The unwelcome child

My Friend:

Before considering the wrong done to the mother, I would state two points which I shall take for granted:

1. That parents, alone, are responsible for the existence of their children.

2. That woman, alone, has a right to say when, and under what circumstances, she shall assume the office of maternity, or subject herself to the liability of becoming a mother.

These two positions seem to me so self-evident, that no arguments can make them more clear and certain. Who is responsible for the existence of children, God or the parents? Who shall say how many children a woman shall have, and under what circumstances she shall have them, the wife or the husband? Who shall say how often, for what purposes, and under what conditions, the wife shall subject her person to a relation which renders her liable to become a mother, and to the suffering and anguish of developing and giving birth to a child? To ask these questions is to answer them. Nature makes but one reply, and that will be found in the consciousness of every true husband and wife, and father and mother.

What is the influence of an undesired maternity on the mother, in regard to the father of her child? is my first inquiry. What is it? It is felt, but seldom spoken. It cannot be expressed in words, as it is felt in the heart.

A woman comes into the relation of a legal wife. At once, it may be, the husband reveals himself to her in a way she did not anticipate, and she is made to know what he expects of her, and for what he married her. She yields her person to his passion, not in obedience to a call in her own nature, but because she thinks that such is the right conferred by law and custom on the husband over the wife. She has, it may be, been duly taught that the only way to secure and strengthen his love is to yield to his passion, whenever it demands indulgence. So she yields, and before she is aware, and before her mind is prepared to meet them, the responsibilities, anxieties and sufferings of maternity are upon her. Grief, anguish, and a dread of some unknown, but terrible suffering, overwhelm her. Consternation seizes the heart, so recently buoyant with the hopes and joys of a loving and trusting bride.

How will this new and dreaded experience affect her mind towards her husband and the father of her child? As a lover, he had been so gentle, so delicate, and so considerate of her slightest wish, so thoughtful of her happiness, and so unwilling to say or do anything to grieve her spirit; as a bridegroom, he had promised to love and cherish her as his own soul; and she fondly trusted that no wrong or suffering would ever reach her through him; when, behold! in the very beginning of their united life, and before, physically or mentally, she was prepared to meet the great demand, he has imposed on her the necessity of yielding up her body and soul to the keenest suffering to which she can be subjected; and that without consulting her wishes, and contrary, it may be, to her earnest prayer. As she ponders on her situation, and the experience through which she must pass, and from which death to herself, or her child, or to both, is the only door of escape, how must she feel towards him who has placed her in this fearful condition? He has subjected her to the necessity, for weary months, of drinking the bitterest cup of life, and of passing through the valley and shadow of death, heart-sick, desponding and shrinking from the final result; and all this, not because she wished to be a mother, or he a father, nor that they might blend their bodies and souls in a new and beautiful life, to be an honor to themselves and the world,—no such motive prompted the relation in which conception originated; but solely his momentary gratification. She feels that his indulgence was had at her expense. No conscious pride and sense of matronly dignity, no high and noble aspirations, sustain her, as she reflects on her condition. Can she continue to love and respect him? He has done her the greatest wrong. He heeded not her prayers that he would control his passion, and spare her until she was ready joyfully to enter upon an office so grand in its nature, and so sublime in its bearing on the destiny of an immortal soul. To meet the responsibilities of such an office, and the physical and mental pain and anguish necessarily pertaining to it, what woman but needs a preparation? Who is sufficient for these things? Yet the dread liabilities are upon her, without a moment’s warning, and without, it may be, any interchange of thoughts and feelings with her husband and the father of her child. She knows not even that he wants a child, nor whether he will receive it with a blessing or a curse. She knows not what heart-support she will receive from him in the moment of her trial and her anguish. He has had no conversation with her on these subjects, and given her no assurance as to the natural results to her of his passional relations with her; expressed no anxiety, no expectations, no hopes, as to her liability to become a mother. He has had no further wish or anxiety, except for his own selfish gratification. He has, it may be, avoided, as indelicate and improper, all allusion to questions so vital to the life and happiness of his newly-wedded wife. All she has to rest upon is the indefinite assurance, given before God and man, that he will cherish, protect and care for her. Why he promised to protect and care for her, whether as a mere means of sensual gratification, or for holier and more exalted purposes, she has no assurance. Not one word, it may be, has he ever spoken to her respecting the motives that have prompted him to seek her as a wife. O, woman! woman! how dare you enter into such a relation with a man, without knowing what he expects of you?

The wife, in such a situation, cannot cherish loving and tender thoughts of her husband when absent, nor receive his caresses with rapture when present. She bears in herself the result of the wrong he has inflicted on her. It is ever present to her thoughts and emotions. She cannot escape from it but by an outrage on herself and child; and as, in her moments of solitary suffering and anguish, she reflects on her condition, and why she must endure them, how can she regard the author of them with loving respect? The sense of the wrong done her is ever present,—can she tenderly cherish the wrong-doer, especially when he continues to demand of her a constant renewal of the relation in which her present afflictions and forebodings of future sorrows originated? She cannot; for he, by inflicting on her a maternity which her own soul cannot sanction, and from which, perhaps, she shrinks with horror, has rendered himself unworthy of her love and respect.

It is in vain to urge a woman thus situated to love and honor her husband. At no command of God or man can she, as a wife, love and cherish him. Indeed, no wife can love her husband at the word of command. If she loves him at all, it is because she must, not because she is ordered to do it. Her love will flow out to him as a necessity of her being, not by the command of a third party. If he has no power to call it out and concentrate it on himself, it will not go out to him. Nothing can force it out. She is not to blame if she does not love him. She gives him all he has power to awaken and call out,—all the love he has power to take; more he has no right to ask, more she cannot give. Her love for him will correspond to his lovableness in her eyes; he will seek to render himself lovable to her, just in proportion to the value he sets on her love. Expect no love from a woman because she is your legal wife. The legal bond can impose on her no obligation to love you; and if it did, she cannot love you, if your person and your passion become disgusting to her.

Would you, my friend, increase and perpetuate the love and respect of your wife? Then beware how you demean yourself towards her in regard to maternity, and the relation that may, at any time, result in it. To a true woman and a loving wife, maternity, and the passional expressions of her husband, must ever be ennobling, or degrading. It is for him to say which they shall be. It is for you to say whether, as the father of her child, you shall seem to your wife altogether pure, noble and attractive, or selfish, ignoble and repulsive. You must determine whether the mother of your child shall see in you a generous, tender, kingly husband, all-worthy to be the father of her child, and to rule over the empire of her heart, or a mean, merciless tyrant, having no purer or higher aim, in your relations with her, than that of animal indulgence, and whom it is impossible to respect. It is for you to say to what extent, and how long, she shall love and respect you. She must love and honor you, if you seem to her to be worthy; she cannot, if you seem otherwise. How can you thus seem, when she is made to feel that for your gratification, and against her earnest appeal to you, as a man and husband, you have imposed on her a burden which she feels unable and unwilling to bear?

Maternity, when it exists at the call of the wife, and is gratefully received, but binds her heart more tenderly and devotedly to her husband. As the father of her child, he stands before her invested with new beauty and dignity. In receiving from him the germ of a new life, she receives that which she feels is to add new beauty and glory to her as a woman,—new grace and attraction to her as a wife. She loves and honors him, because he has crowned her with the glory of a mother. Maternity, to her, instead of being repulsive, is a diadem of beauty, a crown of rejoicing, and deep, tender, and self-forgetting are her love and reverence for him who has placed it on her brow. How noble, how august, how beautiful, is Maternity, when thus bestowed and received!

But, in proportion as it is holy and ennobling when designedly conferred and joyfully received, is it unholy and debasing, when undesigned and undesired. In proportion as a mother’s heart overflows with tender gratitude and loving reverence towards the father of her child, when that child comes in answer to the call of her womanly and wifely nature, will it be filled with aversion to the father of a child which she did not want, and which she is conscious is the result of a relation sought only for a sensual purpose.

Many wives become indifferent to, or positively and forever alienated from, their husbands, from this cause. Nothing will so surely and so irrevocably destroy the love of a wife for a husband, as a disregard, on his part, of her feelings and wishes in regard to Maternity, and to the relation from which it comes. In nothing are husbands (through ignorance, I would fain think) so unmindful of the entreaties and wants of their wives, as in these respects. They often demand the surrender of their persons without any inquiry into their feelings and conditions; consequently, before they are aware, the very life of God in their hearts,—that is, their love and respect for their husbands,—is crushed out of them. No wonder, when we consider what liabilities, what a sense of self-degradation, and what a shrinking of soul, are involved, to a true woman, in a surrender of her person to mere sensual passion, and to a maternity so dreaded. On the contrary, how certainly and how permanently a husband will secure the love and respect of his wife, and her perfect trust, when he so treats her as to make her feel secure that she is never to become a mother till her own nature calls for it; and when, knowing his own nature, he can assure her that he shall never subject her to the possibility of that suffering till she is able and willing to bear it!

When a woman once feels that the power of her husband is controlled by a tender love and reverence for her, and a desire to subject it to her growth and happiness, rather than to promote his own selfish ends, she rests in his bosom knowing no fear, assured that this very passion will but intensify the holy love that encircles her. When all fear of his passion is gone, her love and trust are perfected. But let the fear of that once settle on her heart, and her love is gone. Love and respect for the husband cannot exist in the heart of the wife simultaneously with a dread of his passion.

Would you, then, secure the love and trust of your wife, and become an object of her ever-growing tenderness and reverence, never impose on her a maternity which her nature does not sanction; neither subject her to the possibility of enduring the suffering incident to such a situation. Assure her, by all your manifestations, and your perfect respect for the functions of her nature, that your passion shall be in subjection to her wishes, and that she will never be made to endure the trials of maternity, except at the call of her own soul. How tenderly and reverently would she, under such an assurance, regard your physical, as well as your mental and spiritual manhood!

It is not enough that you have secured, in the heart of your wife, respect for your spiritual and intellectual manhood. To maintain your self-respect in your relations with her, to perfect your growth and happiness as a husband, you must cause your physical nature to be tenderly cherished and reverenced by her in all the sacred intimacies of home. No matter how much she reverences your intellectual, or your social power, if she shrinks with disgust from all contact with your person, if by reason of your uncalled-for passional manifestations, you have made your physical manhood disagreeable, and all personal contact painful, how can you, in her presence, preserve a sense of manly pride and dignity as a husband? You cannot, if you respect yourself.

One distinctive characteristic of a true and noble husband is a feeling of manly pride in the physical elements of his manhood. His physical manhood, as well as his soul, is dear to the heart of his wife, because through this he can give the fullest expression to his manly power. But if such manifestations are made when the wife is not prepared to receive them, and when she repels them and dreads the consequences, his physical nature becomes associated, not with the pure joy of a longed-for maternity, but with a deep sense of shame and degradation, with an outrage on her nature, and with the protracted suffering and anguish of an abhorred maternity. How can she respect the person of her husband? How can she cherish, and proudly care for, the purity, health and comfort of his physical nature? He has made it disgusting to her. She regards it as the deadliest enemy of her purity and peace as a wife, and as the bane of her home. She cannot look upon his person but as the source of her degradation and ruin. In its presence, she feels as in the presence of some hated reptile, from which her soul and senses shrink. How can she lovingly cherish and care for it? How can the husband respect himself, when by his own abuse of his wife and of himself, he has made his physical manhood thus contemptible to her?

How can you, my friend, avoid this? How can you secure for your person the loving care and respect of your wife? There is but one way; so manifest yourself to her, in the hours of your most endearing intimacies, that all your manly power shall be associated only with all that is generous, just and noble in you, and with purity, freedom and happiness in her. Make her feel that all which constitutes you a man, and qualifies you to be her husband and the father of her children, belongs to her, and is sacredly consecrated to the perfection and happiness of her nature. Do this, and the happiness of your home is made complete in righteousness. Your body will be lovingly and reverently cared for, because the wife of your bosom feels that it is the sacred symbol through which a noble, manly love is ever speaking to her, to cheer and sustain her.

Woman is ever proud, and justly so, of the manly passion of her husband, when she knows it is controlled by a love for her, whose manifestations have regard only to her elevation and happiness. The very power which, when bent only on selfish indulgence, becomes a source of more shame, degradation, disease and wretchedness, to women and to children, than all other things put together, does but ennoble her, add grace and glory to her being, and concentrate and vitalize the love that encircles her as a wife, when it is controlled by wisdom, and consecrated to her highest growth and happiness, and that of her children. It lends enchantment to her person, and gives a fascination to her smiles, her words and her caresses, which ever breathe of purity and of heaven, and make her all lovely as a wife and mother to her husband and the father of her child. Manly passion is to the conjugal love of the wife like the sun to the rosebud, that opens its petals, and causes them to give out their sweetest fragrance, and to display their most delicate tints; or like the frost, which chills and kills it ere it blossoms in its richness and beauty.

Beware, then, how you perpetrate this wrong against your wife, as you would secure her love and respect. Trifle not with the function of Maternity in her; for as this comes to her as the crowning joy and glory of her earthly existence, or otherwise, will be her estimate of you as her husband and the father of her children. See to it that she is never subjected to the possibility of becoming a mother unless she calls for it, and is ready with joy to assume the responsibilities of maternity.

But I will let woman tell her own story. She can speak on such a theme, and tell her own needs and wrongs, as no man can. The following extracts from a private letter will give you an insight into the wants and feelings of a wife and mother in regard to this subject. When woman speaks of her feelings while suffering an undesired maternity, let man reverently give heed to her words:

“My maternal experience has been varied. I have never been the recipient of a designed maternity, but I have that within me which gives me an idea of what its joy and blessedness might be. I have never been forced, with entire repugnance on my part, into the relation which resulted in conception; and yet I have suffered the keenest agonies in view of such a result.

“In the first years of my married life, I had no thought but to submit to the passion of my husband, without regard to the consequences to myself. As every true woman does, living in conjugal relations, I desired to be caressed by my husband, and to be pressed to his manly bosom. I did not suppose it was incumbent on him to control himself.

“In an unwelcome maternity, I have sometimes felt a deep repugnance to the passion of my husband,—a sense of deep suffering and anguish through it; but I have usually been so encircled by love as to make me forget this, or rather, shun such thoughts as sinful. But since my husband and I have come to a truer knowledge of parentage, I have come to ‘love, honor and cherish’ those functions which I had before only feared and obeyed. I think this is not the feeling that married women usually have towards the physical manhood of their husbands. I never heard a woman admit that her thoughts rested on the physical nature of her husband with loving respect and womanly pride: but I have heard, not unfrequently, expressions of disgust instead.

“I have known many instances in which the fathers of children, unintentionally and unwillingly conceived, became so repulsive to the mother, during gestation, that they would be made seriously ill by coming in contact with them, in any way; though ordinarily they would be agreeable and congenial.

“I have heard many women say they would gladly strangle their children, born of undesired maternity, at birth, could they do so with safety to themselves. I believe, judging from a long and intimate acquaintance with many mothers, and from much conversation with them on this subject, that there are many children whose existence is undesigned by their fathers and undesired by their mothers. Yet among those heterogeneous and unnatural combinations called marriages, there is enough love to produce some tolerable specimens of humanity; and when there is any thing remarkable in development, there will be found physiological and psychological conditions sufficient to produce it.

“No words can express the helplessness, the sense of personal desecration, the despair, which sinks into the heart of woman when forced to submit to maternity under adverse circumstances, and when her own soul rejects it. It is no matter of wonder that abortions are purposely procured; it is to me a matter of wonder that a single child, undesignedly begotten and reluctantly conceived, is ever suffered to mature in the organism of the mother. Her whole nature repels it. How can she regard its ante-natal development but with sorrow and shrinking?

“Sensitive as woman ever is at such periods, she rarely meets with any special consideration; indeed, that very situation is too often made the occasion for increased passional indulgence on the part of the husband, or of neglect and contempt. Woman must have had, doubtless has, a very large amount of what you call the God-element in her nature, to enable her to do as well as she does in the function of Maternity, under such debasing and depressing influences.

“The strength and energy of body and mind which were required properly to develop and give birth to one child, have been often taxed to conceive and develop six or eight, or perhaps ten or twelve. Would it not be well to study economy in the function of Parentage, as well as in some other departments of domestic life?

“There are few, very few, wives and mothers who could not reveal a sad, dark picture in their own experience, in their relations to their husbands and their children. Maternity, and the relation in which it originates, are thrust upon them by their husbands, often without regard to their spiritual or physical conditions, and often in contempt of their earnest and urgent entreaties. No joy comes to their hearts at the conception and birth of their children, except that which arises from the consciousness that they have survived the sufferings wantonly and selfishly inflicted on them.

“There are facts enough illustrating the dire effects of an undesigned and an undesired maternity to move the whole earth to sorrow and repentance, if woman, as a wife and mother, dared give utterance to the wrongs inflicted upon her and her children. The living illustrations of woman’s wrongs, inflicted on her in the holy of holies of her home, by those who had promised to ‘love, cherish and protect’ her, do now fill the earth. To the influences bearing on the unborn babe, in consequence of the disregard, by the husband, of the conditions and wishes of the wife in reference to maternity, and the intercourse that leads to it, must we go to learn the causes of much of the wrong and suffering of this world.”

When woman’s rights in regard to Maternity, and to the relation that leads to it, are truly understood and appreciated by man, then, and not before, can marriage become what it was designed to be,—a diadem of beauty, a crown of glory, to the husband and wife, and “the power of God and the wisdom of God” unto salvation to the generations of the future. Husbands! if you would secure the loving respect of your wives, you must reverently regard their protest against an undesired Maternity.