Women and Economics, Charlotte Perkins Gilman [epub read online books .txt] 📗

Before a man enters a trade, art, or profession, he studies it. He qualifies himself for the duties he is to undertake. He would be held a presuming impostor if he engaged in work he was not fitted to do, and his failure would mark him instantly with ridicule and reproach. In the more important professions, especially in those dealing with what we call “matters of life and death,” the shipmaster or pilot, doctor or druggist, is required not only to study his business, but to pass an examination under those who have already become past masters, and obtain a certificate or a diploma or some credential to show that he is fit to be entrusted with the direct responsibility for human life.

Women enter a position which gives into their hands direct responsibility for the life or death of the whole human race with neither study nor experience, with no shadow of preparation or guarantee of capability. So far as they give it a thought, they fondly imagine that this mysterious “maternal instinct” will see them through. Instruction, if needed, they will pick up when the time comes: experience they will acquire as the children appear. “I guess I know how to bring up children!” cried the resentful old lady who was being advised: “I’ve buried seven!” The record of untrained instinct as a maternal faculty in the human race is to be read on the rows and rows of little gravestones which crowd our cemeteries. The experience gained by practising on the child is frequently buried with it.

No, the maternal sacrifice theory will not bear examination. As a sex specialized to reproduction, giving up all personal activity, all honest independence, all useful and progressive economic service for her glorious consecration to the uses of maternity, the human female has little to show in the way of results which can justify her position. Neither the enormous percentage of children lost by death nor the low average health of those who survive, neither physical nor mental progress, give any proof of race advantage from the maternal sacrifice.

Although the superior maternity of the human female is so difficult to prove, so open to heavy charges of inadequacy, so erratic and pathological, there remain intact our devout belief in it, our reverence, our unshaken conviction that it is the one perfect thing. The facts as to our carelessness and ignorance in the fulfilment of this function are undeniable: the rate of infant mortality and children’s diseases⁠—those classed by physicians as “preventable diseases,” namely⁠—these mortal errors and failures confront us everywhere; but we ignore them all, or attribute them to any and every reason save deficient motherhood.

One of the most frequent excuses, among those who have gone far enough to admit that excuse is needed, is that the father is to blame for these conditions. His vices, it is alleged, weaken the constitution of the race. His failure to provide prevents the mother from giving the proper care. He is held responsible for what evil we see in our children; and still we worship the mother for the physical process of bearing a child⁠—now considered an act of heroism⁠—and for the “devotion” with which she clings to it afterward, irrespective of the wisdom or effectiveness of this devotion. A healthy and independent motherhood would no more think of taking credit to itself for the right fulfilment of its natural functions than would a cat for bringing forth her kittens or a sheep her lambs. The common fact that the women of the lower social grades bear more children and bear them more easily than the women of higher classes ought to give pause to this ridiculous assumption, but it does not. The more women weaken themselves and their offspring, and imperil their very lives by anti-maternal habits, the more difficulty, danger, and expense are associated with this natural process, the more do women solemnly take credit to themselves and receive it from others for the glorious self-sacrifice with which they risk their lives (and their babies’ lives!) for the preservation of humanity. As to the father and his share in the evil results, nothing that he has ever done or can do removes from motherhood its primal responsibility.

Suppose the female of some other species, ignoring her racial duty of right selection, should mate with mangy, toothless cripples⁠—if there were such among her kind⁠—and so produce weak, malformed young, and help exterminate her race. Should she then blame him for the result? An entire sex, sacredly set apart for maternal functions so superior as to justify their lack of economic usefulness, should in the course of ages have learned how to select proper fathers. If the only way in which the human mother can feed and guard her children is through another person, a provider and protector on whom their lives and safety must depend, what natural, social, or moral excuse has she for not choosing a good one?

But how can a young girl know a good prospective father, we ask. That she is not so educated as to know proves her unfitness for her great task. That she does not think or care proves her dishonorable indifference to her great duty. She can in no way shirk the responsibility for criminal carelessness in choosing a father for her children, unless indeed there were no choice⁠—no good men left on earth. Moreover, we are not obliged to leave this crucial choice in the hands of young girls. Motherhood is the work of grown women, not of half-children; and, when we honestly care as much for motherhood as we pretend, we shall train the woman for her duty, not the girl for her guileless maneuvers to secure a husband. We talk about the noble duties of the mother, but our maidens are educated for economically successful marriage.

Leaving this field of maternal duty through sex-selection, there remains the far larger ground to which the popular mind flees in triumph: that the