and
opportunity, but many would not be wise mothers under any circumstances
or with any amount of help, because they are weak in character and are
incapable of child-training. Now, the problem of saving the child is
quite a different one in these opposite cases: in the one instance
everything ought to be done to keep the child with its mother, in the
other the one safeguard is to keep the child wholly out of the mother's
power._

I state sadly, but without hesitation, and from my own experience, that
in innumerable cases the salvation of the child depends more than
anything else on its complete separation from the mother. I cannot
countenance sentiment that blinds our intelligence. How can it be wise
to recommend in cases where the character of the mother "seems to
warrant a separation," that "periodic visiting by the mother needs to be
fostered."[175:1] Again, what must happen if the baby is in the care of
the trained nurse by day, but at night is given up to the untrained and
often untrainable mother, who goes out to work but returns to the hostel
to sleep?[175:2]

You will tell me the mother wants to have the child. That is right and
good from one point of view--that of the mother; but from the other--the
point of view of the child--it cannot work out well. The child switches
hither and thither between various treatments and quite opposite
influences. And with the child's terrible candor it shows the hurt it is
suffering and says always, in effect, though not in words, "I wish you
would all agree as to how you want me to grow up."

I may state the question in this way: _Do we want the child to grow up
like its mother or do we want to save it from being like her?_

To answer this simple question will help us more than at first we may
see. Frankly, our confusion here in fixing what we want is the cause
which, in my opinion, more than anything else must bring failure to what
is being done, and being proposed to be done, to help the illegitimately
born child. Our sentiment causes us to confuse what is good for the
mother with what is good for the child, and, because of this, we are
failing to grapple with the most warring element in the whole difficult
problem of saving the child; we shall have to face and deal successfully
with this certain fact of the very common unfitness of the unmarried
mother, before we can do the one simple and right thing and prevent the
child from having to pay the penalty of its parents' i