OUR BABIES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 15, 12 October 1910, Page 60

OUR BABIES.

< By

HYGEIA.)

Published u4er the auspices of the Society for the Health of Women and Children.

"It is Kiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain on ambulance at the bottom.”

Training Girls for Motherhood. "O ▼ NDER the heading, “Ignorant f I Mothers,” appears a very strong 1 JL, article in the “Contemporary Review,” which has an interesting bearing on what I was advocating as to the education of girls in practical domestic hygiene. The want of such instruction was strongly represented by Dr. Batchelor at the annual meeting of our society in Dunedin eighteeen months ago, and forcibly referred to by the Hon. Dr. Collins in his recent address to the Legislative Council on the need for a “Purer Milk Supply” and a greater knowledge on ithe part of girls and mothers as to how this important food should be dealt with in the home. As the “Contemporary” article will be specially acceptable to all parents interested in our work. I make no apology for giving extensive extracts. From first to last, In spite of much strenuous opposition, the Society for the Health of Women and Children has stuck to its guns and maintained the position taken up at its foundation three and a-half years ago, viz., that a practical “Health Mission” was not more needed for the poor and ignorant than it was for the Ignorant and well-to-do. In other words, “The society’s mission was to all classes.” Recently a great clamour has been made with a view to restricting the service* of the Plunket Nurses to parents who cannot afford to pay for special instruction in such matters as the society bas set itself to teach; but our contention has always been that the dependent or indigent among us, who do not constitute a tenth i>f the population of the Dominion, are of infinitely less importance to the race than the selfreliant nine-tenths, and are not so ready to accept and profit by our teaching as the more capable and intelligent members of the communitv.

The English point of view in these matters always tends to be that of the charitable “patronage” of the poor by those who are better off—the tacit assumption being that the upper classes don’t make the deplorable mistakes characteristic of the lower orders, and. therefore need no educative health mission among themselves. However, the writer of “Ignorant Mothers” knows better.

Ignorant Mothers. “Every few months, at some conference or another, eornes up the subject of the ignorance, the fatal ignorance, of the mothers of the lower classes. This subject, apparently a favourite one with the kind-hearted orators, is one upon which all agree, for one one attempts to deny the existence of the evil, and it is impossible to doubt the array of medical and scientific evidence which marks it as the Source of half the ills of humanity. ‘Badly feed and badly train the child,’ they all cry, ‘and what can you expect but poor specimens of adults?’ Thereupon all sections of these conferences resolve to make an effort to wheel the ignorant mothers of the poorer classes into line with modern dietary and hygienic wisdom.

“That is very gratifying; for at least we have got beyond believing in the miracles of maternal instinct, and are able to observe that the fact of having given birth to a child does not prevent a woman from giving it bacon and red herring before its mon'.hs have lengthened to years. Love comes—oceans of illimitable love—but when were Love hnd Wisdom ever twins’ Much less are they triplets with Knowledge. It is undisputed now', I fancy, by all but the Inost bigoted of mothers, that the true principles of diet, clothing, health, and cleanliness are not miraculously born |iith a child. How hard the poor babies cry to teach the Ignorant mother—poor tables, ‘with no language but a erv,’ Fuch clever sounds the mites can make X-Munds graduated to their needs, but

conveying to the fond, foolish ears of the adoring parent nothing but an eternal request for food. What We All See. “I saw two very well-dressed young women of the middle class in a suburban shop a few days ago —one of them carrying a baby of a month or two old. The infant suddenly gave a yell of pain, and drew its tiny legs up in what one would have thought the most amateur eye could have detected as a fit of colie. An adult would make much the same sounds and gestures if unrestrained by civilisation. ‘There, there!’ shouted the mother above the hubbub, throwing the tiny bundle up and down violently—in the' hope of stunning it to insensibility, I supposed. The baby’s eyes stared dizzily, but by a supreme’ effort it contrived to emit a yet more piercing shriek. I became interested. They held it up to the strong electric light ito ‘See the pretty lamps,’ but it only got more purple and more noisy. At last —I was waiting for the words —the aunt cried, ‘Try him with the bottle,’ pulling out of a bag she carried an abomination with a rubber tube a foot long, and probably the cause of this attack. They managed rto force the baby to suck, and onee that began the rubber was firmly held to his mouth till the sobs and moans died down, and when I saw the party half-an-hour later the child, with staring eyes, was still pulling desperately, with an occasional scream or moan of pain. If you look about, you may see such sights every day and everywhere, hut these are not the women who are preached about on platforms, and who are going to be -reformed and taught by scientific philanthropists. No, it is the very poor who are quoted, illustrated, Mid up, and about to be Reformed.

Patronising Reformers. “A lot of good folk are very keen on this subject, and rightly, too; but are their methods and arguments for reform of any lasting or definite avail? Ask of them one simple and perfectly legitimate question. Ask Lady Bountiful, the Hon. Mrs. Goodworks, the Reverend Reformer, eimply thia question; ‘Are your own daughters being trained and prepared in the duties and knowledge of the sacred wisdom of motherhood? 'When they marry will they be, but for the nurses they are able to employ, one whit less ignorant or less foolish than the mothers you are so eager to train up in the class below your own?’ “That is the root of the matter, for once a woman is already a mother, you can do very little with her. She thinks she has no more to learn. There are exceptions, of course, many and.illuminating; but the most narrow-minded farmer who ever walked a wasted acre is not more incapable of receiving advice or assimilating new ideas than the average fond mother. Touch the subject of a woman’s management of her children, and you are hoist with your own petard.” Memo, by Hygeia.—ln our experience New Zealand parents are, on the whole, more open to receive and adopt rational ideas than the average English mother. There are, of course, many very trying and difficult cases, but the colonial mother is usually more open-minded than her Home sister.

The Well-to-do. “If once you know the traces of opium in an infant’s face, you may take a walk in Kensington Gardens and see the writing upon a hundred little white faces. At the same time, if it be summer, you may observe many little heads exposed to the broiling sun with no better protection than a fashionable little Dutch cap of silk or linen, close to the skull, and covering the ears with huge rosettes. Such children look picturesque, probably suffer from headaches and earaches, and cry for no reason, and are Jiit for still less reason. You can also see the babies of the rich propped up like

any slum baby, reclining, or even upright, before they can sit of their own accord, getting ready to have curvature of the spine. Ever such a little curve brings hysteria and insanity. Bare legs in the chill spring winds; tight little trousers that a tiny person cannot stoop in, with Nature insisting every moment of his play that he must and shall stoop.

“What stone have we to throw at the ignorance of the poor? That there is crying need to reform the child-lore of the poor is evident, for they have not the off-chance of the luck of securing a good nurse, but must tread all alone those paths of hard experience which lead, alas, how often! to the bitter Valley of the Shadow of Death. One’s heart bleeds for them, those poor, fond, foolish women, with their pale, dulleyed babies, their weedy children, and anaemic daughters. But there is only one way to help them, which is first to reform the rich. No social change has ever travelled upwards, or can ever do so. The impulse is imitative, for good or evil, and comes from example set by those /above. Revolutions may (break out below, but they begin above. We now see the lower classes struggling against the vices which have descended to them by natural gravitation from the best society of the late Georgian days.

The Ideal. “Thus, then, with reform and example ever set from above, there is no way eo sure of reforming the mothers of the poor as that of first reforming the mothers of the rich. . . . Begin with the daughters. Let the daughters of the rich, all the girls in fashionable schools, be taught before everything else that she ternity is the highest and holiest and happiest destiny a woman may attain. Then, when they think that, teach them, insist that they be taught, the eare and feeding of children as the most important part of their education. Let the ideal schoolmistress say to young Lady Clara Vere de Vere: ‘I daresay you do find Euelid most interesting, and I know you are invaluable to the hockey teamj but, my dear girl, I cannot possibly hope to send home a good report at the end of the term unless you do better work in the Food Values essays. Nurse Constance told me your notions of what would suit a child of three months old would kill a rhinoceros! She really did! And I am sure your gardener’s daughter knows better than you do what course to pursue if an infant has convulsions.*' “Sufficient unto the day are the reforms thereof. And so surely as we make wise and careful motherhood the ideal and the fashion in the upper classes, so surely, and by no other means, will the truth gravitate towards the poorer folk, and become an immutable feature of our national life, to the salvation of millions of constitutions and to the happiness of as many homes.”