THE 96-HOUR MOTHER
By HONOR CROOME
AS I write, Two Months sleeps in his pram, Not Quite Three mauls some plasticine on the porch, Seven plays with her gang in the garden, and Ten is, I hope, enjoying camp—at a safe distance. Beside me, here in Ottawa, lies The Spectator, dated June 18th, displaying the latest batch of opinions on the Population Problem.
A problem, indeed, thinks this erstwhile economist and currently single-handed housewife. On few issues do the immediate comfort and pleasure of the individual and the long-run interests of public and individual alike meet so devastatingly head-on. Practically every woman wants a child, most want a family of children ; but the personal price of a real family is certainly very high. There is little to add on behalf of the " educated " classes (whose habits have some importance as setting a standard for others) to an admirable letter in that Spectator. " At present," affirms the writer, " the well-to-do woman . . . leads the life of a working woman . . . a ninety- *" In spite of the fact that many military experts testified to the adequacy of Russian equipment and military organisation, the prestige of the Soviet Union as a Power on which the Western Democracies could confidently rely in case of aggression on the part of Germany continued to fall rapidly during 1938. This was due to the uninterrupted purges going on in Soviet Russia and affecting very large numbers of the highest military officers."—The Annual Register for 1938.
six-hour-week," she says. We know it. And we gain a new respect for the labourer's wife, the small farmer's wife and others who have always had to contend with this toil as well as with small resources, and particularly for those who raise sizeable families not by accident but by choice.
There, from the public point of view, is the rub. Nature's im- memorial stand-by, the unwanted child, is on the way out, and no one wants to go back to conscription for cradles. But the volunteer level is too low. The statistics do not, superficially, look too bad. Population still rises, the birth-rate is actually up. But consider. We women between eighteen and forty-five are, to put it crudely, the nation's brood-stock, the biggest brood-stock in English history. The size of that stock and its fertility fix the current birth-rate ; the size and fertility of the stock immediately replacing it, the birth-rate of the immediate future. Now we bear fewer children, for -all our numbers, than the smaller brood-stock of twenty years ago ; twenty years hence most of us will no longer qualify, and how many daughters will succeed us? As things now go, higher birth- rate and all, nearly a quarter less. We shall still be alive, playing some other part and keeping up the population totals ; but another twenty years will see us doddering old pensioners, lovable old characters 'perhaps, but not of much practical use ; and the brood- stock will be down anoth'er quarter or so ; and as we die off it will, belatedly, become clear that England, which seemed so full, is emptying.
Well, why not? -Why not the smaller towns, the uncrowded countryside, the population, say, of the mid-eighteenth century? Because we do not want to go back to eighteenth-century standards ; even present standards are, for shockingly large numbers, shockingly low ; and the standard of modern amenities (water h. and c., good cheap clothes and shoes, wholesome and varied food) is only made possible by modem industry, based on the big market and all the permutations of skill available in a big community. New techniques may alter this dependence of standards on numbers ; but one can hardly gamble on that. Nor do lesser numbers cure unemploy- ment ; wise economic policy has a good chance of doing so, but a shrinking population, fewer mouths to feed, fewer backs to clothe, an older, less adaptable labour force, will only make its job harder. We cannot sit back and say " Fewer babies? A good thing, too! "
Which brings us back to the harassed mother with her ninety-six- hour-week. It all rests on her shoulders—our shoulders. Assuming (large assumption) that the actual financial deterrents are mitigated, what about the personal ones? 0 for a little less work, a little, just a little, freedom! Architects and industrialists can lessen work ; the ideal owner-driver house, centrally heated by oil or electricity, with constant hot water, convenient and adaptable lay-out, ample cupboard-space, may be only a post-war dream now ; but let the growing family be remembered when rebuilding begins. The magician electricity and the use of imaginative intelligence in every- day design can enormously reduce chores. But no architect or inventor can change a wet baby or keep a toddler amused by remote control. If we mothers are to have even a relic of the freedom which we have learned to value, we must look -elsewhere. From North America, where domestic help proper has long been in the Rolls-Royce luxury class, we might borrow that useful institution the " sitter," the sensible secondary schoolgirl or older woman who, for occasional pin-money, will take charge for the evening. There are nursery schools—let them be universally available ; and let us, please, have a fetch-and-carry service for them when peace and petrol return. There are the holiday camps for older children, so universal in the United States and Canada, so unknown in England. Most modern communities provide about as much facility for the rearing of children as a boiler-plate factory for the painting of miniatures ; but need it be so?
To ask for such changes shows no levity towards parental duties, no wish to eat one's cake and have it too. We ask for them not that we may be virtual bachelors again ; only that we may (to the benefit of our children and society as well as ourselves) carry- out our fascinating, exacting and vital task to the full without entirely sacrificing the distinctive qualities of civilisation.
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