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40
have sanctioned certain schemes for such improvement. They should not
rightly be included in this report for 1934, but they will be included in my
report for 1935.
I do, however, want to emphasize an opinion which 1 have formed during
my investigation into these matters during the past year or more.
A local authority may establish the finest Maternity service and the
finest Infant Welfare service in the kingdom, but there will be little improvement
in these mortality rates unless the mothers are taught to appreciate
these services and to avail themselves of them in an intelligent manner.
Education of the mother is therefore of the first importance.
This education is a terribly depressing matter. One can imagine the
despair of a doctor or a health visitor who has spent several periods of ten
to fifteen valuable minutes, or even longer, giving advice to a Mother, to
find later on that she has not taken in one single word of that advice and
has not carried out one single instruction. There is far too much of the idea of
"what was good enough for my mother and her children is quite good enough
for me and mine."
It appears to me that we must train a new type of mother—a mother
who will forget her mother's training (or rather will realise her mother's lack
of training) and who will become more naturally scientifically minded.
Then we will have women who, immediately they become pregnant,
will be industrious in their attendance for ante-natal care, and who, immediately
they become mothers, will carry out all the instructions given to them
at Infant Welfare centres or elsewhere. Then, and not until then, can any
schemes for the prevention of Maternal and Infantile Mortality hope to be
completely successful.
How is this universal new type of mother to be obtained? It appears to
me that the training should start in early life. Why not start the lesson in
the nursery through the medium of the ubiquitous doll? This can be done
easily in the Day Nurseries and in the Nursery Schools and in the Infant
Classes, and it should be possible to teach the correct playing with dolls on the
lines of real infant care. The most receptive age, however, in my opinion, is
from 13 to 16, or even earlier, and here is the finest opportunity for instilling
the lessons of motherhood into the future generation of mothers. During
the last 2 years of school life and during the first 2 years of club life all girls
should be taught what motherhood means (and incidentally during the latter
part of that period the meaning of sex).