174 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



for -want of a mother, will not be born. She who should have been his mother 

 will perhaps be a very distinguished collegian. That one truism says it all — 

 women are made and meant to be, not men, but mothers of men. A noble 

 mother, a noble wife — are not these the designations in which we find the high- 

 est ideal of noble womanhood ? Woman was formed to be man's helpmate, not 

 his rival ; heart, not head ; sustainer, not leader. 



The ideal mother is undoubtedly a woman more placid than nervous 

 in temperament, more energetic than restless in habits, and with more 

 strength of character and general good sense than specialized intel- 

 lectual acquirements. Strong emotions, strained nerves, excitement, 

 anxiety, absorption, are all hurtful to the unborn child. They tend 

 to bring on premature birth ; and if not this, then they create sickly 

 offspring, whom the mother can not nourish when they are born. And, 

 speaking of this, I may as well state here that the number of women 

 who can not nurse their own children is yearly increasing in the edu- 

 cated and well-conditioned classes ; and that coincident w T ith this spe- 

 cial failure is the increase of uterine disease. This I have from one of 

 our most famous specialists. The mental w r orries and the strain of 

 attention inseparable from professional life make the worst possible 

 conditions for satisfactory child-bearing ; while the anxiety bound 

 up with the interruption to her work, consequent on her health and 

 changed condition, must tell heavily on the nerves and mind of the 

 woman whose professional income counts in the family. Her physical 

 troubles, of themselves quite enough to bear, have thus extra weight ; 

 and mind, nerves, work, and condition, act and react in a vicious circle 

 all round. Even w T here her profession is one that does not take her 

 out-of-doors, and does not involve any great personal fatigue — as lit- 

 erature or art — the anxiety of her work and the interruption which 

 must needs result from her state are more disastrous to the unborn 

 than to herself ; and the child suffers as much from the relaxation as 

 from the strain. As one of the wisest and best-trained women I know 

 said to me the other day : " How much of all the grand force and nerv- 

 ous power, the steadiness and courage of Englishmen, may not be owing 

 to the fact of the home-life and protection of women ; and bow much 

 shall we not lose when the mothers of the race are rendered nervous, 

 irritable, and overstrained by the exciting stimulus of education carried 

 to excess, and the exhausting anxieties of professional competition ! " 



This does not say that only the " stupid women " are therefore to be 

 w r ives and mothers. Specialized education does not necessarily create 

 companionable nor even sensible w r omen ; else, by parity of reasoning, 

 would all professional men be personally charming and delightful, 

 which undoubtedly they all are not. A girl may be a sound Grecian, 

 a brilliant mathematician, a sharp critic, a faultless grammarian, yet 

 be wanting in all that personal tact and temper, clear observation, 

 ready sympathy, and noble self-control which make a companionable 

 wife and a valuable mother. Nor is unprofessional or unspecialized 



