How Noble It Is for Our Homes to Be a Nursery for Children

In a past issue we published an article by Mrs. Salwa Boustani entitled "Worn-Out Traditions," in which she attacked the traditions that have made woman the slave of the house. The refined Mrs. Ellen Rihan wished to have a word on this subject opposing Mrs. Boustani's view, for she holds that the noblest field for woman is the field of motherhood, where woman's virtues appear in their fullness.

We, who wish The Woman's Voice to be a noble exhibition of ideas and opinions, care before all else that woman's new life be built on sound foundations of goodness and truth.

The Editors

I appreciate, madam, your frankness and your eager spirit, which endears liberty and equality with man to you. But I have a few observations, which you will permit me to publish as a comment on your article in the magazine The Woman's Voice—your magazine and mine, indeed the magazine of the Lebanese woman.

You say, madam: "The traditions which hold that woman's function is managing the house, raising the children, and sewing clothes carry in them the destruction of humanity." As for me, madam, I hold that the loftiest work a woman can perform is the raising of children, and that her first duty is the management of the house; and I do not agree with you at all that "these household tasks can be performed by the simplest of maidservants." The mother is the best educator of children: she must attend to them herself, straightening what is crooked in them, strengthening the weak, helping the one who falls behind, and flooding them with her tenderness, which no tenderness can rival. She is the moral pillar of the home, and her stamp as wife and mother must be seen in every one of its corners. It is her field of work, not the field of maidservants; and leaving the children "to the simplest of maidservants" is a negligence and a sin for which every careless mother will be called to account.

As for "making the homes of marriage a nursery for children," that is an honor on which I congratulate every woman who has succeeded in making her home a garden for her children, where they receive the principles of love, truthfulness, and justice. And why, madam, do you deprive the home of the sweetest of its titles—the title of the nest that gathers parents and little ones—and dub it "a hotel for men"? It is not the home-"hotel" that we want to create for our daughters and our sons. Rather, the Lebanese woman raises her children to love the home, to hold it sacred, and to make it a nest sheltering the little ones, or the seed of a fruitful, flourishing tree. And it is for all of us to strive to learn the reason why some homes have become hotels, so that we may root out that reason by sound upbringing and by reform.

And your saying that "the wife accepts slavery but does not accept obedience" is a saying I find very strange indeed. No, madam: the free human being never accepts slavery, and woman refuses it, loathes it, and rises against it. But obedience built on mutual respect, on persuasion, and on love—that obedience which is sometimes necessary to preserve harmony and happiness in the home—we welcome it; indeed we teach it to our daughters. And I have no doubt that the Lebanese Women's League, which publishes The Woman's Voice, holds a view other than yours, madam, on the guidance of the Lebanese woman.