Yet another one on being open to life

"These days, when women just serenely ignore the question of children, or at most, as a special concession, bring up one or two - just the one or two whose expenses can be comfortably met!- there's something magnificent in a woman like your mother, who begins eight destinies instead of one! She doesn't strain and chafe to express herself through the medium of poetry or music or the stage, but she puts her whole splendid philosophy into her nursery - launches sound little bodies and minds that have their first growth cleanly and purely about her knees. Responsibility - that's what these other women are afraid of! But it seems to me there's no responsibility like that of decreeing that young lives simply shall not be. Why, what good is learning, or elegance of manner, or painfully acquired fitness of speech and taste and point of view, if you are not going to distill it into the growing plants, the only real hope we have in the world? You know, Miss Paget," his smile was very sweet, "there's a higher tribunal than the social tribunal of this world, after all; and it seems to me that a woman who stands there, as your mother will, with a forest of new lives about her, and a record like hers, will find she has a Friend at court!" (Mother, by Kathleen Norris)

This excerpt comes from a short novel written in 1911 by a Christian woman, though it isn't clear whether the author was Catholic or Protestant. It was interesting to me to see from the novel how, nearly a hundred years ago, the secular attitude towards children was so very similar to what it is today. I suppose that more or less, it's always been the case. Without a perspective that views this life in light of eternity, child-rearing would be nothing but burdensome.

I'm certain there's no man I know who would enjoy it, but for the ladies, it's a good book if you need a little light, wholesome fiction to pass the time. Enjoy!