female parasitism which afflicts humanity) to be, probably, not more
adverse to the advance and even to the conservation of a healthy and
powerful society, than the parasitism of its child-bearing women. For the
prostitute, heavily as she weights society for her support, returning
disease and mental and emotional disintegration for what she consumes, does
not yet so immediately affect the next generation as the kept wife, or kept
mistress, who impresses her effete image indelibly on the generations
succeeding. (It cannot be too often repeated that the woman who merely
bears and brings a child into the world, and then leaves it to be fed and
reared by the hands of another, has performed very much less than half of
the labour of producing adult humans; in such cases it is the nurse and not
the mother who is the most important labourer.)

No man ever yet entered life farther than the length of one navel-cord from
the body of the woman who bore him. It is the woman who is the final
standard of the race, from which there can be no departure for any distance
for any length of time, in any direction: as her brain weakens, weakens
the man's she bears; as her muscle softens, softens his; as she decays,
decays the people.

Other causes may, and do, lead to the enervation and degeneration of a
class or race; the parasitism of its child-bearing women must.

We, the European women of this age, stand today where again and again, in
the history of the past, women of other races have stood; but our condition
is yet more grave, and of wider import to humanity as a whole than theirs
ever was. Let us again consider more closely why this is so.


Chapter III. Parasitism (continued).