ontinued stories that every
newspaper now carries, the woman's difficulties range around the most
absurd petty jealousies, and she never seems to cook or sew or have any
responsibility, and they always end so "sweetly." On the stage the
epidemic of girl and music shows has quite displaced the drama. Here sex
is exploited to the point of the risque and sometimes beyond it.

Sex is overemphasized by our civilization on its distracting side, its
spicy and condimental values, and underemphasized so far as its
realities go. The aim seems to be to titillate sex feeling constantly,
and a precocious acquaintance with this form of stimulation is the lot
of most city children. Such things would have no serious results to the
housewife if they did not arouse expectations that marriage does not
fulfill at all. This is the great harm of prurient clothes, literature,
art, and stage,--it unfits people for sex reality.

In how far the delayed marriages of men and women are good or bad it is
almost impossible to decide. That unchastity increases with delay is a
certainty, that fewer children are born is without doubt. Whether the
fixation of habit makes it harder for the wife to settle down to the
household, and the man less domestic, cannot be answered with yes or
no. There seems to be no greater wisdom of choice shown in mature than
in early marriages, though this would be best answered by an analysis of
divorce records.

That contraceptive measures have come to stay; that they are increasing
in use, the declining birth rate absolutely evidences. I take no stock
in the belief that education reduces fertility through some biological
effect; where it reduces fertility it does so through a knowledge of
cause, effect, and prevention. Some day it will come to pass that
contraceptive measures will be legal, in view of the fact that our
jurists and law makers are showing a decline in the size of their own
families. When that time comes the discussion of means of this kind
consistent with nervous health will be frank, and some part of the
neurasthenia of our modern times will disappear. The vaster racial
problems that will arise are not material for discussion in this book.

Though not perhaps completely relevant to the nervousness of the
housewife, it is not without some point to touch on the "neurosis of the
engaged." The freedom of the engaged couple is part of the emancipation
of youth in our time. Frankly, a love-making ensues that st