The Woman Socialist/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
MARRIAGE, MATERNITY
It is quite impossible at this time, nor would it be desirable, if possible, to lay down any hard and fast line as to the development of the details of Socialist organisation. Broad principles are all that can with any degree of confidence be spoken about. The details will arrange themselves, as the time arrives when it becomes necessary to settle them. It is not possible, therefore, to prophesy in what exact, special, and particular way the State will exercise control over those of its citizens wishful of entering upon the state of matrimony. That it will interfere to prevent marriage in many cases there is no question. The Socialist community will recognise to a far greater extent than is recognised at the present time, despite the cant about “woman’s sphere,” and the hypocritical concern for its protection, the power for good or evil of the mother, and the determining influence of the parents upon the children that are going to be.
One would fain believe that, if the people of this country could be made to realise even faintly the terrible waste of infant life and the horrible curse laid upon the coming generation by reason of unsuitable, immoral, and too early unions, they would rise as one individual and demand that the State shall interfere to prevent such unions.
It has already been pointed out that, under Socialism, every potential mother (which includes the entire female sex) shall receive proper training for the maternal functions she may be called upon to undertake. Here is a reform which should be established at once, and which should not be allowed to wait until the Collectivist programme in other particulars has been completed. All who have lately read the soul-sickening articles appearing in a leading newspaper on the subject of child mortality will surely endorse this sentiment. It is no small matter that nearly a quarter of a million infants annually die before they reach their first year, through the ignorance or the neglect of the mothers.
Teach the mothers as soon as possible. Teach them that gin is not the proper nourishment either for themselves or their infants. Teach them the terrible power of heredity. Teach them the beauty of cleanliness in person, dress, and home. Teach them the value of sleep to a little child. Teach them regular habits. Teach them to feed their children themselves whenever possible. Teach them a hundred matters of vital concern in their own and their children's lives. Teach them at once, for the children are dying. But besides this, examine the social system which makes these shiftless mothers possible. Find out the root-cause of the ignorance and carelessness. And then remove it.
Miss Margaret M'Millan, in a pamphlet lately published, declares that thirty per cent. of the infants who die prematurely do so because they are prematurely born. Marriage has taken place before the mother was sufficiently matured herself to bear a healthy child. Or the children have come too quickly, and the mother has had no time to regain her strength between the births. Physicians have declared, out of their wisdom, that a woman does not attain to physical maturity until the age of twenty-six or twenty-seven. But, because of our infamous and cruel ideas of life, which relegate a woman to the "upper shelf," and allow her to be spoken of in the contemptuous term of "old maid" unless she shows signs of marrying before she is well out of her teens, thousands of marriages take place between individuals who are totally unfit; and, with a few exceptions, the unfortunate offspring pay the penalty by either dying, or living in a weakly, sickly condition, a burden to themselves and to society.
So far we can prophesy, at least, that a Socialist state will not permit of marriage between immature individuals. Possibly little in the way of regulation by law will be necessary, since the main incentive to present-day marriages will have disappeared. The modern marriage, in the average, is founded, not upon mutual esteem and affection, nor upon a concern for the welfare of future citizens, but it is, for the woman, a means of escape from the struggle for a living; for the man, a means of providing himself with a useful companion at the lowest cost, and for both man and woman, an escape from the worries and torments of life into an oblivion of sexual indulgence which the "law allows and court awards," and which has received the sanction and blessing of the court and council of Heaven.
The lives of women will be much wider and more interesting when the new order is established. Only a call to maternity will sanction maternity. There will be no unwilling mothers. The children born will be wanted. Their coming will be looked for, anticipated with joy; and due preparations to receive the little lives will be made. No heart-broken wail of the anxious mother with already more mouths than she can fill turning to her for food, at the arrival of still another little stranger, will be heard. For every child born, the State will make provision. Either the mother will be paid so much per child so long as it lives and thrives, as her wages for important work done for society in bearing and rearing it; or her absolute independence of her husband will be secured in some other way. The State doctor (a woman for this office) will prescribe and care for the child from the moment of its birth, and State nurses will be in attendance to see that the mother is in need of nothing for her own, and the child's well-being. What a different prospect for the Socialist child of the future from that of the child of the poor at present, often sodden with drink, diseased and dirty, and (120,000 of them) dead before it is twelve months old.
One other reform which will certainly be accomplished under a well-directed order of society is, that marriage between the mentally weak will not be allowed. Imbeciles, lunatics, and those with dangerous and ineradicable criminal tendencies will not be permitted to reproduce their species at all, and in this way will be prevented the dire calamity which is afflicting this country at present, to its terrible cost in the future unless more control over these people be exercised. For it is the people of this quality, those individuals who are less developed intellectually, and more strongly developed in the selfish, gross, and animal part of their natures, who are to-day reproducing themselves in the largest numbers. That these unfortunates of society, more to be pitied than blamed, should be deprived of the joy of intimate human relationship with one of their own kind seems to some a hard doctrine to preach. But under a healthy organisation of society these types will be less and less common. It is even possible to conceive of a time when, as a result of the observance of natural and moral laws, these types may cease to exist altogether. But until that time arrives, and in order that it may arrive the more quickly, the pleasures of the few must give way to the good of the whole community, for the highest good of the greatest number, of society as a whole, will be the guiding-star of the Socialist administrator.