demand more definite individual
treatment and rebel more at what they consider an infringement of their
rights as human beings. Also, and unfortunately, they still wish the
right to be whimsical, they continue to reserve for themselves the
weapons of tears, reproaches, and unreasonable demands. This has
brought about the divorce evil.

Briefly the "divorce" evil arises first from the rebellion of woman
against marital drunkenness, unfaithfulness, neglect, brutality that a
former generation of wives tolerated and even expected. Second, it
arises from a conflict between the institution of marriage which still
carries with it the chattel idea--that woman is property--and a
generation of women that does not accept this. Third, it arises from the
ill-balanced demands of women to be treated as equals and also as
irresponsible, petty, and indulged tyrants. Men are unable to adjust
themselves to the shattering of the romantic ideal, and the home
disintegrates. Though divorce is the top of the crest of marital
unhappiness, it really represents only the extreme cases, and behind it
is a huge body of quarreling and divided homes.

We shall later see that our Nervous Housewife has symptoms and pains and
aches and changes in mood and feeling that are born of the conflict that
is in part pictured by divorce. _Divorce is a manifestation of the
discontent of women, and so is the nervousness of the housewife._

There arises as a result of this individualization of woman, as a
result of increasing physiological knowledge, the hugely important fact
of restricted child bearing. The woman will no longer bear children
indiscriminately,--and the large family is soon to be a thing of the
past in America and in all the civilized world. The-woman-that-knows-how
shrinks from the long nine months of pregnancy, the agony of the birth,
and the weary restricted months of nursing. Had the woman of a past time
known how, she too would have refused to bear. In this the housewife of
to-day is seconded by her husband, for where he has sympathy for his
wife he prefers to let her decide the number of children, and also he is
impressed by the high cost of rearing them.

One gets cynical about the influence of church, patriotism, and press
when one sees how the housewife has disregarded these influences. For
all the religions preach that race suicide is a sin, all the statesmen
point out that only decadent nations restrict families, and all or
nearly all