It goes without saying that this woman loses also all opportunity of
personal expression outside her home. She has neither a chance to
develop social qualities nor to indulge in social pleasures. The
feminine element in her--that spirit which blossoms forth now and then
in women free from such burdens--cannot assert itself. She can
contribute nothing to the wellbeing of the community. She is a
breeding machine and a drudge--she is not an asset but a liability to
her neighborhood, to her class, to society. She can be nothing as long
as she is denied means of limiting her family.
In sharp contrast with these women who ignorantly bring forth large
families and who thereby enslave themselves, we find a few women who
have one, two or three children or no children at all. These women,
with the exception of the childless ones, live full-rounded lives.
They are found not only in the ranks of the rich and the well-to-do,
but in the ranks of labor as well. They have but one point of basic
difference from their enslaved sisters--they are not burdened with the
rearing of large families.
We have no need to call upon the historian, the sociologist nor the
statistician for our knowledge of this situation. We meet it every day
in the ordinary routine of our lives. The women who are the great
teachers, the great writers, the artists, musicians, physicians, the
leaders of public movements, the great suffragists, reformers, labor
leaders and revolutionaries are those who are not compelled to give
lavishly of their physical and spiritual strength in bearing and
rearing large families. The situation is too familiar for discussion.
Where a woman with a large family is contributing directly to the
progress of her times or the betterment of social conditions, it is
usually because she has sufficient wealth to employ trained nurses,
governesses, and others who perform the duties necessary to child
rearing. She is a rarity and is universally recognized as such.
The women with small families, however, are free to make their choice
of those social pleasures which are the right of every human being and
necessary to each one's full development. They can be and are, each
according to her individual capacity, comrades and companions to their
husbands--a privilege denied to the mother of many children. Theirs is
the opportunity to keep abreast of the times, to make and cultivate a
varied circle of friends, to seek amusements as suits their taste and
means, to know the meaning of real recreation. All these things remain
unrealized desires to the prolific mother.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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