of yourself!" responded the magistrate; "a woman capable of such conduct
would be capable of doing anything!" and the fine was remorselessly
inflicted. Undoubtedly, if somewhat brutally, the magistrate yet gave true
voice to the modern view on the subject of excessive and reckless child-
bearing.)

Further, owing partly to the diminished demand for child-bearing, rising
from the extreme difficulty and expense of rearing and education, and to
many other complex social causes, to which we shall return later, millions
of women in our modern societies are so placed as to be absolutely
compelled to go through life not merely childless, but without sex
relationship in any form whatever; while another mighty army of women is
reduced by the dislocations of our civilisation to accepting sexual
relationships which practically negate child-bearing, and whose only
product is physical and moral disease.

Thus, it has come to pass that vast numbers of us are, by modern social
conditions, prohibited from child-bearing at all; and that even those among
us who are child-bearers are required, in proportion as the class of race
to which we belong stands high in the scale of civilisation, to produce in
most cases a limited number of offspring; so that even for these of us,
child-bearing and suckling, instead of filling the entire circle of female
life from the first appearance of puberty to the end of middle age, becomes
an episodal occupation, employing from three or four to ten or twenty of
the threescore-and-ten-years which are allotted to human life. In such
societies the statement (so profoundly true when made with regard to most
savage societies, and even largely true with regard to those in the
intermediate stages of civilisation) that the main and continuous
occupation of all women from puberty to age is the bearing and suckling of
children, and that this occupation must fully satisfy all her needs for