What Will Become of the Babies?

Reintroducing suffragist Eleanor Kirk

Babies and balance have been on my mind recently. I’m five months pregnant, at a point where the reality of a new human, one I will be responsible for keeping healthy and happy and safe, is becoming ever stronger. This commitment is more lasting than marriage, as I can’t divorce myself from a bloodline I’ve created. I will never be able to declare myself not this child’s mother. How to define my relationship to this new human when my duties turn into something other than nurturing it via my placenta?

It was in this frame of mind that I came across “What Will Become of the Babies?”, a short essay published in 1868 by Eleanor Kirk, a now-forgotten suffragist who worked with such well-known names as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Motherhood is about making tough choices, and Kirk, who suffered an abusive first marriage and then the death of her second husband, had five children to look after. Rather than following Anthony—and perhaps achieving lasting notoriety—by taking the helm of the Working Women’s Association, which later became a central part of the National Women’s Suffrage Movement, Kirk focused her energies on her income-generating writing career. At a time when women didn’t have the right to vote or to  have their voices heard within American democracy, she wrote impassioned words about the importance of women’s self-sufficiency to society as a whole, and she wrote from experience. Her newspaper columns on issues facing women grew in popularity and, when syndicated across the country, began to reach millions of Americans each week. Through writing these columns and a series of books, she was able to support her family on her own. She is sometimes appropriated as an icon for the present day pro-life feminist movement, which occasionally quotes statements from Kirk about the problems of abortion in her time. But from essays like “What Will Become of the Babies?”, reprinted in full below, it seems to me that Kirk’s overall priority was giving women more, not fewer, choices in their lives.

The realities of modern day life may be different from those Kirk tackles in the work that follows, but providing equal opportunities to women, especially in the context of employment and child-rearing, continues to be a battle in the United States today. I think of the debates over maternity leave, the move of some employers to pay for egg freezing (thereby extending the service of young women to their organization), and the countless women who work several minimum-wage jobs just to feed their children, and I wonder what Eleanor Kirk would have to say. I wonder what will become of my baby.

— Catherine LaSota

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“What will become of the babies?” From every quarter is wailed this cry—and wherefore? Only because women are waking up to a sense of their position as wives, mothers, and members of society, and insist on their right to have a hand in the management of all public affairs pertaining, however remotely, to their interest, socially and financially. Why is it that a great many cultivated, intelligent men—and women, too (that’s where the rub comes)—persist in ignoring the fact that female equality and suffrage mean more love, more tenderness, an occasion of respect and thoughtfulness for our companions, and better sense in molding the characters of our children? 

Said a lady to me yesterday: “Why should I lift up my voice for this Revolution in social affairs you so strongly advocate? Religiously and politically my husband and myself are one; and our love for each other is such that his wish is my law, and vice versa.”

Now, just that little sentence caused every nerve in my body to quiver painfully. No true woman can shut herself up in a little Paradise of her own, and never look out into the great thoroughfare of life. Why, woman alive, or woman asleep, where there is one wife happy and contented in the love of a noble man, there are thousands of wretched ones who are driven to feebleness, moral destruction, and the grave. Think a moment. Suppose death, inexorable and strangely exacting, should claim his own; what then? Your husband’s salary, which now nicely supports you, you would receive no longer. Your three babies fatherless, and you a widow, educated, refined, and fitted by numberless graces to adorn a little niche in society, undisturbed by want or the necessity of labor; our opinion is that you would be glad to take into consultation even Revolutionists under such circumstances, and be very happy to welcome any educational or philanthropic movement whereby you could walk out into the world, and demand as an equivalent for your work a comfortable living for yourself and your babies. Then, at the conclusion of that heartless speech, to have her look so sweetly and wisely into our face, and remark: “But Frank and I have been thinking should women turn to politics and literature entirely, what will become of the babies?”

What will become of your babies, madam, should you be suddenly deprived of the means of their support? Have you the courage, stamina, ay, ability, to fight the world single-handed? “A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind.” We have been there, thank you, and know all about it. Every heart-throb, every blush in indignation, every dastardly attempt to change the wages of labor for the wages of sin, we are familiar with; and it makes us sick when we see an intelligent female looking at so great a subject through so small a glass, and dirty at that. What will become of the babies? Why don’t somebody ask—what has become of the babies? Ask Restell and thousands of physicians, male and female, who have been engaged in their work of destruction for years. Physicians who have graduated from our first medical colleges, whose elegant equipages stand in front of Fifth Avenue mansions, who pocket a big fee and a little bundle of flesh at the same time, and nobody’s the wiser; not even the husband in hosts of instances. What will become of the babies—did you ask—and you? Can you not see that the idea is to educate women that they may be self-reliant, self-sustaining, self-respected? The wheel is a big one, and needs a strong push, and a push all together, giving it an impulse that will keep it constantly revolving, and the first Revolution must be female suffrage. After this, the ponderous affair will move regularly, and perhaps slowly; but education, moral, physical, and intellectually practical, will as surely follow as dawn follows the darkness of night. Then marriages of convenience will not be necessary; men and women will come together, attracted by mutual respect; namby-pamby, doll-faced, wishy-washy, milk-and-water feminine bundles will be unmarketable. God speed the time, for the sake of the babies. Little ones will then be welcome, and mothers will know enough to instruct them sensibly, with a view to the practical side of life. Men, if you desire healthy, intelligent, economical wives, do not oppose this new movement; for in this way only can you and yours, and subsequent generations, be saved from degeneracy. Will somebody please tell us why women who pay taxes (we will leave out the rest just at present) should not be allowed a voice in the management of the laws decreeing taxation? Don’t be afraid to speak; come out squarely. This is the time for free, earnest discussion on all points of general interest; but please do not take for your final syllogistic premises the foolish idea that women who are self-reliant must necessarily be unlovable. It is no such thing, we assure you, and we know. My dear fellows, this is quite as much for your benefit as ours. What we propose to do, is so to arrange things that should you ever become sick or poor, we can put our hands to the plough and run the machine, nursing, sympathizing, attending to the finances, and loving you to distraction at the same time. How do you like the picture?

—from The Revolution, May 28, 1868