In spite of the lack of reticence which makes so many modern novelists delight in obstetric detail, there is still an amazing ignorance about this baby business, and a whole crop of errors in the average story which contains a small child.

  Writers have ceased to picture the blushing young wife who whispers to an astonished husband one June day that a little stranger will arrive in July,but they have not yet dropped the convention that her first confirmation of the expected event is a dramatic faint. Though this was natural in the days of tight -lacing , it is out of place today and to picture, for instance, the splendidly healthy and graceful heroine of “Sweet Aloes” as doing so dropped a false note into an otherwise natural play.

It is wise not to kill off your mother in child~birth unless it is absolutely necessary. The present rate of maternal mortality is about 3 per thousand, but the fiction rate is nearer 30 per. cent. One of our ruthless slaughterers is Neil Bell, In his collection of short stories ‘Mixed Pickles" 4 of the 12 mothers mentioned die in child-birth (33.3 %) and of the 16 children 4 are still born and one dies within a week of its birth. Next time you need to dispose of a mother and baby use a sports car. tt is more probable and kills just as efficiently.

 It is not really necessary for the mother who does not die to ‘go through Hell’ and be  able only to raise a wan white hand for an overwrought husband to kiss, If she is young, healthy and well-cared~for, she is just as likely to give him a smile of triumph.

 Now for the bay itself - - a stumbling block to so many, inexperienced writers, The new-born babe does not as one writer expressed it, ‘open wide blue eyes and smile at its father,‘ It has eyes so sensitive to light that they are rarely opened during the first few days and the first smile appears at about the sixth week. A common convention is to make all new-born babies ‘red and hideous’, This is by no means inevitable, so be original and picture one of the many that are pale pink and attractive from the first. The cry of the new-born is distinctive end can be expressed as “Ah-wah!”.

 Having brought your baby, do not forget about it. A baby is an all-pervading thing in the average household and the adventures of John and Jane cannot go on as before with just a casual reference to the infant from time to time to show it is there. An extreme case of this was shown in a story by Lorna Ree in ‘nash's, It was based on the old theme of wife who puts house before husband, When wife refused to go to the theatre on the maid's night out, pleading domestic duties, we were expected to sympathise with husband who took the other woman. Neither wife, husband nor author mentioned the one real tie which kept the wife at home, the sleeping infant upstairs.

 It is by no means easy to picture the growing child correctly and almost fatal to rely on memory. The novice would be well advised to listen to a real child of the age required before writing baby-talk. The usual mistake is to make the talk too babyish for the age. A rough guide is single words at a years; phrases of two words (such as "All done”  “Good-bye”) at two, and simple sentences between two and three. By five (the official school age) there should be few traces of baby — talk left except a difficulty with the 'r‘ or ‘th” and a tendency to make such errors with verbs as “Look what I done’ or “we sawed a dog’, The writer who is in contact with a growing child should set down specimens of its talk at six months’ intervals. It will form an invaluable source of reference later, and will confirm the inadvisability of writing from memory. 

 The small boy of five or six has a good vocabulary and can talk wisely of car, aeroplanes and engines-- imitative talk, of course, not indicating wide knowledge so much as a desire to know. The age of seven marks a definite stage of growth. It completes the first stage of development; the child passes from infant school or kindergarten to junior, from the ‘I'. of babyhood to the ‘we’ of the gang. In the small boy there is a promotion to jacket suits and real shits, a new arrogance of tone and roughness of slang; in the little ‘girl ‘there may be a now independence and general “tomboyishness". The writer should watch this age as a danger point, keeping his  curly-haired darling well below it, He will not then make a child of nine, as a writer in the ‘Daily Mirror’ recently; pout ‘Naughty man’ at a stranger. 

Though ‘Helpless' is the term most frequently applied to the baby, the writer should remember that the modern child is encouragé to be independent and its helplessness is of short duration. In a recent short story shown to me for criticism a child was described as seated at the table calling steadily for someone to lift her down so that ‘she could paint with her box of paints. This leaves the reader completely muddled as to the child's age. As if old enough to speak clearly and to use-paints, she would certainly climb out of her high chair, a feat which any intelligent infant can tackle by the time it is two.

 To sum it up. Keep the fiction maternal mortality down, adjust your hero and heroine's lives to the new arrival. Use baby talk as sparingly as possible. Go to the Living model of your child, and if you have no child of your own or near relation, sit in the park with a notebook instead, + but never guess!