turn again to the disagreeable factors in our housewife's life which may
cause her neurosis.

The child is the central bond of the home and is of course the
biological reason for marriage. The maternal instinct has long been
recognized as one of the great civilizing factors, the source of much of
human sympathy and the gentler emotions. While the beautiful side of the
mother-child relationship is well known and cannot be overestimated, the
maternal instinct has its fierce, its jealous, its narrow aspect. Love
and sympathy for one's own in a competitive world have often as their
natural results injustice and hardness for the children of others. While
the best type of mother irradiates her love for her own into love for
all children, it is not uncommon for women to find their chiefest source
of rivalry in the progress and welfare of their children.

Maternal devotion is largely its own reward. The child takes the
maternal sacrifices for granted, and after the first few years the
interests of parent and child diverge. There is a never-ending struggle
between the rising and the receding generations, which is inherent in
the nature of things and will always exist wherever the young are free.
All the world honors the mother, but few children return in anything
like equality the love and sacrifices of their own mother.

Is the maternal instinct waning in intensity in this period of
feminization? There have always been some bad, careless, selfish
mothers; has their number increased? Probably not, yet the maternal
instinct now has competition in the heart of the modern woman. The
desire to participate in the world's activity, the desire to learn, to
acquire culture, engenders a restless impatience with the closed-in life
of the mother-housewife. This interferes with single-minded motherhood,