It should be the constant effort of every mother to conform her habits to God’s will, that she may work in harmony with Him to preserve her children from the health and life destroying vices of the present day. Let mothers place themselves without delay in right relations to their Creator, that they may by His assisting grace build around their children a bulwark against dissipation and intemperance. If mothers would but follow such a course, they might see their children, like the youthful Daniel, reach a high standard in moral and intellectual attainments, becoming a blessing to society and an honor to their Creator.
(CD 226.1)
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340. The best food for the infant is the food that nature provides. Of this it should not be needlessly deprived. It is a heartless thing for a mother, for the sake of convenience or social enjoyment, to seek to free herself from the tender office of nursing her little one.
(CD 226.2)
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The mother who permits her child to be nourished by another should consider well what the result may be. To a greater or less degree the nurse imparts her own temper and temperament to the nursing child.—The Ministry of Healing, 383, 1905
(CD 226.3)
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341. In order to keep pace with fashion, nature has been abused, instead of being consulted. Mothers sometimes depend upon a hireling, or a nursing bottle must be substituted, for the maternal breast. And one of the most delicate and gratifying duties a mother can perform for her dependent offspring, which blends her life with its own, and which awakens the most holy feelings in the hearts of women, is sacrificed to fashion’s murderous folly.
(CD 226.4)
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There are mothers who will sacrifice their maternal duties in nursing their children simply because it is too much trouble to be confined to their offspring, which is the fruit of their own body. The ballroom and the exciting scenes of pleasure have had the influence to benumb the fine sensibilities of the soul. These have been more attractive to the fashionable mother than maternal duties to her children. Maybe she puts her children out to a hireling, to do those duties for them which should belong to herself exclusively. Her false habits make the necessary duties, which it should be her joy to perform, disagreeable to her, because the care of her children will interfere with the claims of fashionable life. A stranger performs the duties of the mother, and gives from her breast the food to sustain life.
(CD 226.5)
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