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bility to provide sufficient food for their children and themselves,
should be lacking in those qualities of energy and thrift so
essential to the comfort of the home and the welfare of the
children.
The most pressing need in connection with the question of
Infant rearing is that of insuring a sufficient supply of good
nourishing food for the mothers during pregnancy, and the six,
or if possible nine months immediately following child-birth.
The lack of good food for the mother is one of the principle
causes of the ever increasing prevalence of artificial feeding of
infants, which is perhaps the most important factor in the very
heavy death-rate from Infantile Diarrhcea and Enteritis during
the summer months.
Occupation of Mothers.—It is very noticeable that families
living to all intents and purposes under exactly similar conditions
with regard to housing and income, differ very widely as to the
comfort and cleanliness of their homes and the success with which
they rear their children.
Although one would expect that the cleanest homes and best
cared for babies would be found amongst that class where the
mother is wholly occupied by her household duties, and not as a
wage earner, this is by no means always the case. There is a
certain class of mother who fails from sheer inability to make
"both ends meet" on a very limited income. Each day brings its
same monotonous round of duties never done, there seems to be
no brightness, no hope, she sits down to her fate and lets everything
go.
Here again probably the lack of proper nourishment has much
to do with the failure. This particular class of mother seems to be