group
necessity like reproduction can be met. Whatever is required of the
individual will become "moral" and "patriotic"--i.e., it will be
wreathed in the imperishable sentiments which group themselves around
socially necessary and hence socially approved acts everywhere and
always.

In whatever races finally survive, the women of good stock as well as
poor--perhaps eventually the good even more than the poor--will
reproduce themselves. Because of our ideals of individual liberty, this
may not be achieved by taboo, ignorance or conscription for motherhood.
But when it is found to be the personal interest to bear children, both
as a means of complete physical and mental development and as a way of
winning social approval and esteem, it will become as imperative for
woman to fulfil the biological function to which she is specialized as
it was under the old system of moral and taboo control. The increasing
emphasis on the necessity of motherhood for the maintenance of a normal,
health personality, and the growing tendency to look upon this function
as the greatest service which woman can render to society, are manifest
signs that this time is approaching. There is little doubt that woman
will be as amenable to these newer and more rationalized mores as human
nature has always been to the irrationally formed customs and traditions
of the past.

To ignore the female specialization involved in furnishing the
intramaternal environment for three children, on an average, to the
group, is simply foolish. If undertaken at maturity--say from
twenty-two to twenty-five years of age--and a two-year interval left
between the three in the interest of both mother and children, it puts
woman in an entirely different relation toward extra-reproductive
activities than man. It does imply a division of labour.

In general, it would seem socially expedient to encourage each woman to
have her own three children, instead of shifting the burden upon the
shoulders of some other. If such activities of nursing and caring for
the very young can be pooled, so much the better. Doubtless some women
who find them distasteful would be much more useful to society at other
work. But let us not disregard fundamentals. It is obviously
advantageous for children of normal, able parents to be cared for in the
home environment. In a _biologically healthy_ society the presumption
must be that the average woman has some three children of her own. Since
this ob