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(8) The non-domestic employment of married women. The infantile
mortality is greatest in districts having the highest proportion of married
women industrially employed. Such employment must necessarily
involve some neglect of the home, and especially of any young children.
(9) Poverty is a direct cause of infant mortality where it induces malnutrition
of mother or infant, or where it implies that the mother cannot give
adequate care to the infant.
(10) Poverty is also an important indirect cause of infant mortality. Its
influence is exercised in the following among other ways:—
(a) Poverty is not infrequently associated with ignorance and carelessness.
(b) With these are commonly associated overcrowding and uncleanliness.
(c) Alcoholic habits frequently result from living under conditions of
poverty, the converse also being true.
What are the principal sanitary defects that can be abated or minimised by
action taken under the Public Health Acts ?
(a) Overcrowding and lack of cleanliness are undoubtedly most important.
This usually means for the infant exposure to a stuffy, dusty atmosphere,
very variable in temperature. It implies for the bottle-fed infant
insufficient or unsatisfactory arrangements for storing food, and the
consumption of food which may be partially decomposed, and probably
is uncleanly. The fact that in tenement dwellings, refuse is often stored
within the living room, and in other forms of houses close to the kitchen,
adds to the possibilities of mischief.
(b) The yard may be unpaved or imperfectly paved, dirt then being trodden
into the house.
(c) The sanitary conveniences may be in an unsatisfactory condition, and
give off noxious effluvia.
(d) Household refuse may have to be taken through the house, or even
through the living room. Infective material may thus be brought into
the house, or blown in or carried in by flies bred in accumulations of
refuse.
The first condition of safe rearing of infants is breast feeding. Ignorant
mothers are, however, fond of giving occasional "tastes" of their own food to the
babies when still breast-fed.
The substitution of artificial for natural feeding is one of the chief evils
associated with the industrial employment of women.