entirely at a loss in
possessing them. It is as well that such people should have none: the
poor little unwanted ones can always be recognised.

'Delicacy' is another plea put forward by neurotic women who are not one
whit too delicate to bear a child. Where the ill-health is genuine, or
some constitutional weakness or disorder is present, of course this plea
is sensible enough. An apparently sane woman once told me quite
seriously that she would have liked a child, only she often had a bad
cough in the winter, and would not risk the possibility of 'handing it
on.' Her lungs were perfectly sound, it was merely a temporary cough
that troubled her. On the same occasion another woman present remarked
that she too would have liked a child, only 'there wouldn't be room in
our flat, and it is so convenient, we shouldn't like to leave it.' My
state of mind on hearing these remarks could only have been adequately
expressed by knocking these two ladies down and trampling on them, and
as this course would not have found favour with our hostess, I had to
content myself with merely being rather rude to them.

I believe the root of the whole matter is that the maternal instinct is
not so general as formerly. The causes for this I am not wise enough to
determine. It may be due to the greater enfranchisement of women, the
widening of women's lives and ambitions, the new occupations, the new
interests which have so transformed feminine existence. Maternity and
the grievous and irksome processes of its accomplishment are apt to
interfere with all this. The instinct of motherhood is still doubtless
innate in the majority; when the babies come, often unwelcome, the
instinct reasserts itself as a rule, but it is certainly not general for
the average woman of to-day to feel it stirring before marriage or
actual motherhood, and I honestly believe that the number of women who,
like the female bee, are utterly without this instinct is yearly
increasing. It has often occurred to me that men are really fonder of
children than are women. In my own experience, I hardly know a man who
does not love them, whereas I know many women who positively detest
children, and many others who only endure their own because they must.
I have also observed that quite devoted mothers dislike all other
children, whereas men, if fond of the little ones at all, seem fond of
every child. Note the attention men will pay a not particularly
attractive child in a railway