p. 300 | Babies' Rights by Nellie Burns

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 15, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 19.

Babies' Rights.

By Nellie Burns

I CHANCED to call at the house of a lady recently who had just been elected as a delegate to a woman's rights convention. She is an earnest advocate of securing to women their denied political rights, and was very enthusiastic in her conversation on the subject on that occasion. While she descanted freely on her favorite theme, on the coming convention and the work she proposed doing, there came frequently to her parlor the sound of a baby's cry. At last my mother-heart could no longer silently endure this infantile wail, so I asked the lady if the voice we heard was not that of her baby. She said it was; that the baby had taken cold, and was feeling a little cross, but that her nurse would give her the best of care.

She then told me how fortunate she had been in securing the services of a good, respectable girl to take care of her baby. After her trying experiences with different nurses, she considered this a rare good fortune, and she could now give more time to her social duties and pleasures. She spoke also of the sacrifices of social pleasures she had been compelled to make on account of the inefficient help she had had in the care of her baby.

As she sat talking in a most complacent manner, the continued fretting of the baby was constantly heard, and there arose in my heart a strong protest against baby wrongs, and I went away in deep sympathy, not with woman's rights, but with the rights of babies.

This lady was the mother of five children, and she was a comparative stranger to every one of them. As soon as they were old enough to leave the nursery, they spent most of their time on the street. The mother did not interest herself in them sufficiently to learn how or where they spent their time, and those she had hired to take charge of them were glad to get rid of them, and did not care much where they went. The husband of this lady was a wealthy banker, and their home was furnished with all the comforts and luxuries that his means warranted; and yet I had a far deeper feeling of pity for their children than I had for those in humble homes, who came directly under their mother's loving care and guidance.

Alas! I thought, how many babies in wealthy homes all over our land are thrust into the care of strangers, and become practically motherless? Would there not be less need of so much work in the various moral reforms, if mothers could be induced to fit themselves for the work, and then take the early training of their children into their own hands, and so form their characters in the start that they will not need to be reformed in after years? The seeds of many of these evils are sown in childhood, and even in babyhood, and nothing short of a mother's love and a mother's watchful care can throw around the child the proper influences, and rightly aid in moulding its earliest impressions.

It must be remembered that at its birth the child knows absolutely nothing. Its own mother is no more to it than any one else, and it would just as willingly become the child of any other woman as its natural mother. On its first feeling of discomfort it begins to cry. Some one comes to its rescue, and it is quieted. As its cries are repeated again and again, and the same one comes to its relief, that face becomes familiar, and it very soon singles it out as the one to whom it must look for solace in all times of need or grief. The baby heart very early goes out to the one who watches over it and attends to its wants, and no one is worthy to fill the position of a mother who does not sufficiently prize her baby's earliest affections to be willing to do the work necessary for winning it. It is a sad fact that so many mothers fail to appreciate the importance of giving their own society to their little ones, of training the young minds themselves, of caring for them and attending to their wants with their own hands. These are sacred duties devolving upon every mother, and to the true mother they are sacred privileges. They are the only means of securing the perfect love of the child, and serve to increase and strengthen her own love for it. In order to rid herself of the burden of care and be free to enjoy the pleasures of a society life, many a mother places her baby in the care of a nurse, often an inexperienced and careless young girl, and thus eases her conscience with the thought that, though she is absent from it most of the time, it is not neglected. Is it any wonder that, as the child grows older, a feeling of estrangement often exists between them, and the mother is made to feel that her child does not love her as it ought? How can she expect it to love her? What has she done to deserve, much less to win its love?

There is wisely implanted in the heart of the mother a natural love for her offspring from its very birth, a love given expressly to invite her to care for and protect it, and designed to be matured and strengthened, instead of dwarfed and suppressed. But it must be remembered that there is no natural love toward the mother on the child's part. She has got to win its love, or else never possess it. True, as the child grows older, he may receive a theoretical idea of what his duty to his parents demands of him, and there may be an outward show of such a feeling, but it does not spring from a genuine affection of the heart.

As the youth approaches early manhood, how many a mother discovers in wonder and grief that she is fast losing her control and influence over him, and learns all too late that at this period of his life the power of love is the "one thing needful," to aid her in guiding his feet in the pathway of virtue, and in keeping him from entering the many by-ways of vice.

The question is frequently asked, why so many of our greatest and best men rise from homes of poverty. I think no small portion of the secret lies in the fact that in such homes the mother has full charge of her children, and they are watched over and cared for by one who has the deepest interest in their welfare. Could that feeling of love and sympathy, so strongly characterizing the relation between President Garfield and his mother, have ever existed had she not by being his earliest companion and tenderly caring for him her own self won his entire heart while it was tender and impressible? And then, with a true mother's spirit of devotion and self-sacrifice, she retained it through all the years of his matured manhood. Many great men have ascribed their success in life to their mother's influence; but they had mothers who patiently and willingly toiled in their behalf in order to secure that influence which they afterwards so judiciously used in advancing their interests.

To the young mother who has been raised in luxury and entirely unaccustomed to work, the care of her baby may seem a task greater than she is able to perform. But let her remember that "love lightens labor," and the good result of her self-sacrificing work, and the rich harvest she shall reap by-and-by, may be far greater and richer than she would now dare to hope. Besides, her reward will not all be reserved for the future. The true mother finds an enjoyment in the presence and care of her little one, in listening to its baby prattle, in watching the strengthening of its tiny limbs and the unfolding of its mind, in hearing its first attempts at speech, in the vain effort to utter the name of mamma, that none but a mother can ever know. And as she so often bends over the helpless form, and looks down into the wandering, innocent eyes, how many lessons of forbearance, of patience, and child-like confidence are implanted in her own breast—just the requirements needed in the development of her noblest womanhood.

All the other work pertaining to the household may be trusted to the care of servants. But the mother of the baby should regard the work of supplying its wants, of studying its nature, of directing the earliest developments of its mind in the proper channel, of shielding it from all hurtful influences, and, through loving attention, of drawing out the baby affections and binding its little heart to hers, as a welcome duty—a prerogative exclusively her own.