According to her, "A healthy, happy, rightly occupied motherhood should
be able to keep up this function (of nursing) longer than is now
customary--to the child's great gain." There can be no question about
the child's great gain; but what is the evidence for supposing that a
mother earning her own living in free competition with men--which is
what a "healthy, happy, rightly occupied motherhood" means in this
connection--can thus spend her energies twice over, unlike any other
source of energy known?
According to official statistics, maternal lactation is steadily
decreasing in several German cities, notably in Berlin, where only 56.2
per cent. of infants under one month were suckled by their mothers in
1905, as against 65.6 per cent. in 1895, and 74.3 per cent. in 1885. At
nine months of age 22.4 per cent. were suckled in 1905, 34.6 per cent.
in 1895, 49 per cent. in 1885. Other towns show more favourable results;
a general decrease, however, is marked. These facts cannot be ascribed,
according to the author,[21] to a growing disinclination to
breast-feeding, nor to the employment of mothers (in Prussia only 5 per
cent. of the married women are employed in manufacture). The question
whether the decrease in breast-feeding is due to the industrial
employment of women before marriage, or to (inherited) degeneration,
remains to be determined.
According to a recent statement by Professor von Bunge, the conditions
are very similar now in Switzerland, where only about one mother in five
can nurse her children.
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