Chapter 5
A man does not age as quickly as a woman. At fifty a woman is supposed to be on her decline while a man is in his prime at fifty.
It is a woman's own fault if, at forty the lines in her face turn down and if her hair and teeth are all gone. If she is a "nagger" the reflection will appear in her face. If she has permitted household cares to swamp her, and reflect themselves in her face and body, she has no one to blame but herself.
Many a woman has attracted her husband through her singing, conversation, or other accomplishments and after marriage has permitted these to decline, and has not lived up to the ideal that she gave him before marriage.
A wife should ask herself if she is living up to the ideal she suggested before she married, or if she is a disappointment, before she questions her husband's conduct.
Some wives think that their morality in wifehood is all sufficient. A woman may boast of her "virtue" until doom's day, but "if her soul is small and her heart stingy" her example is not worthy of imitation--for she is only good to herself. She has no way of proving the ownership of the "virtue of virtues." It takes many virtues to make one "good," in the real sense of the word.
A colored wife should not be discontented without good cause nor should she complain of monotony when she may choose so many helpful diversions, and may help to make others happy.
Every colored wife who has not borne children, or a wife who has lost children owes a duty to the children of others.
In fact, these owe a greater debt to posterity than the mother. Such women should not live for themselves alone, lest they canker. Contact with youth infuses youthful thoughts and enthusiasm, and keeps a woman's heart young, and if her heart is young her face will reflect this mental attitude.
There are thousands of children with living mothers who still need "mothering." One may work out her own youth and beauty culture while "mothering" a little one. It is worth a trial as a youth stimulant.
There are four great laws given to a wife:
"Brace up! Brush up! Clean up! Look up!"
The Colored Mother Beautiful.
When a woman enters into the marriage contract--into the partnership of home making--it is understood that parenthood is to be the chief aim and hope.
If a man is good enough to marry and to contribute his support, he is good enough to be a father or else he should not have been selected.
A woman who marries and does not intend to have children is merely an object of convenience who has sold herself.
To assume the position of colored motherhood is the greatest privilege and responsibility that can come to any woman in this age.
The colored mother beautiful carries a heavy burden--the weight of future generations of a handicapped, persecuted people. She may bless or curse each succeeding generation; she may change race history; she may make a more beautiful race with the beauty that comes from beauty of character and right living.
What a privilege to carve the destiny of a race! How glorious to look into the future and see lines of ancestry influenced and advanced by her thought and example, to see her stamp of personality upon a posterity which will point to her in pride and thankfulness!
The time has come when each colored girl must prepare herself for this rare privilege, when she must distribute her powers and talents for race good.
Whatever the colored mother is, millions of colored children will be. A colored mother lives not only for herself and for her own children, but she must live for the race. A colored mother is a success as she measures up to her relation and obligation to the race.
Negro children of all children need mothers who are strong spiritually, physically, and intellectually. Enough colored children have been born under bad or careless conditions. The child born under bad conditions can not be expected to hold his own among other children.
No woman has a right to blight the future of her race. Not even her body may be abused--this beautiful casket--the treasure house of future souls. Any crime that she commits against herself or her body she commits against the race.
Almost any colored mother would lay down her life for her children but she must have a wider vision into the scheme of life and the world, and must deliberately plan to make her grand-children and great grand-children healthier, happier and more useful.
While it is admitted that heredity is not all, yet inherited tendencies have great influence.
The colored mother beautiful must be a living example of all that is progressive. She must study more about the laws of heredity, and child culture to prepare the child for its race battle, unhampered by inherited mental or physical tendencies.
The "gray matter" in the colored woman's head is the same as the gray matter in any woman's head. Through the exercise of will power she may conquer inherited tendencies and even command nature as other women are doing.
There are many books which will guide and instruct a prospective mother who should read and learn all she can on the laws of reproduction. She should absorb this knowledge that she may be able to impart it to less informed women.
The early Romans are said to have surrounded a prospective mother with examples of courage and strength.
The mother of Napoleon is an example of the power of pre-natal direction. She is said to have studied military tactics and to have visited battlefields. The mother of Michael Angelo is said to have watched the painters of pictures in the Cathedral. The result was the greatest artist of the time.
As mental impressions are as active during the night as in the day, no prospective mother should carry unpleasant thoughts to bed. The sub-conscious mind receives the bad thought at bed time and acts all night under this influence. Its forces affect the same as thoughts during the day.
The prospective mother should read good books, think right, live right, and keep a pure mind and heart, thus developing a deeper nature to bequeath.
More than anything else, the prospective colored mother must practice self-control. All worry is poisonous. Strong thoughts of disgust and hatred if not controlled during the pre-natal period are liable to leave disastrous affects. The aim should be to train herself to change any thought which will create a physical disturbance.
Mothers who fail to control their tempers, passions, and indulgences too often weep bitter tears as they see in their off-spring the consequences of their own wrong doing.
Someone has said: "Parents transmit deviltry to children and then punish them for it." Instance after instance of such cruelty could be cited. Why should parents expect their children to be better than they?
Anger causes a chemical change which acts like poison to the system of an adult. It affects the heart, stomach, blood, and nerves and causes many other disturbances.
"Often the unborn child's little organism is flooded with shocks of passion and disturbed by nervous movements which cause unsound mind and body."
Altho inheritance comes from two lines of ancestry, the prospective mother may be able to control and supervise the tendencies from her line. She must do all in her power before the birth of a child to sway it for good. She may then save herself years of worry and sorrow and the race an unworthy example.
Before and after birth the colored mother beautiful will cultivate and give out the best in her. No contrary or selfish thought will be permitted because of the bad effect upon the child. These unpleasant things will enter soon enough into its life. The mother will faithfully endeavor to be an example to her children in thought, poise, speech, personal appearance and in all forms of cleanliness and politeness.
A child's ideal seldom goes higher than that of its mother. Children very accurately reflect the thought of their parents.
How can the child have high ideals and elevating thoughts unless the mother has them?
Taste is said to be a faculty of the soul. The mother bequeaths her taste.
How can the colored mother beautiful expect her children to have habits of observation and appreciation of the beautiful in Nature, Art, Science, Music and Literature, unless the mother has "walked and talked with nature, has heard the tongues in trees and brooks" as Shakespeare has said, and has pointed these out to the child?
If the starlight, the moonlight, the dawn, the sunrise, the sunset, the blue sky, the tranquility of a summer day or the grandeur of a storm have no response in the mother's soul, then how can a child be expected to lift its eyes and see the beautiful everywhere, every day and absorb the benefits from such communion?
The physical feeding of a child occurs but three times a day but the spiritual, mental and moral feeding goes on all the rest of the time. Children should be fed ideals of thought and affection to counteract the evil effect of thoughts of passion.
The colored child should be taught to think and should be given opportunity for a quiet hour for self communion and self entertainment. It should be taught to live a period of solitude so that in after life it may not always be compelled to hunt around for entertainment and excitement.
How can the child be expected to love reading if the mother does not read to it?
How can the child love music if the mother does not play or sing to it or teach it songs?
How many nights are wasted that might be spent in giving colored children ideals of home life and right habits in reading and home study?
Colored children have been left alone too much.
How many of them have a children's hour? How many have been given something to think about? How many spend their spare moments in reading? How many can recite poems or give quotations from the master writers?
The mothers themselves must put some time in exerting their minds in reading and thinking with a view towards mentally improving the next generation. They must observe and note what is passing on in the great world. History is being made every day. How can the child resist the desires of the lower nature when its mother has tantrums? The colored mother must refuse to express passion. A mother can not shame or beat her child into gentle manners when she is rough or coarse.
How can the child be careful and controlled in speech if the mother has not the power of expressing herself in good English. Language is too powerful a weapon in reaching, compelling and swaying the feelings of others and in winning friends--to be neglected.
Children always betray home training. If they have not been trained properly as they are not adepts in dissembling and they reflect their mothers in all their thought, speech and actions.
The mother who is strict in her own conduct and who pays careful attention to the home conduct of her children will seldom be ashamed of their deportment. Good habits may not be assumed at a moment's notice. The good breeding of parents is very truly reflected in the manners of their children.
It is sad to have the children learn the laws of politeness and good breeding outside the home, and to watch them assume that which should be innate.
It is sad to hear little children lie about their home training pretending that "My mother makes me do this or that" when they know that the mother has failed to make a strong point of this particular fault.
It is sadder still to hear colored children say, "I can't." The colored mother should put success in the child's thought and teach it to believe in himself and his race. It is the duty of every mother to preach success and one's duty to aim to excel along all lines.
How can the child be clean and love cleanliness when its mother is habitually untidy and slovenly? The colored mother beautiful would no more exhibit herself unclean than naked. She would no more walk slovenly than to dress slovenly. If a mother wears unclean clothes, has unclean thoughts or unclean manners, her children will reflect her.
How can a child hold her head up and her back straight when her mother slouches around and forgets that her body belongs to God as well as her soul.
The colored mother beautiful makes a point of teaching her child to be true and helpful to the race, and to speak up for the good points and keep silent about the weaknesses when before other races. Every race has strong and weak points.
She should take part in efforts for the advancement of the race. No one can lift the race unless he stays in it. A child should be taught not to depreciate the race any more than it would itself.
No one is so big and strong that he can exist alone. All of us are dependent to a degree. Each one will need friends. There are no friends which mean so much to us as those of our own race.
The percentage of physical deformities in colored children is lessening. Colored mothers are learning to study children's faces and bodies in order to change and correct their physical defects. Bowed and weak legs, outstanding ears, misshapen mouths, noses and teeth are being corrected according to scientific rules. Then, too, they are training children to do things to improve their own physical defects without--of course--causing them to be over conscious.
The colored mother beautiful is the health officer of the race as well as her own posterity. It is her duty to see to it that her children have clean bodies inside and outside. She will see to it that in her neighborhood there will be more regard for health, drainage, and other sanitary conditions. She will pursue the deadly fly and cause this pest and all vermin to be eradicated.
She will study up on the kinds and amounts of food to give children that they may not be fed the coarse, greasy food which coarsens the instinct, or may make them gluttonous, which will abuse the stomach and cause unnatural heat that may wreck them morally. Instead, she advocates the light brain forming food to lift them above the dominant animal tendencies.
She controls the child's play which is so necessary to health and which at the present day aims for educational results.
A colored girl's estimate and idea of colored womanhood comes from her mother.
The colored mother beautiful will not give the best to strangers in preference to home folks, nor will she expect her daughter to receive politeness from other boys and men when her brothers and men in the house keep their hats on, smoke and talk in loud disrespectful tones before her.
A colored mother will teach her daughter to command respect from all boys and men and not to capitulate in any way. To do this she will teach her daughter that she must conquer or control her lower nature and not permit privileges with her body or her given name. Her conduct at home and on the street must also command this. Her daughter will no more use the Lord's name in exclamation than any other profanity. She must be taught not to hang out or talk outside of the windows.
She must be taught that she is never to stand and talk to men on the street, also that she must not continue a conversation with a man or boy who shows he has no respect for her. She will demand a respectful attitude if she is a good girl or else she should excuse herself from further conversation and association.
The daughter of the colored woman beautiful will be taught to expect boys and men to tip their hats in meeting and parting, and she will not encourage them to sit in her presence if she stands unless they are her elders, superiors, or invalids. If necessary she will exaggerate the importance of these seemingly small courtesies to impress them upon other younger and less thoughtful girls.
Such a daughter will be taught to count for something besides clothes and looks. She will pass an intemperate or immoral man as she would something polluted, for both are irresponsible and she may suffer from even a moment's contact.
This daughter must be taught not to marry for support or for money. That is selfish and cowardly. Love should be the basis of marriage because after the honeymoon is past there are responsibilities, troubles, sorrows and self-sacrifice which need the stimulation of the "Love light."
The daughter of the colored woman beautiful will aim to marry a man mentally and physically fit to be the father of her children. An immoral, vile-tongued, untruthful or diseased father is a curse to his race. It is her duty and aim to improve racial stock.
This daughter will study the ethics of the period of engagement and will not abuse or destroy the mysterious charm which belongs alone to the early period of wife-hood.
A girl should be taught the duties of married life; to fulfil the beautiful aim of motherhood should be her ambition and her daily prayer.
Boys, also, get their estimate of colored womanhood from their mothers.
A whipping, striking, scolding, threatening, "shut-up" mother presents him a wrong view point of real motherhood.
The colored mother beautiful will teach her son to respect colored womanhood and to show this respect in every word and action. He is not supposed to know the "wheat from the tare." To any woman in all the small courtesies of life he will reflect his mother's home training. He will be taught to look up to, and to show special respect and reverence for the great women and men of the race.
Even in the way he puts on or takes off his hat he reflects his mother.
If a colored boy is expected to tip his hat to any woman, he should tip it to the women of his mother's race.
If it is expected that he should stand erect before any woman, he should before the women of his mother's race. Off will go his hat, if even asked a question. His voice, his eyes, his backbone, his heels, all reflect his mother and her training. In spite of protest he will never sit if a woman is standing unless he is ill or a cripple. Especially does he exhibit the mother training he has received from his manner in his actions to colored women.
If he is expected to speak respectfully to any woman he should to the women of his mother's race.
If he works faithfully for any woman who employs him he should work faithfully for a woman of his mother's race.
When he marries he should select a woman of his mother's race--a Colored Woman. His mother will teach him that a good wife is about the best thing in the world.
He will be taught to support and trust his wife as he did his mother and never doubt her until he has positive proof that she is unworthy. He will never publicly put another woman before his wife if he lives with her. As long as a wife bears his name and stays under his roof she is entitled to the respect that her title is supposed to carry. He would never go about complaining of his wife for that is small and cowardly. He will tip his hat as gallantly to his wife as to another woman and kiss her with uncovered head to show his respect to the woman he has chosen to bear his name.
The son of the colored mother beautiful will not smoke in the presence of his wife or friends unless he is sure it is unobjectionable and he should regard this as a privilege rather than a masculine right. He will be taught to wear his coat at table and regard it also as a privilege if he appears otherwise. He will be taught that it is unmanly to tattle and gossip.
He will be taught that it is vulgar and low to quarrel especially in the home. No man will strike a woman no matter what the provocation might be any more than it would have been right for his father to strike his mother. A man who is unable to control himself in anger is a weak man and is hardly fit to be a husband, much less father. Belonging to a race full of impulse and emotion he must be taught to control his emotions as he would his appetite. Culture and manliness are really restraint.
He will be taught to remember the vital sex difference in strength and physique and will not permit a woman to lift or reach unnecessarily--not even to help with his coat. He will not preach a double standard of morality for the men and women unless he practices what he preaches and has always been pure.
Early in the boy's life the colored mother beautiful will teach him to keep as pure in thought and deed as girls are expected to be. He will be given a right idea of the sacred sex organs and will be taught their health--value and the price of their abuse. Self mastery will be the watchword in thought, even in sleep and recreation.
The colored mother beautiful will teach her son not to lie and steal or to use intoxicants and profane language. She will teach him to keep both his inward and outward body clean. She shall insist that he keep his lips "in" while his chest will be out. The son will be taught the value of a good name and that fondness for work is one of the best recommendations in the world. He will be taught not to scorn or neglect his chores and to help his mother in the housework, not only because it is his duty but because it will prepare him for the duties of married life when he may be able to help his wife or instruct her if it should be necessary.
The colored mother beautiful will teach her son to be a little man and not to receive "penny tips" like a beggar. He should be taught to do neighborly favors without pay, after first asking his mother for permission. If he must have money let him work for wages that he may be his own business boss. He should never be permitted to ask any one but his parents for pennies and he should be encouraged not to expect or accept them.
A boy should be expected to walk with a graceful carriage and present an attractive personal appearance in the way of clothes, teeth, hair and nails as well as a girl.
Early in life he should be taught to invest in a savings bank, to get the saving habit.
The habit of reading good books should be made a part of his daily work as a preparation for the idle hour when he would otherwise seek excitement and harmful association.
A boy should be taught the duties of married life and what to expect from a good wife.
He should be warned of pitfalls and how vicious girls and women play upon men's physical weaknesses for selfish purposes. Any abuse or excess may ruin his health and happiness.
He should be taught to appreciate the qualities in a girl which will make congeniality during the long married life which has trials of which courtship never dreams.
He should be taught to seek and appreciate good, respectable girls and to associate with the best people.
If the day should come to the colored Mother Beautiful when after years of patient sacrifice and toil, all her hopes and dreams are cruelly dashed to earth and the child so carefully nurtured refuses to do her duty to parent and race and will not help to make the race and world better by having lived in it, or, when perhaps, the child is a disgrace to her parents and the race, the mother must conceal her agony and grief and still keep a serene countenance.
In silent meditation she looks back over all the years in which she has tried to rear a creditable member of the race and society. If, after honest review, down in her heart she can truthfully say, "I have raised my child to the best of my knowledge," then she may leave the rest in the hands of the "Creator." Perhaps he will reward her efforts, in a future generation, while she is yet on earth.
A disappointed colored Mother Beautiful does not envy other Mothers nor does she criticise their daughters.
Suffering opens the door to a wider vision in life and if she looks around she will find forgetfulness in helping others. It is never too late to begin.