an ever-readiness to put her child before herself, before her safety, before her personal needs, before everything.
Just yesterday I read of a woman who had saved two of her children from their burning home. The place had gone up like tinder and she had snatched them up, one seven and one ten, and, holding them under her arms, brought them to safety down a flaming stairway. She had thought her twelve-year-old had gotten out by himself but then discovered that he had not. She started back at once, without a moment's hesitation, to rescue him, but the building was now on the point of collapse and she was restrained by several firemen. However, so powerful was her drive to save her child that she broke away from their grasp and entered the building.
She found him, too, on the kitchen floor, overcome by smoke, and somehow got him to the front hall and out. She was badly burned, though she will live. But the child was all right; the child was all right! That was all that mattered.
And it is all that matters to every mother, unless, of course, she is dreadfully ill mentally—psychotic, in fact.
Just think of it; this aspect of the maternal instinct is more powerful than the instinct for self-preservation, which is known to be one of the basic instincts of all life. It supersedes self-preservation, annuls it; there are no reservations about it. It will never whisper: "You've done all you can; three powerful men are holding you down and you can't get to him anyway." It will fight powerfully and to the very end for the mother's right her indomitable need, to save her child.
Of course most mothers never have to face physically dangerous situations for their children. In most lives the way this aspect of the mother instinct expresses itself is in everyday sacrifices. Mothers give up (and, in the healthy woman, with pleasure, by preference) their time, intellectual pursuits, careers, first to have the child and then to see him
