Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1897-05-31

ssNever fear that the granting of
any right would ever make good
women love their children or their
homes less. The mother love is the
beginning and the root of all love.
The first faint indications of mother
love began low down in the animal
creation, when the offspring first
needed care. Whenever in nature
there is a period of helpless infancy,
there is found the corresponding
mother love and mother care to pro-
vide for it, Father love appears
much later. The first real attention
bald by the father in nature to his
offspring is at the point where he eats
it. With the single exception of the
birds, father love below the grade of
man is almost unknown. But mother
love begins with the need for it, and
continues on up through the stages
of animal life, until it reaches it's eli
max in civilized life today; and we
believe that the possession of politi-
eal rights and the exercise of public
duties will be the legitimate outcome
bf the evolution of mother love.
The higher the type, the more pro-
longed is the period of adolescence.
The brute mother protects her young
for a few months, then forgets 1t.
The savage mother cares for her
child as long as it is helpless, but with
Its entry into the tribe she loses it.
The half civilized mother of the East
lives up her boy when he is seven,
and he goes to the mems apartments.
In Germany, where woman's progress
educationally and politically is ad-
mittedly behind that of other civillz-
ed nations, the mothers authority
almost ceases when her son enters
school. In America, tie mothers
care and love reach far out into the
adult life of her sons and daughters.
The educated mother is the care
taker of infancy, the teacher of youth,
and the guide of young manhood and
womanhood. If these various facts
mean anything, they mean that
mother love and mother care are sub
iect to laws of change and growth;
that the ideal mother of the twenti-
eth century will differ from the ideal
mother of the nineteenth, as she in
turn differs from the ideal mother of
the eighteenth. What would the per-
feet minister of 1896 or 1896, do in
pulpit of 1896? Would he please his
parishioners? What would king of
the seventeenth or eighteenth CEN
tury do on a nineteenth century
throne? Put an eighteenth century
housewife and mother, with her
thrifty management of an old-fas
toned household, her spinning wheel
and loom, her belief in the efficacy of
the rod, and her narrow educational
horizon, bounded by the Bible, Bax-
ter's ''Saint's Rest" and "Pilgrim's
Progress, put such mother into
modern furnace heated, electric
lighted house, with a husband and
children of today, and what would
happen? She would not fit, would
she? She was none the less an ad-
mirable figure in her own environ
ment, none the less an ideal mother
of her own time. But this is pro-
gressive age, and a changeful one,
and however much the conservative
element may deplore the fact, the
type of our woman has changed, and
will continue to change, and as she
comes to occupy that position of
EQUALITY with man, which Christiani-
ty is bringing her to demand, there
will be so much the swifter progress
towards the higher development of
the human family.