. It will be impossible under such an arrangement for parasites and harpies to batten on the shame of the hapless mortals who have loved not wisely but too well. Here is an opportunity for the State to rise to the occasion and perform an act of tardy justice to the wopanhood of the nation.