The injustice done children by the selfishness of fathers who smoke
cigars or pipes, for instance, is one that injures the health of children
permanently. Yet men scarcely permit this habit to be criticised,
but the nervous wives and mothers of this land are its victims, and
every honest physician, admits this truth. Every child is entitled to
nature's first food, pure air; yet this most essential of all rights is often
denied them. Ev^ery child is entitled to a clean body, and yet how
few of the children in the world to-day are kept neat and clean any
portion of the time ! Every child born into this world is entitled to
decent rearing. Only cowards and moral delinquents shirk so grave
a subject. The heathen nations cared for, and do now care for, their
young more reasonably than do the people of Christian countries. As
a rule, men, even those of the most extensive culture, are wholly un-
educated on the physiological questions relating to parentage. They
are the authors of the existence of children utterly unfit to live often-
times. One of the most celebrated divines of his denomination in
the United States has an idiot child, and has been heard repeatedly
DUTY OF PARENTS TO CHILDREN. 363
to allude to it as proof of God's love to him, since " God loveth whom
he chasteneth." Strange to say, no one has ever rebuked him pub-
licly for such blasphemy. A man who knows no more than he of
the laws governing procreation should be driven from his post of
public teacher. He is makijig God responsible for his own errors,
and then strengthening his position with Scriptural quotations.
Children who grow up to adult years only to turn and rend the
hearts of their parents are unanimously condemned, yet the real cause
of their course may be found to be due to conditions under which
they were conceived and brought into the world. If children are un-
welcome arrivals in their parents' house, if the expense of their main-
tenance is a cross, and their presence a drawback to the comfort and
well-being of others there, is it not to be anticipated that they will
have inbred in the fibres of their being the murder, revenge, hatred
and contempt which, while lying dormant for years, may break out
at an unexpected moment ? It is a well-nigh hopeless task to plead
for justice to children while motherhood is treated in the unholy
manner it is. The question of justice to children comprehends justice
to mothers, and until the latter is secured, the first need not be an-
ticipated ; it is out of the question. There is much said about women
having the training and moulding of children in their own hands. It
is not the truth so long as they have not yet as individuals nor as a
sex learned the first and inalienable right of maternity.
Page 238
Presented as published in 1883. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
AI-modernized reading of the original text
The injustice done children by the selfishness of fathers who smoke cigars or pipes, for instance, is one that injures the health of children permanently. Yet men scarcely permit this habit to be criticised, but the nervous wives and mothers of this land are its victims, and every honest physician, admits this truth. Every child is entitled to nature's first food, pure air; yet this most essential of all rights is often denied them. Every child is entitled to a clean body, and yet how few of the children in the world to-day are kept neat and clean any portion of the time ! Every child born into this world is entitled to decent rearing. Only cowards and moral delinquents shirk so grave a subject. The heathen nations cared for, and do now care for, their young more reasonably than do the people of Christian countries. As a rule, men, even those of the most extensive culture, are wholly uneducated on the physiological questions relating to parentage. They are the authors of the existence of children utterly unfit to live oftentimes. One of the most celebrated divines of his denomination in the United States has an idiot child, and has been heard repeatedly
to allude to it as proof of God's love to him, since " God loveth whom he chasteneth." Strange to say, no one has ever rebuked him publicly for such blasphemy. A man who knows no more than he of the laws governing procreation should be driven from his post of public teacher. He is making God responsible for his own errors, and then strengthening his position with Scriptural quotations.
Children who grow up to adult years only to turn and rend the hearts of their parents are unanimously condemned, yet the real cause of their course may be found to be due to conditions under which they were conceived and brought into the world. If children are unwelcome arrivals in their parents' house, if the expense of their maintenance is a cross, and their presence a drawback to the comfort and well-being of others there, is it not to be anticipated that they will have inbred in the fibres of their being the murder, revenge, hatred and contempt which, while lying dormant for years, may break out at an unexpected moment ? It is a well-nigh hopeless task to plead for justice to children while motherhood is treated in the unholy manner it is. The question of justice to children comprehends justice to mothers, and until the latter is secured, the first need not be anticipated ; it is out of the question. There is much said about women having the training and moulding of children in their own hands. It is not the truth so long as they have not yet as individuals nor as a sex learned the first and inalienable right of maternity.