Woman and labour / by Olive Schreiner.

  • Olive Schreiner
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Woman and labour / by Olive Schreiner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Time was, when the woman kept her children about her knees till adult years were reached. Hers was the training and influence which shaped them. From the moment when the infant first lay on her breast, till her daughters left her for marriage and her sons went to take share in man’s labour, they were continually under the mother’s influence. To-day, so complex have become even the technical and simpler branches of education, so mighty and inexorable are the demands which modern civilisation makes for specialised instruction and training for all individuals who are to survive and retain their usefulness under modern conditions, that, from the earliest years of its life, the child is of necessity largely removed from the hands of the mother, and placed in those of the specialised instructor. Among the wealthier classes, scarcely is the infant born when it passes into the hands of the trained nurse, and from hers on into the hands of the qualified teacher; till, at nine or upon the way ?—perhaps to find them ? To the old mother one is inclined to say, “Ah, good old mother duck, can you not see the world has changed ? You cannot bring the water back into the dried-up pond ! Mayhap it was better and pleasanter when it was there, but it has gone for ever; and, would you and yours swim again, it must be in other waters.” New machinery, new duties.
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