Womans Profession As Mother And Educator PDF Download

The object of the following pages is to present the subject of woman's profession as mother and chief educator of our race in connection with the present demand that she shall also assume the responsibilities of civil government. However great or small may be the probabilities as to the imposition of woman suffrage, it is certain that there is just cause for alarm at organizations all over the land sending out women of talents and benevolence to lecture, and scattering tracts and newspapers by hundreds of thousands, advocating principles and measures destructive both to the purity and the perpetuity of the family state. This little volume consists of unpublished addresses--all but the first--to meetings of ladies only, and its design is to meet the false principles and false reasonings on the subject of "woman's rights" now working extensive evils that are little realized. It is offered with the deep conviction that an important crisis in our national history is impending, and that it is the intelligent and conscientious women of our country who eventually will decide whether the result shall be beneficial or most disastrous. As the daughter and sister of nine ministers of Jesus Christ you will allow me to address you by those endeared names; and also because there is an emergency that demands unusual measures. This woman movement is one which is uniting by co-operating influences, all the antagonisms that are warring on the family state. Spiritualism, free-love, free divorce, the vicious indulgences consequent on unregulated civilization, the worldliness which tempts men and women to avoid large families, often by sinful methods, thus making the ignorant masses the chief supply of the future ruling majorities; and most powerful of all, the feeble constitution and poor health of women, causing them to dread maternity as--what it is fast becoming--an accumulation of mental and bodily tortures. Add to this, that extreme fastidiousness which not only excludes needful instruction from the pulpit, but makes mothers shrink from learning and teaching those dangers which their daughters most need to know, and prevents medical men and even women physicians from uttering needful warnings. I once said to a lady physician with an enormous practice, in reply to some of her statements, "why do you not call the mothers of this city together and tell them all this?" She replied "it is impossible--they would not hear me--I should have to nail the doors and windows to keep them--and if they did hear, they would not believe." It is the women teachers of our common schools who must be instructed to become lecturers on health in all our school districts and teach mothers how to instruct children in all the laws of health and the dreadful penalties which in certain directions are but little known and now threaten the ruin of the rising generation. There is no duty more difficult than this; for it is one which if done properly saves from danger, and if improperly leads to it. If the clergy of this nation will give their powerful influence to promote the aims of this work in modes they will more wisely devise than I can suggest, success will be ensured; and to them I appeal (as I used to do to a beloved father and as I often do to dear brothers,) to help me where my own strength and courage fail. With christian love and respect, Yours truly, Catharine E. Beecher