Radiant Motherhood

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hough the payment of the price exacted may be long deferred or may be made in suc

as none in the world are so great as lovers, the price exacted by Natur

s is mysteriously intermingled with self-sacrifice. A young woman whose character is sufficiently beautiful and sensitive to know the highest joys of motherhood-the full delights of human existence and love-will also be s

sfigured saint, hallowed by suffering comprehended and endured, tr

with each other. One can scarcely believe that they are conscious of the resulting parenthood which will become a physical fact at a later date, although the training of her cubs by a woodland mother undoubtedly does include handing on, through some speechless communication, of some actual instruction. A similar blind parenthood, but in addition coerced, has for many thousands of years been characteristic of a large portion of the human race. Even to-day motherhood is

highest forms of civilization ever attained) and still infanticide direct or indirect goes on among all the populous races of the world. Where the value placed on the mother's mental and physical suffering is low, one may still see mot

erhood. The use of the word is just, and based on truths too generally concealed by those who know them, and far too generally unknown by thos

fitted for motherhood than the majority of women are to-day. Following biblical tradition, the memory of the agony of birth is generally portrayed as being wiped out by the supreme joy in the child which follows. To-day, however, this effacement of the anguish is by no means universal, and the abiding horror

way of bone through which the infant has to pass is but three or four inches in diameter. It would have been possible had our evolution taken a different turn for the infant to have made its exit through the soft wall of the mother's body instead of through this fixed and hardened circle of her bone. But for some causes too remote for us at present to discover this was not so, and the essential fact faces us to-day that every infant born naturally must be born through this circle of bone. Moreover if the infant is a well

th for every 250 children born alive. In addition to this we have to remember that the same accidents and diseases w

journey through the bony archway into the outer world so difficult and arduous a task that they perish in the process of

e earlier months in its conscious memory as it grows up, but the excessive moulding, particularly of its head, which often has to take place

at present doing, ever depending more and more on our brains, and the head of the new born infant tends to increase with the natural development of the brain, the day will come when the birth of a child is absolutely blocked by the relative diameter of its head and of its mother's pelvic bones. If the higher races maintain a dominant place in the world, the day may come when with nearly all women such an incompatible relation will arise. Of what avail then would be the ratings and pee

ratively easily to pass through it, and the difficulty and danger of birth for them is minimized. With them the birth pangs may be

pulse should encourage to be the mothers of the large families, which ar

d would-be mothers would gladly reach were it possible in any degree to control the formation of a

r any one and with no pain to myself. This little party has grown into a splendid specimen, very large (h

t be done by science to discover what are the causes of the r

dividual formation of the growing structure, with a view possibly to securing some such development. In recent years, however, a little has been done in the recognition of the causes of the converse, that is to say the excessi

n comes for motherhood, the birth of a living child may be impossible by the ordinary processes of Nature. Here again, as so often is inevitable, in the course of any consideration of the profound truths of mated

ty. It is this standard, this ideal picture, which may yet be reproduced in the lives of millions, which I desire to present in this book, so that in telling young married people some of the great facts which are ahead of them I will present only those difficulties which are inevitable, and leave to others the handling of disease. As

ed that it may be hard indeed for her not to cry out in her bewildered pain. How much of this distress and pain is essentially "natural," how much is the artificial result of our mode of living and our ignorance of Nature's laws? What are the things which a healthy, finely-built young woman mated to a healthy young man must endure, those experiences w

essentials in a way which will truly help the healthy and sensitive type of young people. The healthy, normal and happy in my mind's vision are the standard of the race: those who to-day to some extent foreshadow the strength and beauty of bodily and mental equipment which will become a commonplace wh

ts or innuendos dealing with illness and handicaps, with abnormal conditions which should never arise, and the knowledge of which should not be brought before the sensitive mind as if they were a usual and general thing. The acquiescence in a low standard of healt

anding and experience in scientific research who have concerned themselves with the problems of the healthy and beautiful, and with the needs and requirements in the way of instruction and outward conditions and environment of those who by nature are healthy and normal, and who desire to remain healt

desire to create further beautiful and happy lives, it seems indeed an ironic and wanton mistake that there should be distressing physical experiences for both of them to endure. But "As gold is tried by the fire, so the heart is tried by pain," and if they are giv