OUR BABIES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 81, 5 April 1930, Page 23 (Supplement)

OUR BABIES

, MOTHER AND BABY WEEK | The following article consists of extracts from an excellent ond most moving broadcast address delivered by Dr. [C. W. Salecby on the, occasion of the I Inst English National “Baby Week.” We feel that it is worthy of the widest possible “broadcast.” by any means available, and feel sure our readers will appreciate the wisdom of its teaching and the sincerity of its ideals Dr. Saleebv said: Best on Record “This is the thirteenth anniversary lof Baby Week, ami the number is no | unlucky one, for we can record that tne ’latest figures of infant mortality in our [own country are the best on record—--65 per 1000 born, as compared with about 150 per 1000 at the beginning of this century. It is my responsible privilege to broadcast, for the fourth successive year, on behalf of the National Baby Week Council, and this time I have ventured to use for the title of my talk the name which, as some of you may remember. 1 have a'vrays wanted for this occasion—Mother and Baby Week. You may recall my perpetual reasons for this name, which is particularly appropriate this year. They arc indeed older than Baby Web?;. oi>’er than civilisa’ion, older even than mankind. Man’s Evolutionary Background | “Through vast ages creative evolu--tion has worked along a noble and unprecedented line towards tho achievement called man. The line ?s in the order of mammalia, of which tho mothers suckle their young. Along another line Nature has achieved the marvels of instinct, which we see in the social insects, ants and wasps and bees; but instinct, though perfect within limits, is sharply limited, finite, and cannot learn. Intelligence is unlimited, infinite, can learn to weigh invisible stars and to write ‘Hamlet’ and the overture to “Die Meistersinger.’ Tt is, and will be, what Wordsworth called “Man’s unconquerable mind. ’’ “Now, in order to win by intelligence we are necessarily divested of fixed, un- ; learnt, and untouchable instincts, lienee 'the young of the mammals, and especially tho higher mammals, such as the man like apes, are born very helpless, and long remain so, whilst they learn. If they are to survive, someone must protect and nourish them, and that .someone is tho mother who loves them and their helplessness, and would almost, have them remain helpless and dependent on her for ever. We human beings are a: Ihe head of the oreer or mammals, ami hence, on my interpretation of history, we lind that y»ie tinman mother does more for her in taut, and does it longer, than any other, whilst that infant is born the most helpless and remains the longest helpless of any living thing. Yet this is the creature, 'the litt'e brat.’ as a vulgar fool would call it, which is destined to become the ‘paragon of animals,’ as Shakespeare called him —only ‘a little lower than the angels.’ This contrast- between the human infant and man the erect, little less than demigod, already beginning (and he is very young yet really) to mould the outer world and eve n to develop and exalt, his own nature ‘nearer to tho heart's desire*—this contrast is. in my view, the most astonishing and impressive paradox in all the universe. It has never yet, i think, been adequately dealt wnth either by poets or by men of science. Madonna and Mother “Il enhances our estimate of the value of the human mother, and approves the lines of Coleridge: A mother is a mother still. The holiest thing alive, and it helps us to understand what the students of comparative religion tell us —that ‘ mothor-and-child worship’ is a central feature of the great historic world religions. “We need in England to-day a modern mother-and-child worship, as, indead, 1 ventured to suggest more than 20 years ago. Let me quote from the greatest English drama since {Shakespeare, ‘ The Dynasts, ’ by Thomas Hardy. A deserter from Sir John Moore’s army in Spain wants to be home again: ‘Would that I were home in England again where there’s old-fasTiionccl tipple and a proper God A’mighty instead of this eternal ‘Ooman ami Baby.’ We have some of the Madonnas of the great Florentine and Venetian painters ami of Raphael in our National Gallery, i>ut surely Protestantism, not least in its most austere forms such as eat vanbin and Presbyterianism, which denounce mariolatry. has lost something which we might do -well to remember for it would help us to value motherhood and infamy aright.

One in Fifteen “Now let us look at the present state of things. We have learnt how to save many bab.es. The horrible old epidemics of summer diarrhoea du not occur. The last was in 1911, though there have been hot and dry summers s«ncc then. We scarcely ever see a longtubed feeding bottle; babies’ milk is far cleaner than it used to be, and my slogan of protest in 1902, ‘One in Seven,’ is obsolete. ‘One in fifteen’ now is the proportion of babies who do not li\<> to the first anniversary of their birthday. But that figure is only very slightly better than others in the past decade, and it would be idle to pretend that we are maintaining tne former rale of progress. W’e still fail to save the very young babies in their first four weeks after birth as we should. This mortality of the new-born, or neo-natai mortality, is practically as high as ever, and so is (he 'mortality of mothers as n result of childbirth. And, as • said last year, we begin to see Ihat x these two failures are one. Thi' very young babies who die have been poisoned or deprived, or otherwise injured before they were born, and their motner’s surfered also, all because our m ithor-ano baby care has not been intolligeny enrmcii. We are too late. We have neglected beginnings. If we are to save the mothers and the very young babies wo must concentrate on the antc-natai period, as we- call it when we think of the baby, or the period of expectancy, as we call it when wo think of the [mother. Lot us think of them together, and in time. . . . Words to Mothers “Let me give, in the fev.-csr, words, the best counsel for the cxpocTant [mother —for h<’r own sake nm< ror nor [baby’s. And if any mon are listening ,—condescending to do so, even though. | of course, we men really have minds far above mere squalling brats, wo being I naturally at home amid tho infinities land high politics, and babies being mere