Only that mother who looks on child-bearing as a disagreeable accident,
and upon the pleasures of love, comfort, education, sociability, as the
meaning of life, will bring up her children so that they shall have as
many pleasures, and enjoy them as much as possible; will feed them
luxuriously, dress them smartly, will artificially divert them, and will
teach them, not that which will make them capable of self-sacrificing
man's and woman's labour with danger of life and uttermost effort, but
that which will deliver them from that labour,--which will give them
diplomas and idleness. Only such a woman, who has lost the significance
of her life, will sympathize with that false, sham man's labour, by
means of which her husband, freeing himself from man's duty, may profit,
together with her, by the labour of others. Only such a woman will
choose a similar husband for her daughter, and will value men, not for
what they are in themselves, but for what is attached to
them,--position, money, the art of profiting by the labour of others.
A true mother, who really knows God's law, will prepare her children for
the fulfilment of it. For such a mother it will be suffering to see her
child overfed, pampered, overdressed, because all this, she knows, will
hinder it in the fulfilment of God's law, experienced by herself. Such a
woman will not teach that which will give her son or daughter the
possibility of delivering themselves from labour, but that which will
help them to bear the labour of life.
She will not want to ask what to teach her children, or for what to
prepare them, knowing what it is and in what consists the mission of
men, and consequently knowing what to teach her children, and for what
to prepare them. Such a woman will not only discourage her husband from
false, sham labour, the only aim of which is to profit by other people's
work, but will view with disgust and dread an activity that will serve
as a double temptation for her children. Such a woman will not choose
her daughter's husband according to the whiteness of his hands, and the
refinement of his manners, but, knowing thoroughly what is labour and
what deceit, will always and everywhere, beginning with her husband,
respect and appreciate men, in claiming from them true labour with waste
and danger of life, and will scorn that false, sham labour which has for
its aim the delivering of one's self from true labour.
And let not those women say,--who, while renouncing the vocation of
women, desire to profit by its rights,--that such a view of life is
impossible for a mother, that a mother is too intimately connected by
love to her children to deprive them of sweets, smart dresses, or
entertainments, or not to fear their being unprovided for, if the
husband has no fortune or secure position, or not to be afraid for the
future of the marrying daughters and sons, who have not got an
"education."
All this is a lie, a burning lie!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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