MOTHERCRAFT 
An Attempt to Make the Education of Girls Fit Their Requirements—Work Done, 
in Private Schools—Should be a Part of the Public Schools—An 
Important and Immediately Practicable Phase 
of Constructive Eugenics 
Mary L. Reap 
Educational Director, National Association for Mothercraft Education, 
New York, N.Y. 
From Pennsylvania 
woman writes me: 
a young 
“T am one of many girls whose training has 
fitted them for almost any position except the 
one of wife and mother. Since my marriage 
almost two years ago I have struggled daily 
to run the house economically and make up 
the deficiency in my early education. Now 
that the baby is coming I am facing a job 
for which I am even less prepared than for 
the other, and when I think that our baby’s 
life may pay the forfeit for the mistakes I 
make in this direction, I am afraid of the future. 
Where can I find anything that will help me 
to learn how to take care of myself now and 
of the baby later? I shall be very grateful 
to ycu for anything you can give me.”’ 
The letter is only one of very many 
that I have received. What propor- 
tion of the young women in the 
educated and well-to-do class would 
express similar sentiments, if they 
were questioned’ I venture to estimate 
somewhere near a majority. 
The girls themselves are not to 
blame for this state of affairs; but 
someone is to blame. 
It is one of the riddles of history why, 
when the life and welfare of children 
are of such vital concern to the family 
and the race, society has never taken 
the trouble to see to it that the women 
in whose charge these precious baby 
lives rested were highly trained and 
fittingly prepared for their responsi- 
bilities. Some people have even said 
it was not “nice” for young girls to 
think they would ever be mothers 
(although they knew they would and 
so did everyone else)—therefore it was 
not proper for them to be told about 
how to care for babies. Sometimes 
they were instructed in other house- 
wifely arts; but when it came to the 
care of the child, the young mother 
usually has had to gain her experience 
at the expense of her own baby. 
We are now beginning to see that 
such a state of affairs is criminal, and 
that the young girl needs education in 
what I have called Mothercraft, above 
everything else. 
But I would emphasize at the outset 
that Mothercraft should be conceived 
as a much larger matter than merely 
instruction as to how one should treat 
a baby when it cries. It should include 
as much as possible of the knowledge 
essential to founding a family and 
carrying it along successfully. As a 
beginning, it should teach the girl a 
good deal about the qualities she should 
possess and that she should seek in the 
man she marries. 
How unromantic! you say. 
Not at all. There is no essential 
contradiction between romantic love 
and eugenics. A young woman knows 
a hundred young men, but is in love 
with only one (or possibly none) 
because the others do not embody the 
ideal that she has fashioned. Every 
young woman (and the same is true 
of men) has such an ideal, perhaps only 
vaguely defined but certainly felt, with 
which she is in love, for which she 
searches, and with which she some- 
times invests an acquaintance only to 
discover later her illusion. This ideal 
is composed of the most alluring quali- 
ties and personalities she has known or 
read about. 
EUGENICS AND LOVE 
What normal young man would be 
likely to fall in love with a girl, how- 
ever pretty, even charming, who he 
knew could be the mother only of 
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