It’s a Sunday afternoon by the beach, and the women are taking these babies out for fresh air. The babies may be their own, or the children of relatives, -or they may just be servants, nursemaids for other people.
In any case the babies are no burden to them; rather a pleasure in fact.
Especially for the older woman on the right- her face is glowing with love for the baby she’s holding. Whether it’s hers or not, it’s hers for this afternoon at least.
For ordinary women, children are the most prized and precious possessions they have, more to be desired than the finest jewels.
A baby is always “a blessing”, under any circumstances.
And the circumstances are not always good. If the parents are a couple, they often don’t have work, and can’t support their children for ordinary things like food and diapers, much less for doctors and medicine- and children get sick, all the time. And so they appear at the door of relatives or friends with their hands out for help: “Our baby is sick, we need…”
And if the mother is only a young girl, and single, then the burden falls on her parents, who probably have more children than they can decently support already.
Even so, even facing these almost impossible problems, everyone is happy when a new baby arrives. Everyone nearby crowds around for a look; plans are made to find money for the baptism, with food for the occasion for neighbors and friends.
After all, no matter how poor you are, a child is absolutely yours for life and can’t be taken away by finance company, like a motorcycle or a TV set. And when you get old, the children will be there to take care of you, always assuming they can take care of themselves and their own children.
It’s all part of the rigid, fixed pattern of life that everyone follows, and that the child will be expected to follow also. Not much provision is made for a child as an individual human being. Babies and children are dearly loved-but mostly as prized possessions, not as persons.
But they are loved. These children by the sea on Sunday, held in these women’s arms- no matter how poor or desperate their parents were, they were not aborted, and they will never be abandoned. And there will be many more to come.