declining birth rate is still further evidence of her individualization
and is in a sense her denial of mere femaleness and an affirmation of
freedom.




CHAPTER II

THE NATURE OF "NERVOUSNESS"


Preliminary to our discussion of the nervousness of the housewife we
must take up without great regard to details the subject of nervousness
in general.

Nervousness, like many another word of common speech, has no place
whatever in medicine. Indeed, no term indicating an abnormal condition
is so loosely used as this one.

People say a man is nervous when they mean he is subject to attacks of
anger, an emotional state. Likewise he is nervous when he is a victim of
fear, a state literally the opposite of the first. Or, if he is
restless, is given to little tricks like pulling at his hair, or biting
his nails, he is nervous. The mother excuses her spoiled child on the
ground of his nervousness, and I have seen a thoroughly bad boy who
branded his baby sister with a heated spoon called "nervous." A
"nervous breakdown" is a familiar verbal disguise for one or other of
the sinister faces of insanity itself.