The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction: Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the MaleHall, Winfield Scott
Science
The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction: Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male
Hall, Winfield Scott
Reproduction; Sexual ethics -- Early 20th century
The fertilized ovum makes a lodgment on the inner surface of the
uterus or womb and begins immediately to absorb its nourishment from
the maternal organism. It soon develops a heart and blood vessels so
related to the blood vessels of the mother that throughout its
intra-uterine existence the mother's blood supplies the growing child
all of the substance that is built up into bone, muscle, brain and
glands, preparing the young child to come into the world a living,
breathing, sentient organism. These draughts upon the vitality of the
maternal organism are so great that they frequently result in a very
sensible depletion of the mother's physical power, particularly
manifest in the depletion of the blood.
During the period when the young child is developing within the body
of the mother, she must make other sacrifices, viz., the withdrawal
from society more closely within the four walls of her home where she
busies herself many days in preparation of the wardrobe for the
expected child. Then there are sacrifices incident to childbirth
represented especially in the pain and travail of parturition. During
the first year of the child's life in normal cases, it draws its
nourishment from its mother's breast. This nourishment in turn is
elaborated by the milk-secreting glands from the mother's blood--still
further depleting her system. During its childhood and youth the
mother prepares the food, clothing and shelter of her child at no
small expense of her own time and strength. For years the mother holds
herself ready to watch by the bedside of her child should he fall
sick, and there is hardly a mother in the land who has not spent many
nights in this vigil by the bed of her sick child.
We might turn now briefly to the consideration of the sacrifices that
the father makes.
As is the case with mother so with the father, the initial sacrifice
in the division of a portion of his body is too small to be
considered, but in his case as in the case of the mother, the
sacrifice for the coming progeny is only initiated with the act of
procreation and continues through a period of fifteen, twenty or even
thirty years--sometimes progressively increasing to the last. These
sacrifices take the form, for the most part, of support and
protection, and begin soon after conception on the part of the
mother--as the pregnant woman usually requires much greater solicitude
and care on the part of the husband than she does on other occasions.
The normal father, like the normal mother, holds himself in readiness
to watch by the bedside of the sick child should the occasion arise,
and to make other sacrifices incident to the protection and support of
the child.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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