sential
that it shall adapt itself to adult conditions and the absence of ties so
rendered necessary. Otherwise there is little likelihood of anything but
friction and pain on one side or the other, and perhaps on both sides.

[4] The varying customs of different peoples in this matter are set
forth by Westermarck, _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_,
Ch. XXV.

The parents have not only to train their children: it is of at least equal
importance that they should train themselves. It is desirable that
children, as they grow up, should be alive to this necessity, and
consciously assist in the process, since they are in closer touch with a
new world of activities to which their more lethargic parents are often
blind and deaf. For every fresh stage in our lives we need a fresh
education, and there is no stage for which so little educational
preparation is made as that which follows the reproductive period. Yet at
no time--especially in women, who present all the various stages of the
sexual life in so emphatic a form--would education be more valuable. The
great burden of reproduction, with all its absorbing responsibilities, has
suddenly been lifted; at the same time the perpetually recurring rhythm of
physical sex manifestations, so often disturbing in its effect, finally
ceases; with that cessation, very often, after a brief period of
perturbation, there is an increase both in physical and mental energy.
Yet, too often, all that one can see is that a vacuum has been created,
and that there is nothing to fill it. The result is that the mother--for
it is most often of the mother that complaint is made--devotes her own new
found energies to the never-ending task of hampering and crushing her
children's developing energies. How many mothers there are who bring to
our minds that ancient and almost inspired statement concerning those for
whom "Satan finds some mischief still"! They are wasting, worse than
wasting, energies that might be profitably applied to all sorts of social
service in the world. There is nothing that is so much needed as the
"maternal in politics," or in all sorts of non-political channels of
social service, and none can be better fitted for such service than those
who have had an actual experience of motherhood and acquired the varied
knowledge that such experience should give. There are numberless other
ways, besides social service, in which mothers who have passed the age of
forty, providing