brings about conflict, and so leads to mental and bodily unrest. Of
course this interferes little or not at all with some, probably most of
the present-day mothers, but is a factor of importance in the lives of
many.

The nervous housewife has several difficulties in her relations to her
children. These are of importance in understanding her and have been
touched on before this, but it will be of advantage to consider them as
a group.

We have said that the opinion of obstetricians is that the modern woman
has more difficulty in delivering herself than did her ancestress. If
this is true (and we may be dealing with the fact that obstetricians are
often the ones to see the difficult cases, or that these stand out in
their memories) there are several explanations.

First, women marry later than they did. It may be said that the first
child is easiest born before the mother is twenty-five years of age, and
that from that time on a first child is born with rapidly increasing
difficulty. The pelvis, like all the bony-joint structures of the body,
loses plasticity with years, and plasticity is the prime need for
childbearing. Similarly with the uterus, which is of course a muscular
organ, but possesses an elastic force that diminishes as the woman grows
older.

Second, the vigor of the uterine contractions upon which the passage of
the baby depends is controlled largely by the so-called sympathetic
nervous system, though glands throughout the body are very important
factors as well. This part of the nervous system and these glands are
part of the mechanism of emotion as well as of childbearing, and emotion