Public-domain ebook
The mothercraft manual
by Mary L. Read
Language: en2,650 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: How To ...·Parenthood & Family Relations
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #70887.
About this book
The Mothercraft Manual is a practical handbook aimed at women who intend to raise children with informed care. Its opening pages begin with a striking statistic about married women in America, then move into the author’s personal narrative: Mary L. Read recounts her own lack of preparation despite a solid college education, the loss of a child, and the subsequent drive to compile a systematic guide. The preface outlines the book’s purpose, to translate the latest scientific knowledge in biology, hygiene, dietetics, and child psychology into clear, everyday language, and to provide a foundation for both novice and experienced mothers. The work is organized into clearly labeled chapters covering everything from establishing a home to feeding, play, and first aid, promising a concise yet comprehensive introduction to the many phases of child‑care.
Written in the earnest, didactic style of early‑20th‑century educational literature, the text reflects the progressive‑but‑conservative spirit of its 1916 publication. Its tone is instructional yet compassionate, blending scholarly references with personal anecdotes. Readers who appreciate a methodical, historically grounded approach to parenting, particularly those interested in the evolution of child‑development theory, domestic science, or women’s education, will find this manual both informative and evocative.
Who appears in The mothercraft manual
- Mary L. ReadEarly‑1900s educated woman, mid‑30s, hair in a modest bun, wearing a high‑collared blouse and long skirt, gentle expression
The opening · free to read
“Seventy-five per cent. of the women of America are married, and most of these have children.” It is not conceivable that women entering into any other vocation of life would think of undertaking it without deliberate preparation. Motherhood is so precious and wonderful that we fear to think of it in terms of definite preparedness. We like to think that it comes natural to be good mothers and that to study in preparation for it or to analyze it might produce more harm than good.
Let me use my own case as an illustration of how ill-prepared even earnest women are for motherhood. I was married twenty-nine years ago. I wanted children with all my heart. My first baby came sixteen months after I was married. I bought all the literature I could find on my new occupation, kindergarten books beginning with Froebel and ending with Susan Blow and her contemporaries; I studied Spencer’s Education, William James’ chapters on habit and attention, and read biographies of great people. My first ambition was to be a good mother, and I was eager to learn all I could about it. My college studies for five years were Greek, Latin, and higher mathematics, with an occasional semester of botany, evidences of Christianity, physics, etc. I do not remember hearing a reference to motherhood during my college experience.
I have had six children, four of whom are living. Had I had the knowledge I now have, or know how to get, it seems that the little seven-months-old boy could have been saved. I was called a scientific mother, my babies were fed regularly, put to bed regularly, and were dressed as sensibly as babies are now, but at that time we did not have the knowledge about the physical care of babies which we now have. What I object to is the amount of time I had to give when my children were little to learn things which I ought to have known before motherhood came to me, so that I could have been free to give myself to them. I knew “education through play” only as a figure of speech. Last summer I took a year-old baby to camp. I had the care of her three consecutive months, and was responsible for her six months. I yielded to the impulse to play with her, and in gratifying this instinct I used all the store of knowledge which experience had brought to me. It was evident that she was learning things every day, and that progress was astonishingly rapid. Most of the things I taught her were taught by the use of signs and objects. I asked her if she wanted to come to me by holding out my hands to her. She understood, and soon asked me to take her by holding out her hands to me. I asked her where her eyes were, her mouth, nose, ears, by touching each in turn. She understood and touched each in turn. It was interesting to note when it was no longer necessary to use the sign, when she understood spoken language without the aid of gesture.
The phrase that “education begins at the cradle” took on a new significance. I felt that I was a teacher as well as a mother and the importance of my part in the education of this baby opened up amazingly. It was play, but it was also education. Those minutes with her when no one was near, when we were all in all to each other, were precious beyond words. Through this love-relation there was intense joy in both learning and teaching. The reason the mother’s part in education is incomparable to any other is because of this love-relation.
We are told that during the first five years of life more is learned than during all the rest of life. The teachers during these years are primarily the mothers. The mother-teacher relation goes on after school days begin, but gradually is regarded less important, and the teacher’s part grows. Mother is forgotten as a teacher. She loses confidence in herself and forgets that no one can take her place.
It does not seem to me that any woman could have more earnestly desired and striven to be a good mother. I studied and worked as hard as I could, but it was not possible for me to secure the training that girls can get to-day. It now seems to me that it is about as rational for a woman to learn by experience with her own children to be a good mother, as it would be for a doctor to get his education merely by practising on his patients. Motherhood offers no less opportunities for success than do the professions of law or medicine. The preparation for it is just as definite and is more important. It has remained for Mary L. Read, with splendid devotion and university training, to put these matters together and to organize and conduct a “School for Mothercraft.”
The time is coming when women will no more go into physical and spiritual motherhood unprepared, trusting to “mother instinct”, than they will go into law or medicine, trusting to their sense of right and of sympathy with the sick to guide them.
CHARLOTTE V. GULICK.
To write a handbook that is so definite, concrete, and clear that the least experienced person of average intelligence will find it practical.
To bring directly to those who have opportunity to use it,—the home-makers, present and prospective,—some of the wealth of present knowledge in biology, dietetics, hygiene, domestic efficiency, child psychology, education, that is stored in the laboratories, research reports, medical records, technical journals, and educational classics, translating these from the obscure tongue of technical language into the clearer speech of daily life.
To furnish a guide to more technical or detailed consideration of each subject.
To present fundamental principles and facts rather than mere rule of thumb procedure, so that the reader may act intelligently and make intelligent variations.
Not to compromise on half-way procedure that merely prevents disaster, but to make clear the means to greatest personal efficiency and social power.
To keep a progressive yet reserved attitude between conservative and radical theories.
To bring the spirit of sympathy and humanness, of love and child-nature and poetry into the teaching of home-making.
To lighten the burden and enlighten the minds and hearts of earnest young people so that with joy and satisfaction they may essay and find the home and family life that their hearts desire.
Froebel outlined, nearly a century ago, a thorough, practical training course for young women, preparatory to home-making or to vocational work as teachers or mothers’ assistants. At Pestalozzi-Froebel House in Berlin, half a century ago, under the administration of Frau Shrader and Miss Annette Schepel, such a course was organized. Echoes of it to-day are found in the German secondary schools and special schools for girls. The same idea spread to England a quarter of a century ago, and there to-day a score of special schools, and some girls’ high schools, provide such a training.
In America, the School of Mothercraft was opened in New York City in December, 1911, to work out experimentally a training course for educated young women.[1] Here has been developed a comprehensive, human, practical course including domestic science and art, and the care and training of babies and little children. The students work in a home atmosphere, under home conditions, using the household for their practice work, caring for the resident babies and children, educating and training them in the course of the day’s régime, and receiving their own training in personality and technique as well as in theory. Extension classes have been maintained for young mothers, brides, and engaged young women.
It is work with young women and the children in the School of Mothercraft that has made possible the preparation of the present volume.
No book can take the place of the living teacher. No amount of discussion of theory can be a substitute for experience. Yet experience, without sound principles, is also of minor value. Any book presupposes a modicum of common sense and rational judgment in its readers.
In a volume of such limited compass only a few significant principles can be presented, and some of the important elementary facts and technique that more technical books may overlook. The present volume aims only to be an introduction to the many phases of home-making, child care, and child training, to furnish something of vision for these responsibilities, and a guide for further study.
No book can be a substitute for the personal advice of the physician, the hygienist, the psychologist, and the teacher. The reader of any book on applied science may easily make the mistake of interpreting statements out of proportion to their significance, or of misunderstanding directions so that they even become misleading. Only discussion with the living teacher will discover and correct such errors.
The reader must be open-minded to new discoveries, new theories, new methods. At the present time, as never before, extensive researches are being made in biology, hygiene, dietetics, child psychology, and pedagogy. Important discoveries as revolutionary as the discovery of the circulation of the blood, radio-activity, the cellular basis of life, may be made at any future time.
In the present volume no attempt has been made to present controversial points of view, but a consistently constructive régime and programme has been given. The novice in any art must first learn to work constructively and rather dogmatically, until he has learned to apply one set of principles efficiently. Then he may begin to modify details according to some rational principle, instead of by mere whim, and to compare his method with other possibilities. The basis and the special authorities for the régime here presented will be found in the final chapter on bibliography.
JULY, 1916. MARY L. READ.
Footnotes:
[1] The word “mothercraft” was coined by the author to express the comprehensive scope of the training. The word has since come into use in England in a narrower sense, including merely infant care. It is hoped that in America the use of the word may be retained in its larger significance.
To the Messrs. Macmillan Co., Ginn Company, F. A. Stokes Co., and D. Appleton & Co., for permission to quote from their publications; to the American Medical Association Press and Dr. Roland G. Freeman for use of the graphs on growth; to Mr. William S. Bailey and The Nurse Studio for many of the photographs taken specially for this work.
Especially the author begs to tender sincere thanks for many criticisms, suggestions, and reviewing of manuscript to Dr. David Starr Jordan, Dr. William F. Snow, Professors Rudolph M. Binder, Willystine Goodsell, Robert M. Yerkes, and Mr. Paul Popenoe, on the sections dealing with the home and the family; to Dr. Josephine H. Kenyon for sections on maternity and infancy, Drs. Henry I. Bowditch, William Shannon, and William H. Burnham, for sections on hygiene and growth; to physicians and nurses at Battle Creek Sanitarium for assistance in the sections on nursing and nutrition; to Dr. William H. Park for revising data on communicable diseases, and to Professors Henry C. Sherman and Mary S. Rose for suggestions and for unpublished data on nutrition. Mrs. Anna Martin Crocker and Miss Sunnyve Carlsen have kindly given literary assistance. Helpful suggestions on the reading list have been furnished by science teachers of Horace Mann, Ethical Culture, Francis Parker, and the University of Chicago Elementary Schools. Miss Helen O. Rider and Miss Mary Scott Allen have rendered invaluable aid in criticism and clerical details. To the many others who have furnished technical data or read portions of the manuscript, the author here expresses thanks. Finally, the author would gratefully acknowledge the unfailing patience and kindly encouragement of the publishers. For such errors as may be found the author alone is responsible. Criticisms or suggestions from readers, which may improve the helpfulness or accuracy of the Manual, will be gratefully received.
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