Family health and history will be the central topics of a Book Talk on “Fannie’s Crazy Quilt” scheduled to take place at 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 21 in the learning lab at Kump Education Center.

Fannie Logan Scott was the mother of Edna Scott who became the wife of West Virginia Governor H.G. Kump.

For “Fannie’s Crazy Quilt” I have pieced together letters and news clippings that we found to tell the stories of the family that built the Kump house. The book is available now at Amazon online publishing, and it can be read on Kindle or any computer app for accessing books online.

The book includes stories from four generations of the Kump family. Visitors at Kump Education Center will see the home of Fannie’s only surviving child who became the wife of Governor Kump and had six children. At the outset, the reader sees how deeply Fannie feared that she would lose her fourth child after the death of her third one. Becoming a mother was risky at best.

Each Mother’s Day is a special time to remember our own mothers and to think about the historic changes in the medical and social meaning of motherhood.

Although greeting cards enshrine sentimental images of motherhood, the honorable role of women has been controversial since Adam allegedly first listened to Eve. Prehistoric women and children died too young long before any records were kept, yet human husbandry is still a topic that does not get enough logical scientific attention.

The reason I think this book was worth all the time I put into it is that I believe motherhood and human husbandry are becoming more complicated in the 21st Century.

Demographic data reflects the fact that populations are declining throughout the developed world, and modern mothers cannot afford the money and time to have families. They need to be able to ensure that they will have funding to give their children food, health care, housing and training on technology to live in this time period.

The concepts of romance, marriage, and family planning options have not kept pace with the economic demands of our time. We have many sentimental expectations about love, marriage, and the baby carriage, but we do not have an economic environment to make having children a viable option for many young people.

Now, Melinda French Gates is one of the few donors who give funding and advocate for women’s reproductive health. She believes that spacing babies with birth control is one way that women can be healthier and have healthier children.

Empowering women will help break the cycle of poverty and improve outcomes for future generations.