deed, so deeply has the sense of shame concerning the
sexual functions been impressed upon the feminine mind that many wives
never cease to feel a recurrent emotion of repugnance throughout the
marital relationship. Especially would this be intensified in the case
of sexual intercourse during the periods of gestation and lactation,
when the girl who had been taught that the sexual functions existed only
in the service of reproduction would see her most cherished illusions
rudely dispelled. The effect of this long continued emotional state with
its feeling of injury upon the metabolism of the female organism would
be apt to have a detrimental effect upon the embryo through the blood
supply, or upon the nursing infant through the mother's milk. There can
be no doubt that anxiety, terror, etc., affect the milk supply, and
therefore the life of the child.

The sixth dysgenic effect of the control by taboos is the rebellion of
economically independent women who refuse motherhood under the only
conditions society leaves open to them. The statistics in existence,
though open to criticism, indicate that the most highly trained women in
America are not perpetuating themselves.[3] Of the situation in England,
Bertrand Russell said in 1917: "If an average sample were taken out of
the population of England, and their parents were examined, it would be
found that prudence, energy, intellect and enlightenment were less
common among the parents than in the population in general; while
shiftlessness, feeble-mindedness, stupidity and superstition were more
common than in the population in general ... Mutual liberty is making
the old form of marriage impossible while a new form is not yet
developed."[4]

It must be admitted that to-day marriage and motherhood are subject to
economic penalties. Perhaps one of the best explanations of the strength
of the present struggle for economic independence among women is the
fact that a commercial world interested in exchange values had refused
to properly evaluate their social contribution. A new industrial system
had taken away one by one their "natural" occupations. In the modern
man's absorption in the life of a great industrial expansion, home life
has been less insistent in its claims. His slackening of interest and
attention, together with the discovery of her usefulness in industry,
may have given the woman of initiative her opportunity to slip away from
her ancient sphere into a world wher