Zoo, whose twelfth and thirteenth infants
were only the other day condemned to follow their brothers and sisters
to an early grave through their parents'--and especially their
mother's--gross stupidity about their bringing-up and welfare. And we
who are human animals, given by God conscious souls, ought to realise
the fact that civilisation and pampered environment have enormously
blunted our natural instincts in this respect, just as they have
Barbara's, and so we should try to restore the loss by consciously
cultivating our understanding of the subject and deliberately
realising the tremendous responsibilities we incur by bringing
children into the world. When we think about the matter quietly, the
magnitude of it is almost overwhelming, and yet there are hundreds and
thousands of women who never give it a serious thought! They have some
vague idea that to have children is the inevitable result of
matrimony, and that if they pay others to feed and clothe the little
creatures, and give them some instruction in the way that they should
go, their own part of the affair is finished. That, until a child is
grown to an age to judge for itself, the parents will be held
responsible for their stewardship of its body and soul at the great
tribunal of God does not strike them, and it is only perhaps when the
boomerang of their neglect has returned to them and blasted them with
calamity that they become conscious of their past negligence.

In this article I do not propose to touch upon the father's side of
the question, important as it is, but shall confine myself to the
mother's, because this has always been one of my deep preoccupations
to think out the meaning of it all, and how best to fulfil the trust.
Obviously the sole aim of true motherhood is the moral and physical
welfare of the child, and to accomplish this end we should understand
that it is quite impossible to lay down any set rule, or go by any
recognised and unchangeable method. For in one age certain precepts
are taught which are obsolete in the next, because science and the
improvement of mechanical aids to well-being advance with such giant
strides. But if we keep _the end_ in view it is simple enough to see
that common sense and discrimination, unclouded by custom or sentiment
or superstition, can accomplish miracles. The circumstances of the
particular case must always govern the method to be used in order to
obtain the same given end, no matter what the stati