CHAPTER XLVII

PRENATAL TRAINING

=One-half trained before birth.=--This chapter will be devoted to the training of children before they are born. It is believed by some students of eugenics that heredity is fully as potent as environment and that a child often receives one-half its training before it is born. Oliver Wendell Holmes often said, “A child’s training should begin with his grand-parents.” The proverb, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it,” to be proven to be absolutely true, must include both prenatal and postnatal training of a child. In other chapters reference is made to what children may inherit from their grand-parents and parents. In this we shall refer to the influence of parental conditions at the creative moment, and the mental and moral influence of the mother during gestation.

=Transmission of acquired characteristics possible.=--The transmission of fixed characteristics is accepted by all. The transmission of acquired characteristics is quite generally accepted. The materialistic student does not accept it, claiming that the only relation between the mother and the child is that of nutrition. We admit that the nervous system of the mother is not connected with the nervous system of the child, but we insist that “the blood is the life.” The mother’s physical, mental and moral life is in her blood. Through her blood the mother furnishes the child not only with air, water and food, but with life. In the chapter, Reproduction and Heredity, we explained how the blood is affected by the transient mental states. Love and anger, joy and fear, grief and jealousy all change the character of the blood and influence the vital energy. The new psychology is rapidly demonstrating that one mind may influence another independent of physical communication. By one or both of these methods, acquired characteristics of the father and mother are transmitted to their children.

=Drs. Fowler and Cowan.=--Fowler says, “All existing parental states are stamped on the offspring.” Dr. John Cowan says, “The fundamental principles of genius in reproduction are that through the rightly directed wills of the father and mother, preceding and during antenatal life, the child’s form of body, character of mind and purity of soul are formed and established. In its plastic state during antenatal life, like clay in the hands of the potter, it can be molded absolutely into any form of body and soul the parents may knowingly desire.”

=An example.=--The origin of the Setter, Pointer, Hound or Shepherd dog will illustrate the transmission of acquired characteristics. The peculiar characteristics of all these dogs were once acquired. For example, some hunter observed that his dog would “set” or “point” when game was located by the sense of smell. This hunter encouraged his dog in the practice of this characteristic. He knew that some of the offspring of this dog would tend to do the same thing. By breeding with a view of developing a variety of dogs with this characteristic we have the Pointer dog.

=The father should co-operate.=--While the father’s direct hereditary influence over his child ceases at conception, his responsibility for what the child receives up to its birth is fully equal to the mother’s responsibility. He can help or hinder the mother in her work of prenatal culture. Where the husband fails to supply his wife with all that is necessary to her health, strength, mental and moral activity, and happiness, he becomes largely responsible for the bad effects on the child.

=The order of training.=--The prenatal culture received by a child grows out of the physical, mental and moral states and activities of the mother during gestation. The physical organism of the child forms first. The brain, in which the mental and moral natures are to reside, develops last. This would indicate the periods when greatest stress should be placed upon the physical, mental and moral training of the child. The physical outlines of the body first become organized during the first four or five months, then the brains and nervous system.

=The mother’s preparation.=--The physical condition of the child at birth, well formed or deformed, healthy or unhealthy, strong or weak, will in no small way be determined by the mother’s being provided with plenty of nutritious food, pure air and water, pleasant exercise, and such clothing as will give the body perfect freedom and comfort. The mental and moral tendencies and capacities of the child will depend much on the mother’s continuing the advice given in the chapter on Parental Preparation.

=Inventive genius.=--During a lecture course in a western city, a young machinist called me into his shop and showed me three inventions he had patented and a most intricate piece of machinery that he was then working on. He was only twenty-two years old. He and his parents had often wondered why he was the only member of the family, on either side, as far back as they could trace, with an inventive turn of mind. Under my lectures the parents had solved the mystery. Ten or twelve months prior to the birth of this young man, the father had worked on a prospect or invention for several weeks with all the enthusiasm of anticipated success. He laid the matter aside and the very fact of his once being interested in an invention had seemed to fade from his memory. The father’s intense mental interest during those weeks so influenced his life-giving blood that he was able to transmit the hereditary gift of inventive genius to his son.

=Two girls.=--I am intimately and personally acquainted with a family where there are two girls. Prior to the birth of the first the mother kept house, did light work, read the best literature and was systematic in her devotion. In case of the second girl, the professional life of the father had changed and this made it necessary for the mother to be guest and hostess of many social functions. The parents had made a study of the laws of heredity and in both cases tried to apply these laws. The children are now thirteen and fifteen. They are obedient, intelligent, and religious, but the different environments of the mother are fully registered in the children. The first has strong business tendencies, is an all-round student, but limited in her social gifts; the second one takes to art, elocution, music, has a fine memory which enables her to advance well in all her studies, and she can entertain anything from a baby to an old man or woman.

=Golden hair.=--In a Missouri town a mother invited me into her husband’s store and gave me her experience. From her early teens she had entertained a wish that should she ever become a mother, her child might have golden hair. When she discovered that she was to be a mother she asked her husband to get her two pictures--one to be the picture of a perfect boy, the other, the picture of a perfect girl, each to have golden hair. While in St. Louis purchasing a stock of goods, he secured the pictures desired. She placed them in her room where she could frequently see and admire them. She called my attention to the dark hair of her husband and self, then, proudly, to the golden hair of a five-year-old son.

=Testimony of a doctor.=--At D----, Mo., an old physician told me of a family in his practice where the wife had been married twice. She and her second husband have black hair. The first child born to the second marriage had red hair. The doctor had a way of accounting for the red hair of the child to me that was not satisfactory. I said, “Doctor, which of the two husbands was the superior?” “Oh,” he said, “there was no comparison, the contrast was so great. The first husband was in every sense a very superior man and the second one was very inferior.” Then I replied, “Prior to the birth of the red-haired child the mental pictures of the two men were constantly in the stream of mental consciousness. The mental picture most conspicuous and most admirable was the first husband.”

=The effects of a mother’s dishonesty.=--I have studied a number of kleptomaniacs. In almost all cases, where facts could be obtained, dishonesty was found in one or both of the parents. I studied a case in a Kentucky town. The mother would sit up until her husband had retired. Then she would slip a small amount of change from his pockets. This was continued during gestation. When the girl, born under these conditions, was eighteen years old, she could not keep from stealing money, jewelry, and other things she desired. She was never arrested. The parents would pay for or return what she had stolen.

=The effects of a mother’s anger.=--While preparing this book for the printers, I am in a Missouri city, where I have become personally acquainted with the following incidents: A wife, thinking she had passed the “change of life,” was much surprised and greatly disappointed when she found she was again to become a mother. Her love for her husband turned to hate. The period of gestation was one of regret, unpleasantness and anger. From birth her child was uncontrollable. Teachers could not manage him. He was a source of danger on the playground. Neighbors would not allow their children to visit him. When he was fourteen he tried to kill his mother with a butcher knife. A year later he assaulted a visiting pastor. When he was angry he would froth at the mouth and scream as a madman.

=A born criminal.=--At the close of a lecture on heredity, a reliable and aged doctor told me the following incident: “When I was a young doctor, a father came for me to call to see a sick member of his family. His little girl met us at the front gate, threw her arms about her father’s legs and looked wistfully into his face. He picked her up in his arms, carried her into the room and while I looked after the patient she caressed and kissed her papa. The brother, some two years older, had found his sister’s paper dolls and was tearing off their heads with a vengeance. Looking up, he noticed the pet cat entering the room. Leaving the mutilated and scattered dolls and seizing a long splinter from the wood box, he caught the cat, and holding it to the floor with his left hand, he tried to cut the cat’s head off with the splinter. Soon the dog entered; releasing the cat, he stood by the side of the cringing dog and was trying to cut his head off. When my services were finished, the father followed me out to the front gate and asked me whether I had noticed the difference in the children. I told him I had. Then he explained that the little girl was wanted in the home and the boy was not. I lived to see that boy sentenced for a term of years in the penitentiary for a crime he had committed.” Many suicidal and homicidal tendencies are received in this way.

=Lasciviousness transmissible.=--No morbid conditions are so fully and generally transmitted as are the results of uncontrolled sexual desire among married people. Most children are the result of uncontrolled desire and their prenatal rights are not respected. This explains much of precocious sex awakening in childhood, the stormy period of adolescence and the fearful wreckage of virtue in youth and middle life. We have inherited from our ancestors and are transmitting sensual tendencies to our children. We can never solve the problems of social vice until the initial of childhood is intelligently planned for, prenatal rights are respected and the child given proper sex instruction.

=We are slow to learn.=--“Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” Even the wisest and best of the human family are slow to learn this truth, and were it not for the consequences of long practiced errors, we should perhaps never learn some truths. We are learning slowly that sexually exhausted fathers and mothers do not parent superior children. This is causing thousands of thinking people and conscientious parents to inquire for the truth that will bring freedom from sensual slavery.

=Sexuality and sensuality.=--Sexuality, or the sexual instinct, is one thing, and sensuality, or sexual perversion, is another. One is God-given and God-honored; the other is a human product resulting from bad heredity, a false education and a misuse of the sexual function. The first is to be appreciated, the second to be suppressed, and, as far as possible, eradicated.

=Vitality determines results.=--Man has a three-fold nature; physical, mental and moral. In this life these natures are related and dependent. The sexual instinct has its seat in the physical nature, but in its functions it is closely related to the mental and moral. Whenever the sexual life is misdirected the mental and moral natures suffer. The sexual nature produces life--physical, mental and moral. It is by restraining this life force, this psychic force, this vital energy, within the body, and learning to direct it properly, that physical health and strength are attained and maintained; that intellectual vigor and brilliancy are realized; and that our emotional nature is developed in its expressions of tender feelings, purest love, truest sympathy, and passionate interest in the welfare of our fellow men. No one can have intellectual and moral development or enjoy a high degree of intellectual and spiritual life, if the sex function is abused. Parents with strong, healthy sexual natures parent the most perfect children.

=Young married people should understand sexology.=--Thousands of young married people have never received any instruction from books, parents or doctors regarding correct sexual relations in the married life. Many of these have learned from sad experience that marriage does not mean unrestricted sexual liberty. Many who have sought the needed information from friends and books have been confused by conflicting opinions.

The husband and wife who desire to be anything, physically, mentally or morally, must retain in their bodies as much as possible their sexual energy. In this is found the elasticity and strength of the muscles, versatility of the mind, strength and vigor of the constitution, which lend an indefinable charm to the masculine and feminine graces.

All sorts of drugs and contrivances have been used by many married people to dodge the natural consequences of the sexual relations. Every attempt of this kind has resulted in some form of physical, mental or moral injury to those who have tried it, and it has strewn their pathway with a horde of physical weaklings and moral degenerates. All preventive and abortive methods, drugs and contrivances cannot be too severely condemned. Legitimate indulgence in the marital relation is allowable only when the act can be made a complete one; when, should conception occur, it would be a welcome result. An occasional union between husband and wife, if prompted by pure love, is not necessarily injurious or morally wrong. But when indulged in, it creates an unnatural desire and substitutes lust for love.

=G. Campbell Morgan= says, “Animalism has been for ages the curse of the marriage relation.” Seventy-five physicians of New York City signed the following statement: “In view of the widespread suffering from physical diseases and moral deterioration inseparable from unchaste living, the undersigned members of New York and vicinity unite in declaring it as our opinion that chastity, a pure and continent life for both sexes, is consistent with the best conditions of mental, physical and moral health.”

=The Wesleyan Methodist= says, “The open and absolute assertion that every wife has the absolute right to determine her relationship to motherhood may make trouble, but it is the kind of trouble which must come in some homes before wifehood becomes anything more than a form of the basest kind of slavery.”

=Dr. Winfield Scott Hall=, in Reproduction and Sexual Hygiene, says, “There is another sacrifice, if it be so called, which the husband is called upon to make during the pregnancy of his wife; namely, to abstain absolutely from sexual intercourse. All other animals observe this period of continence. Nature demands that man observe it. The author submits this question to all fair-minded men; is it not due the wife that she be not asked to satisfy the recurring sexual desires of the husband during the period when her life and its energies are so sacred to the race, to society and to the family? The author submits this question because some men are known to transgress this law of nature.”

=Prof. N. N. Riddell= says, “The present ethics of marriage licenses that which degrades the affections and destroys the possibilities of harmony. The abuse of the generative function is the chief cause of domestic inharmony, divorce and shame, inherited lascivious tendencies and the vices and crime which follow. Three-fourths of the race have their origin in uncontrolled desire, while less than one-half of the remainder are as well-born as they might have been.”

=A suggestion.=--The author would suggest that the reader pause one moment before he criticises or rejects the opinions of the great and godly men. What right has a married man to preach, teach and demand continence among young people, his sons and daughters, if he cannot practice self-restraint on a level with the savage and the lower animals? The violations of the laws of sex are the chief causes of human degeneracy. Where married people have been falsely educated in the idea that marriage means unrestricted indulgence and under this delusion have created unnatural demand, a horde of evils will follow. If this unfortunate class care only for a selfish pleasure, the children will follow each other closely and will receive a poor heredity. If they use preventive means to restrict the size of the family, the few children born into the home will receive an unfortunate heredity. Excess in marriage impoverishes the body, mind and soul and unfits for true parentage. Every device used to prevent conception or to destroy unwelcome life will injure the parents and the occasional accidental and unwelcome child will receive a most unfortunate heredity.

The mental and moral states, as well as the physical condition of the parents, for months before and at the initial moment and during gestation, must necessarily become a part of the child.