It would almost seem that they value motherhood more
for being themselves deprived of it.

Now, how does this history from the bee-hive apply to us? Here you
have before you, old as the world itself, one of the most urgent
problems that has to be faced in our difficult modern society. I have
little doubt that something which is at least analogous to the
sterilisation of the female bees is present among ourselves. The
complexity of our social conditions, resulting in the great
disproportion between the number of the sexes, has tended to set aside
a great number of women from the normal expression of their sex
functions. Among these women a class appears to be arising who are
turning away voluntarily from love and motherhood. Many of them are
undoubtedly women of fine character. These "Intellectuals" suggest
that women shall keep themselves free from the duties of maternity and
devote their energies thus conserved, to their own emancipation and
for work in the world which needs them so badly. But the biological
objection to any such proposition is not far to seek. No one who
thinks straight can countenance a plan which thus leaves maternity to
the less intellectual woman--to a docile, domestic type, the parallel
of the stupid parasitic queen-bee. Mind counts in the valuation of
offspring as well as physical qualities. The splitting of one sex into
two contrasted varieties, which we see in its completed development in
the bee-hive, cannot be an ideal that can even be worth while for us.
It means an end to all further progress.

There is another group of women who wish to bear children, but who
seem to be anxious to reduce the father to the position of the
drone-bee. He is to have no part in the child after its birth. The
duty of caring for it and bringing it up is to be undertaken by the
mother, aided, when necessary, by the State. This is a terrible
injustice against the father and the child. It seems to me to be the
great and insuperable difficulty against any scheme of State Endowment
of Motherhood. I cannot enter into this question now, and will only
state my belief that a child belongs by natural right to both its
parents. The primitive form of the matriarchal family, which we shall
study later, is realised in its most exaggerated form by the bees and
ants. In human societies we find only imitations of this system. And
here, again, there is a lesson necessary for us to remember. Any
ideal that takes the father from