Health Through Will Power

Some rather carefully made statistics demonstrate that the old tradition in the matter is not merely an impression but a veritable truth as to human nature's reaction to a great natural call. While the mothers of large families born in the slums with all the handicaps of poverty as well as hard work against them, die on the average much younger than the generality of women in the population, careful study of the admirable vital statistics of New South Wales show that the mothers who lived longest were those who under reasonably good conditions bore from five to seven children. Here in America, a study of more favored families shows that the healthiest children come from the large families, and it is in the small families particularly that the delicate, neurotic and generally weakly children are found. Alexander Graham Bell, in his investigation of the Hyde family here in America, discovered that it was in the families of ten or more children that the greatest longevity occurred. So far from mothers being exhausted by the number of children that were born, and thus endowing their children with less vitality than if they had fewer children, it was to the numerous offspring that the highest vitality and physical fitness were given. One special consequence of these is longevity.

In a word, the dread so commonly fostered that the mothers of large families will weaken themselves in the process of child-bearing and unfortunately pass on to their offspring weakling natures by the very fact that they have to repeat the process of giving life and nourishment to them at comparatively short intervals, is as groundless as other dreads, for exactly the opposite is true. It is when nature is called upon to exert her amplest power that she responds most bountifully and dowers both children and mother with better health in return.

Something of the same thing is true with regard to the age of mothers when their children are born. The infant mortality is lowest among the children of young mothers between twenty and twenty-five years of age, though it has been found out that "delay in child-bearing after that age penalizes the children." This is, of course, true particularly for first children. The successive children of young mothers are known by observation and statistics as being constantly in better condition up to the seventh. There is on the average nearly a half a pound difference in weight at birth between succeeding children of the same mother, so that each infant is born sturdier and more vigorous than its predecessor.

These recently collated facts remove entirely the supposed foundations of a series of dreads which were having an unfortunate effect upon our population, for the natives were disappearing before the foreigners because of the higher birth rate among the latter. Birth control has been producing a set of unfortunate conditions for both mothers and children. The one child in the family is sure to be spoiled, not only as a social being but often as regards health, and conditions are scarcely better when there are but two, especially if they are of opposite sexes. If anything happens to them, the mother has nothing to live for, and a little later in life the selfish beings that have been raised under the self-centered conditions of a small family are almost sure to be a source of anxiety and worry. Many a woman owes the valetudinarianism of her later years to the fact that she dreaded maternal obligations and avoided them, and so the latter part of her life is empty of most of what makes life worth living.

The will to make life useful for others rather than to follow a selfish, comfortable, easy existence is the secret of health and happiness for a great many women who are almost invalids or at least constantly complaining in the midst of idle lives. A woman who has nothing better to occupy her time than the care of a dog or two cannot expect to have any interests deep enough to divert her attention from the pains and aches of life that are more or less inevitable. The opportunity to dwell on them will heighten their intensity until they are almost torments. Many more of the feminine ills can be explained in this way than by learned pathological disquisitions. Every physician has seen the bitterest complaints disappear before some change of life that necessitated occupation and gave the patient other things to think about besides self.

The will to face nature's obligations of maternity straightforwardly is probably the greatest preventive against the psycho-neuroses that prove so seriously disturbing to a great many women. Their affections, given a proper opportunity to develop, impel their wills to such activity as prevents the development of morbid states. The dreads for themselves and their children, which so often make the excuse for a different policy in life than this, have proved unfounded on more careful study. Now that war activities no longer call women, it must not be forgotten that home duties are the only ones that can serve as a universal antidote for the poison of self-indulgence, which is much more productive of symptoms of disease than the autointoxications of which we have heard so much, but for which there is so little justification in our advancing science. The assumption of serious duties is the best possible panacea for the ills of mankind as well as womankind, only unfortunately in recent years women have succeeded in shirking duties more and have paid the inevitable price which nature always demands under such circumstances, when the dissatisfaction in life is much harder to bear than the work and trials involved in the pursuit of duty.