PREPARATION FOR MATERNITY.
1. WOMAN BEFORE MARRIAGE.—It is not too much to say that the life
of women before marriage ought to be adjusted with more reference to
their duties as mothers than to any other one earthly object. It is
the continuance of the race which is the chief purpose of marriage. The passion of amativeness is probably, on the whole, the most powerful of all human impulses. Its purpose, however, is rather to subserve the object of continuing the species, than merely its own gratification.
2. EXERCISE.—Girls should be brought up to live much in the open air, always with abundant clothing against wet and cold. They should be encouraged to take much active exercise; as much, if they; want to, as boys. It is as good for little girls to run and jump, to ramble in the woods, to go boating, to ride and drive, to play and "have fun" generally, as for little boys.
3. PRESERVE THE SIGHT.—Children should be carefully prevented from
using their eyes to read or write, or in any equivalent exertion, either before breakfast, by dim daylight, or by artificial light. Even school studies should be such that they can be dealt with by daylight. Lessons that cannot be learned without lamp-light study are almost certainly excessive. This precaution should ordinarily be maintained until the age of puberty is reached.
4. BATHING.—Bathing should be enforced according to constitutions, not by an invariable rule, except the invariable rule of keeping clean. Not necessarily every day, nor necessarily in cold water; though those conditions are doubtless often right in case of abundant physical health and strength.
5. WRONG HABITS.—The habit of daily natural evacuations should be
solicitously formed and maintained. Words or figures could never
express the discomforts and wretchedness which wrong habits in this
particular have locked down upon innumerable women for years and even
for life.
6. DRESS.—Dress should be warm, loose, comely, and modest rather than
showy; but it should be good enough to Satisfy a child's desires after
a good appearance, if they are reasonable. Children, indeed, should
have all their reasonable desires granted as far as possible; for
nothing makes them reasonable so rapidly and so surely as to treat
them reasonably.
7. TIGHT LACING.—Great harm is often done to maidens for want of
knowledge in them, or wisdom and care in their parents. The extremes
of fashions are very prone to violate not only taste, but physiology. Such cases are tight lacing, low necked dresses, thin shoes, heavy skirts. And yet, if the ladies only knew, the most attractive costumes are not the extremes of fashion, but those which conform to fashion enough to avoid oddity, which preserve decorum and healthfulness, whether or no; and here is the great secret of successful dress—vary fashion so as to suit the style of the individual.
8. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE.—Last of all, parental care in the use
of whatever influence can be exerted in the matter of courtship and
marriage. Maidens, as well as youths, must, after all, choose for
themselves. It is their own lives which they take in their hands
as they enter the marriage state, and not their parents; and as the
consequences affect them primarily it is the plainest justice that
with the responsibility should be joined the right of choice. The
parental influence, then, must be indirect and advisory. Indirect, through the whole bringing up of their daughter; for if they have trained her aright, she will be incapable of enduring a fool, still more a knave.
9. A YOUNG WOMAN AND A YOUNG MAN HAD BETTER NOT BE ALONE TOGETHER VERY
MUCH UNTIL THEY ARE MARRIED.—This will be found to prevent a good
many troubles. It is not meant to imply that either sex, or any member
of it, is worse than another, or bad at all, or anything but human. It
is simply the prescription of a safe general rule. It is no more an
imputation than the rule that people had better not be left without
oversight in presence of large sums of other folks' money. The close
personal proximity of the sexes is greatly undesirable before
marriage. Kisses and caresses are most properly the monopoly of wives. Such indulgences have a direct and powerful physiological effect. Nay, they often lead to the most fatal results.