Reading the American Past: Printed Page 156
DOCUMENT 23–4
Mothers Seek Freedom from Unwanted Pregnancies
When birth control activist Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States in Brooklyn in 1916, authorities arrested and jailed her for violating the Comstock Law of 1873, which outlawed the distribution of information about contraception. Undeterred, Sanger sponsored many other clinics and worked tirelessly to publicize birth control. During the 1920s more than 250,000 women wrote to Sanger, asking for information and help. Excerpted below, these letters revealed what Sanger termed the “bondage” of motherhood. Many women experienced the 1920s not as an era of flappers and sexual freedom but of overwhelming burdens of child rearing and family responsibilities.
Margaret Sanger
Motherhood in Bondage, 1928
Thousands of letters are sent to me every year by mothers in all parts of the United States and Canada.
All of them voice desperate appeals for deliverance from the bondage of enforced maternity. ... [Here are] the confessions of these enslaved mothers. ...
[MOTHER A]
I was married at the age of twelve years. One month before my thirteenth birthday I became the mother of my first child, and now at the age of thirty I am the mother of eleven children, ten of them living, the youngest now seven months old. My health has been poor the past two years now and I don't believe I could ever stand it to have any more. Please won't you send me information so I won't have to have more children, for we have more now that we can really take care of. ...
[MOTHER B]
I am nineteen years old, have been married two and a half years and my second baby is just two months old. I love my babies, my husband and my home. Life and the work it brings would be nothing to me if I could only feel sure I would have no more children right away. I do not want another for a few years. But my babies are girls, and my husband wanted a son and I want to give him one, but I would like to wait until my little girls are better on their way in life and I am more mature and stronger. I can feel myself becoming weaker and if I had another baby within the next couple of years it would only be detrimental to the child and the rest of the family as well as myself. I left high school at the age of seventeen to marry a poor man and never have regretted it. I have done all my own work and borne my own children happily and with never a complaint, but I live in constant dread of another baby soon, and so does my husband. He has kept away from me for long periods but I cannot ask that of him forever. In the hospital where my babies were born every woman there was trying to find out the same thing. They asked doctors, nurses and each other. They were all in constant dread of more children. Such a condition is deplorable in this age of freedom in everything else. ...
[MOTHER C]
I was a high school girl of seventeen when I married a farmer, fourteen years ago. I am the mother of eight living children, one baby dead and a three months miscarriage. I am thirty-one years of age and have spent almost all of my married life nursing and carrying babies. I would like you to advise me what to do to prevent from having any more children. My oldest child is thirteen and my youngest five months. I love my children and would give my life for them. But what good would that do, who will teach and care and sacrifice for them as a mother will? I know it was my ignorance on this important subject that has put me where I am, but I must learn all I can for I have three little girls who will need to know about these things and it is them I must learn to care for and save from my fate. ... I have always suffered and worked and never enjoyed myself without this fear of being pregnant again. I love my husband as much as ever and we never quarrel or have hard feelings. We both work hard to make an honest living for our children. I have hired help when I need them most, but I want my home, my husband and children to myself, to raise as we wish without being spoiled with hired help. I want to teach my girls and get advice for myself. My mother is old-fashioned and thinks children should not know too much and never told us girls what to expect at our sick times or when we were married. I have asked my doctor many times but never get any satisfaction from him. I think I have been down to the valley of death enough times. So please answer and give me some hope. ...
[MOTHER D]
I have been married twelve years and am the mother of seven girls. The oldest is ten years old and you know what I suffered. We are poor. We can't care for what we got half the time for them to be healthy. I got one dead. My oldest one living has got heart trouble. My youngest one is seven months old. I'm just twenty-eight years old. We are working on the shares this year. My husband is a hard worker and tries to make an honest living. And let me tell you I have to work to make ends meet. I saw, chop wood, plow and have my little kids to tend to for they are not large enough to help me but a little. Oh, I have a hard time. We are never out of debt. I never get to go anywhere for I never got a dress nice enough to wear or I'm always in a family way. Oh, it is hard on poor women to be in my shape. It is just one baby after another. I can't stand it much longer and work like I do, trying to keep a little to eat and wear. I pray you to help me. If I could stop having babies long enough for these to get where they could walk, Lord, how glad I would be. I know little babies are sweet but when you can't clothe them like they are to be and then they are sick. Lord what trouble mothers do have. ...
[MOTHER E]
I was married three years ago and have two children one two years old and the other almost a year. Before I was married there was no other girl in the community that was stronger or healthier than I — I did not know what it was to be sick. We rented a house and my husband intended working in the mill but then the mill shut down and he could get no work anywhere. I was in the family way and of course we tried to live as cheap as we possibly could, having no work I worried all day and couldn't sleep at nights. I would worry all the time. When my baby was born it only weighed three and a half pounds and cried lots. Then my husband still had no work. When baby was three months old we got a chance to work on a farm. I to keep house and him to work on the farm. I got up at four o'clock and went to bed at ten o'clock. I was in the family way again. Then last spring we came up to my father's house I to keep house and husband to work in the mill. I had lots of work, I get up at three o'clock and go to bed at nine; there is father and six brothers and sisters, myself and two children now. I don't want any more children. If I get in the family way again I don't know what I will do. ... I seem to have lost all interest in life, I sometimes feel that I would be glad to die sooner than to have more children. ...
[MOTHER F]
I am twenty-five years of age and a mother of three children and in less than five years. I had the three of them and it's very hard for me. I do be very sick and I have to take chloroform and roar like a lion with pains. So please help me, give me some good advice what to do to take care of myself as my dear mother is died and I didn't know any better so I married young and a poor man just like myself and so his mother was died also. So we went housekeeping for his father. Now there is five of them, who are all boys and a father-in-law and five of us: now there's eleven of us and only myself to take care of all those people and my three poor little ones are neglected and my baby one seventeen months old and a very mean father-in-law. He says throw the kid down on the floor and you do this and that and hurry up. So I would not want any more children for I can't give the care they ought to have and I have tried to do all the washing, ironing, cooking, baking bread and yet beside sewing for my children and myself as we can't afford to buy things ready made. Just think the work for eleven people! It is very hard for me and when evening comes I'm in and out all tired. Why when I go to bed I can't turn round and can't stand it any more and I work all day and cry beside and when they get home from work I don't even hear a kind word from any one. ... My heart is broken. No one ever takes pity on me and I'm just tired of living and bringing those children into this world to suffer. ...
[MOTHER G]
I am twenty-eight years old and the mother-to-be very soon of a sixth child. I am a farmer's wife. My husband is a drunkard and so very abusive. He tries to kill me and beats at my door. I have to hide the butcher- and paring knives and the guns. He calls me the vilest things a woman can be called before my children and threatens my aged parents and I don't dare tell the neighbors. They respect him. He don't say anything before them.
I have so much work to do. I raise garden enough for seven or eight people to eat all summer. I canned six hundred quarts of fruit last summer. Always do. I have to raise enough chickens to eat, some to sell and enough to supply our family in eggs and help keep up the table. I do all our washing for our family and I have been injured when my first baby was born until I can hardly stand on my feet and no one knows what I suffer. We own 114 acres of well-improved corn-belt land. I have it thrown in my face how dishonest I am, and what a liar I am. He never trusts me an inch and will ask the neighbors and children questions — to see if I am lying.
He calls me a liar and thief and other names fifty times a day. He says I am no wife if I don't like the way he does, how can I help myself, and a thousand other things. I can't please him no way, shape or manner. My baby will be born the last of April. I don't want it. ...
[MOTHER H]
My mother is of the old German type and she said everybody could and should have all the children they could even if it kills them. She is a good mother, but I don't think it is right to raise children like cattle and then throw them to the street or poorhouse to be brought up or die. If I could get one good contraceptive that would not fail but would be sure so I would not become pregnant till I can get strong again I would surely be glad. Then I could give my husband my true love and do my children justice.
From Margaret Sanger, Motherhood in Bondage (New York: Brentanos, 1928).
Questions for Reading and Discussion