make some equation for the greater burden of reproduction upon women,
the inevitable result will be that that particular service will not be
rendered by those most desirable to be preserved.

Given the fundamental assumption that the group is to survive--to be
perpetuated by the one possible means--if it withdraws all solicitude
about the handicap this entails to women as a whole, introducing a
spirit of laissez-faire competition between men and women, the women
with sense enough to see the point will not encumber themselves with
children. For each one of these who has no children, some other woman
must have six instead of three. And some people encourage this in the
name of democracy!

The most involved problems must inevitably centre around the women who,
to quote Mrs. Hollingworth, "vary from the mode," but are yet
functional for sex. Some have no sex desires at all, some no craving for
or attachment to children, some neither of these. It is a question still
to be solved whether some of them ought, in the interest of the race, to
be encouraged to reproduce themselves. In less individualized primitive
society, seclusion, taboo and ignorance coerced them into reproduction.
Any type of control involving the inculcation of "moral" ideas is open
to the objection that it may work on those who should not reproduce
themselves as well as those who should.

In a sense, this problem will tend to solve itself. With the
substitution of the more rationalized standards of self-interest and
group loyalty for the irrational taboo control of reproductive
activities, there will be as much freedom for women to choose whether
they will accept maternity as there is now, in the period of transition
from the old standards to the new. The chief difference will be that