What a Young Wife Ought to KnowDrake, Emma F. Angell (Emma Frances Angell)
Science
What a Young Wife Ought to Know
Drake, Emma F. Angell (Emma Frances Angell)
Infants -- Care; Marriage; Women -- Health and hygiene
“They should know that the less children and the more servants in the
home, the less health and happiness, other things being equal. It is
natural for women to bear children, and unnatural to evade this function;
the everlastingly recurrent congestion of the generative organs, month
after month, year in and year out, without the rest of generation,
promotes a true disease of these organs, and favors all the various
growths which afflict so large a proportion of our women.”
With the prevailing ignorance, which has been the heritage of our
daughters for so many generations, no thought of preparation for
motherhood has exercised them. On the other hand, much the larger
majority of our young women come to the marriage altar, far better
informed in the methods of preventing conception, or producing abortion
after conception has really taken place, than of any proper preparation
for motherhood. Who are their teachers? Many who should blush with
shame that they lend their influence to this nefarious business; this
education in invalidism, murder and suicide. Many, who should be the
teachers in truth and purity. Mothers, mothers-in-law, sisters, aunts,
“friends,” young matrons, who have become adepts in the business, and
whose punishment has not yet overtaken them—all these, and many more.
Christians? Yes, professing Christians; but who would hardly like to
have their advice in these things written along side of their confession
of faith in the records of the church. They should remember that it is
written in a larger book than that of a church, and written so large that
all the world can read it by and by.
In the first steps of preparation for motherhood, the mother should be
the teacher. That so few mothers are capable of teaching their daughters
as they should, emphasizes the need of right teaching along these lines,
and the necessity of plain talks with mothers and daughters.
From a recent paper I clipped the following: “There is a story going
the rounds, that the last convention of the National Mothers’ Congress,
was not entirely successful, owing to the fact, that only about one
out of every ten delegates was even married. Since the object of the
organization is the better care, discipline and rearing of the young,
it has been determined that every delegate to the convention next
month, must show her right to be there. While many unmarried women
are probably more capable of rearing children than many who are trying
to, no exceptions will be made to the rule of making the organization
exclusively for mothers and wives.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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