In the early days of our modern civilization, that is to say within the last couple of hundred years, the treatment of women in Western Europe sank to a terribly low ebb. Although the last few years have done much to restore woman to some of her ancient rights and privileges, there are still among us a distressing proportion of ignorant, coarse and consequently ruthless men who are not debarred from becoming husbands. Such men have been in the past in the habit of “using their wives” regardless of the desires or even the actual health requirements of the unfortunate women who are tied to them, and such men have made a practice of continuing to indulge in sex union even through the later stages of pregnancy. I have heard from midwives, to my amazed horror, that some such depraved men (not bestial, for no beast behaves in such a way) have even used their wives while they are still in bed after child birth. With such I have in this volume no concern beyond the mention that they are loathsome.

Their existence, however, has had an effect on a better type and has given rise to reaction on the part of men infinitely their superiors. Women who have seen their sister women thus outraged have had the support of men of sensitive conscience and consideration when they have claimed that the mother who is carrying and nursing her child is sacred, and must not be approached by her husband at all during the whole of the child’s coming and nursing period. It has, therefore, come about that a large number of our best and most high-minded women (supported by correspondingly high-minded men, anxious to do the best that is within their power for their wives and children) hold the view that no sex union after the third month, or perhaps that no sex union at all is allowable during pregnancy.

Now this is one more matter which has not begun to receive the consideration which it deserves. When I wrote Married Love I felt that I was not entitled to decide on this subject, and I tried to hold the balance between the various opinions, and drew attention to the fact that the prospective mother of the lower creatures is always set apart. This was apparently misinterpreted by some of my readers as being a personal expression of opinion, and women wrote or spoke to me about the subject saying they were sure I was right because their husbands held the same opinion as I did, BUT the women themselves were ashamed, almost humiliated, to confess that during the carrying of their child they most ardently desired unions.

To these, as individuals, I pointed out that I was very far from expressing a definite opinion in my book on this point, and that my actual opinion indeed inclined towards thinking that restricted unions should be advantageous. In a later edition (the 7th) of my book, I enlarged on what I had to say on this subject, concluding: “There is little doubt that in this particular, even more than in so many others, the health, needs, and mental condition of women who are bearing children vary profoundly.”

Through evidences from very various types of women in the last year or two, I have now accumulated facts in sufficient numbers to begin to see something approaching a possible generalization on this subject.

One of the most striking things I noticed concerning the evidences I received was that the women who confessed to a desire for sex union while they were carrying a child were, almost without exception, the best type. A hasty generalization would have predicted that those very women with their pure attitude, their high degree of culture, their intellectual attainments, and their gracious self-restraint in outer life were just exactly those women who would maintain a fierce chastity during the nine months. These quite remarkable corresponding experiences of similarly superior women forced the matter vividly upon my attention, and I am now prepared to make a tentative generalization, coupled with the generalization to be found in Chapter XV.

The attitude of one of the women who confessed her intimate feelings to me is typical of those of this type, and is illuminating. She is a woman of unusually gifted brain, well endowed physically and a normally healthy mother in every respect; she is noted for a peculiar beauty and sweetness of disposition, and an unusually high degree of sensitive appreciation of beauty and goodness. In conversation she said to me: “You know I feel so ashamed and degraded by myself, but just at the time when I felt I ought to be sacred from these things, I more ardently desired my husband than I had done throughout all my married life of fifteen years.” She then told me that her husband who had been truly devoted to her all his life was particularly considerate and thoughtful for her during her time of expectant motherhood, and that when she tentatively hinted at her wish for union with him he refused tenderly on the grounds that the higher standard for men was to share, however difficult it was, in the nine months of complete abstinence. He said that, for the sake of the child and herself, he must refuse. Her desire, however, again recurred, much to her own shame and mortification, because she felt that what her husband said really represented the highest accepted standard of pre-natal conduct. Quite a number of rather similar and also exceptionally endowed women have confessed to me in almost the same terms the same feeling.

Before I indicate my conclusions, let us briefly consider some of the surrounding circumstances of this problem. As I said in the opening paragraphs of this chapter, the nobler and better men have been carried away by a certain type of woman into thinking that it is man’s share of the difficulties and self-sacrifice of parenthood that he should entirely sacrifice what is spoken of as “his desires.” In my opinion, this attitude involves two profound fallacies. The first fallacy is that the act of sex union is to meet only “his desires”; it is not. Completed union is something infinitely greater: it is a consummation jointly achieved by both the man and his wife. This attitude I make clear in my book, Married Love and in my new Gospel addressed to the Bishops at Lambeth. And I must postulate in this, my present book, the far reaching effects on the bodily, spiritual and mental health of a man and woman concerned in this complex sex union. The truth is that the husband who mutually and considerately unites with his wife when she can accept him is not merely gratifying his own desire, he is enriching her whole system as well as his own through this mutual alchemy.

Before following up the logic of this paragraph, let us turn to the woman and her needs. The drain on her system of providing for another life out of her own tissues, and the substances which pass through her own body, must be very severe unless she is amply provided with all the subtle chemical compounds which are demanded of her. Now there is much evidence that in unmarried women, and in young wives who are debarred from sex union altogether, something approaching a subtle form of starvation occurs; conversely that women absorb from the seminal fluid of the man some substance, “hormone,” “vitamine” or stimulant which affects their internal economy in such a way as to benefit and nourish their whole systems. That semen is a stimulant to a woman was long ago recognized as probable, and is now the opinion of several leading doctors. Reference to this will be found in Havelock Ellis, vol. 5, 1912. See also the paper by Toff in the Centralblatt Gynakologie, April, 1903. Incidentally the converse is true, and the man who conducts himself properly during the sex union, and remains for long in contact with his wife after the ejaculation is completed, also benefits through actual absorption from his wife. For this I have the testimony of a number of men.

If, therefore, the woman who is becoming a mother, and who is supporting a second life, feels the need of union with her husband it is, I maintain, an indication that her nature is calling out for something not only legitimate but positively beneficial and required, and that it should be not only a man’s privilege, but his delight, to unite with his wife at such a time and under such circumstances.

The maintenance of the right balance of the internal secretions of the various glands which re-act on sex activity is important to women at all times, and particularly during the time when a woman is becoming a mother. One of the results of the growth of the child is the increased activity of the thyroid gland in the neck, which considerably increases in size.

A general account of the relation of such glands to a woman’s mental and physical balance is found in Blair Bell’s book (The Sex Complex, 1916), but he does not deal with the special aspect of a woman’s requirements which forms the subject of this chapter.

There is, even with the type of woman who does feel the need of, and ardently desires some sex unions with her husband during the long months, almost always a space of time, perhaps as much as two or three months consecutively, when she will have no such desires at all and there are also times of special liability to lose the child through premature birth, when unions should be avoided. Unexpected abortions most usually take place at the dates around the time which would have been a monthly period.

When I consider the evidence which I have before me, which is almost exclusively from the very best type of women, and when I observe that the most generally perfected, and finest women of my acquaintance, and they in particular, desire occasional moderate intercourse during pregnancy, I feel that one has a guide to what is best for the race. In these women and the conduct which their needs inspire, we have an indication of the truest and highest standard of all. The deviations of conduct may at last return from both the grossness of abuse and the reaction from it, and settle in the right and middle path. After the excessively virtuous, and perhaps undersexed type of woman, in contrast to the totally base attitude of the earlier and coarser type of man, has made the thoughtful speed from baseness to an ascetic absence of unions, we should be led back by these well developed and well balanced and noble minded women to the right and middle way. In this the spontaneous impulse of the responsible mother will be the guide for her husband and will benefit all three concerned.

For, let us realize what a profound mystical symbol is enacted when the union is not that of a single man and woman, but of that holy trinity the father, the mother and the unborn child. Only during these brief sacred months can the three be united in such exquisite intimacy, and during all these months when the child is forming, it is only in the few infrequent embraces of subdued passion that the husband and father-to-be can come truly close to his child, that he can, through additions to her system from his own, assist the mother in her otherwise solitary task of endowing it with everything its growth demands.

Every woman who is bearing a child by a man whom she loves deeply, longs intensely that its father should influence it as much as it is possible for him to do: in this way and in this way alone can he give it of the actual substance of his body.

This view of mine, in the present crude state of scientific knowledge must, of course, be stated as an hypothesis, but it will be proved later on when science is sufficiently subtle to detect the actual microscopic exchange of particles which takes place during proper and prolonged physical contact in the sex union.

Light on my thesis is also shown by the converse: For instance, an interesting suggestion was made by a distinguished medical specialist as a result of his observation of two or three of his own patients, where the prospective mother had desired unions and the husband had denied them thinking it in her interest: the doctor observed that the children seemed to grow up restless and uncontrollable, with a marked tendency to self-abuse. To these two or three instances I have added some which have come under my own observation and, although as yet the evidence is insufficient to support a dogmatic attitude, I incline to think that not only the deprivation of the mother of proper union during pregnancy, but also the after effects of some years of the use of coitus interruptus tends to have a similar effect upon later children. That is to say that mothers whose natural desire for union has been denied, and mothers who are congenitally frigid rather tend to produce children with unbalanced sex-feeling liable to yield to self-abuse. Immoderate and excessive desire for sex union during pregnancy so far as I am aware is rare, and where it occurs it should of course be treated as an abnormality.

The mother of the higher type, such as I have indicated in the paragraphs above who does desire unions, will probably only require them infrequently during these months.

It should be obvious, but as the general public often lacks a visualizing imagination, I ought to add, that for the proper consummation of the act of union, particularly during the later months of coming parenthood, the ordinary position with the man above the woman is not suitable and may be harmful. The pair should either lie side by side, or should lie so that they are almost at right angles to each other, so that there is no pressure upon the woman. Or the man should lie on his side behind the woman, which makes penetration easy and safe and free from pressure. I might point out here a fact which is of general importance in all true consummations of the sex union, and that is that all the preliminaries and even the final act of ejaculation itself do not constitute the whole of the truest union. A truth on which I lay great stress, although I have not yet dealt with it fully in any publications, is the fact that an extremely important phase of each union is the close and prolonged contact after the culmination takes place. The benefit to both of the pair of remaining in the closest possible physical contact for as long a time as is possible after the crisis is almost incalculable.

A whole chapter could be written upon this theme, and indeed it should be written. In the union during pregnancy, a woman is by nature debarred from the complete and intense muscular orgasm and for her, indeed, the union must essentially consist almost solely of the close contact of skin with skin and of the absorption of molecular particles as well as the resolution of nervous tension as the result of so close and prolonged a contact.

Among the children known to me personally, several of the most beautiful were the children of mothers and fathers who had unions during the months of their development. The following quotation from a young husband may be of interest in this connection:—

As I have seen photographs of the child, I can endorse the parent’s opinions.

Tolstoy’s condemnation of any sex contact while the wife was pregnant or nursing may have influenced some serious men, but, as in many other respects, Tolstoy’s teaching is so widely contradictory, and depends so much upon his own age and state at the time, one cannot but regret the unbalanced influence his literary power has given him.

While this chapter may be taken as an indication that sex union is, in my opinion, not only allowable but advisable for certain types during the time they are carrying a child, nevertheless I do not wish it to be misinterpreted in such a way that a single act of union which is repugnant to the prospective mother should be urged upon her “for her good.”

There is undoubtedly a large body of most excellent women who are as individuals distinctly rather undersexed, but who are on the whole good mothers, profoundly well meaning and right minded and virtuous women to whom the time of prospective motherhood is an intensely individual period, during which they feel an active repugnance to any sex union.

Women of this type are not able to give the completest dower to their children, but are immensely superior to the average and baser type which forms the majority. If such women do not spontaneously desire unions they should be left unharried by any suggestion that they would benefit by them, and the husbands of such women should, in their own interests, curb any natural impulses which may conflict with the intense feeling of the wife. Husbands, however, should also be aware that such women generally feel as they do because they have never been wooed with sufficient grace and tenderness.

To sum up, I am convinced that unless there is any indication of a disease or abnormal appetite in any respect, that the natural wishes and desires of the mother-to-be who is bearing a child should be the absolute law to herself and her husband, for during these months she is on a different plane of existence from the usual one. She is swayed by impulses which science is as yet incapable of analysing or comprehending, and experience has again and again proved that she is wise to satisfy any reasonable desire, whether for the spiritual, bodily or mental contributions to her growing child’s requirements or those which would strengthen her own power of supporting that child.

Fortunate indeed is the husband of the best, well-balanced and developed mother-to-be, who with intense emotion shares with him in the closest and most exquisite intimacy, the creating of a life which has every prospect of adding beauty and strength to the world.

CHAPTER XIII
The Procession of the Months

At first invisible, with no outer changes to indicate the vital internal processes, from the moment of conception an intense activity has begun within the mother. Sometimes women are aware of the actual moment of conception, and faintly perceive for the first two or three days sensations too delicate to be called pain and yet intense and penetrating as though of the lightest touch upon the inward and most sensitive consciousness. I have read reports of women, and know one personally, who felt the process of conception, although this will probably be generally received with incredulity. The majority of people are less completely cognisant of the voices of their own organism, and perhaps for two or three months are almost unaware that anything different from the usual course of their life is taking place.

If, as seems to me unquestionably the best and happiest relation, the man and woman who are creating a child are doing so deliberately, consciously and with acute interest, a mutual knowledge of the principal stages through which their child passes should add greatly to their interest and the intensity of their feeling.

From the first moment of its conception, indeed often for months before this has been possible, their child is to the loving pair a living entity of whom they may speak.

The active egg cell, which is ready for fertilization, is produced in one or other of the two ovaries, which lie internally and cannot be touched or reached in any way without operating upon the mother; they have no direct contact with the outer world. These two ovaries each communicate with the central chamber, which is called the womb or uterus and this is a strong muscular organ, into the walls of which the attachment of the minute embryo fastens, and within this chamber the growing embryo gradually fills the space reserved for it. The womb or uterus has a connection with the outer world through the lower mouth called the os, which opens into the vaginal channel. This os or mouth with its rounded lip can just be felt at the end of the vaginal channel.

Fertilization consists in the actual penetration of the egg cell by the male sperm, the nuclei of which unite. As I have elsewhere described (Married Love, Chap. V) the numbers of male sperm provided in any act of union outnumber by millions those actually required, because for each single fertilization one egg cell combines with one sperm cell. The egg cell or ovum is very large in comparison with a single sperm; nevertheless it is itself a minute, almost invisible protoplasmic speck, measuring rather less than 1/120th of an inch in diameter, and roughly spherical in its shape—a minute pellet of jelly-like protoplasm with a concentrated centre or nucleus. The single sperm which unites with it is a still more minute fleck, and is little more than a nucleus with a film of protoplasm round it, and a long cilium or hair-like continuation which it lashes to and fro, and thus propels itself or swims towards the egg cell. Judging by analogy, it leaves this tail outside the egg cell on the mutual fusion. The nucleus of the sperm and of the egg unite in a very complex and precise manner. In other organisms, and probably also in human beings, the entry of a single sperm to the egg cell shuts out the possibility of other sperms fusing with them, because directly it has been fertilized, the egg cell exudes a film of substance which antagonizes the other sperms, and which ultimately forms a filmy skin around itself.

From the moment of the fusion of the nuclei of the male and female cells, active changes and nuclear divisions are in progress. The egg cell, which is free, travels slowly to the allotted place in the womb or uterus of the mother, and there it settles down in the tissue of the wall and attaches itself. Until it has attached itself firmly to the wall of the uterus, conception proper has not finally taken place, and a fertilized egg cell may be lost through want of a capacity to attach itself to the womb, or through some nervous or other disturbance of the walls of the womb, which throw it off after it has been attached. The distinction between the actual moment of fertilization (or union of the male and female nuclei) and of the final attachment which secures true conception is an important one, though frequently overlooked. Sometimes the failure to conceive a child may not at all be due to lack of fertility and readiness to unite on the part of the egg cell and sperm cell, but may be due to some nervous or other influence on the wall of the uterus, which consequently throws off the ovum before it has firmly settled into its place there.

A few days after conception, and when the ovum has attached itself to the proper place, a definite zone of tissue begins to form which, growing and altering with the growth of the tiny developing child (which is now called the embryo), forms a medium of transmission between it and the mother through which pass the substances used and excreted by the embryo in its growth.

After fertilization, intense and rapid activity takes place in the nuclei of the cells, first in the united nucleus of egg and sperm cell, and later in the nuclei of all the resulting division cells. The nucleus of the sperm cell is supposed to contain twelve chromosomes which go through a formal rearrangement and mingling with the corresponding chromosomes in the egg cell. As a result of the complete fusion and intermingling of the male and the female factors on fertilization, all the resulting divisions of cells which follow derive their nuclei partly from the male and partly from the female nucleus of the parents. Thus, if it were possible to trace the history of every tissue cell in the body of your child, we should see that each nucleus of all the myriads that compose its structure would ancestrally consist of part of the many sub-divisions of the nuclei of both father and mother. Thus to speak of one side of the body as being male in its inheritance and the other female, is the most unmitigated nonsense, though this idea formed the basis of a recent book.

The rapidity with which the first cells grow to form tissues, once they have been stimulated by union is very great, and from the ovum, which on the day of fertilization is only 1/120th of an inch in size, the growth is so rapid that it is ten times as big at the end of fourteen days. By that time the length is one-twelfth of an inch, and it weighs one grain. By the thirtieth day the tiny embryo is already one-third of an inch big, and were it practicable, which, of course, it is not, to remove it living from its bed of tissue in the mother’s womb and examine it, even with the naked eye, and still more with a magnifying glass, it would be possible to see the rudiments of the legs, head and arms which are to be.

By the fortieth day the embryo is about one inch in length, and the shape of the child, which it is to be, is quite clearly visible. Dark points are to be seen where later it will have eyes, nose and mouth, and there is already a hint of its backbone.

Meanwhile, as may be realized, although to have grown in forty days to the size of an inch from a minute speck 1/120th part of an inch is a great and rapid achievement, nevertheless the existence of a thing one inch big within her makes little outer difference to the mother, and all the earlier weeks and months of the growth of this tiny organism do not yet take more visible effect on the mother’s body than to enhance its contour. After the first child this effect is less noticeable, and a woman may be unaware that she is about to become a mother. The first sign in a really healthy woman generally is in the form of her breasts, which sometimes begin to enlarge by the second or third week. It is said that the more healthy and perfectly fitted for motherhood a woman is, the sooner her breasts show signs of the effect of the developing embryo but, particularly with a woman who has already borne a child, there may be no external sign until at least three months have passed.

By the sixth week, the limbs and most essential parts of the child are apparent, and there are the minute indications of the beginning of its future sex organs. It is evident, therefore, that if there is any desire to control the sex of the coming child, it is already too late by the sixth week to do anything, were it ever possible reliably to control sex at any time. It is, therefore, apparent that any passionate desire for a child of one or the other sex which the mother may indulge in when she knows she is about to be a mother, say by the third or fourth month, is futile. It may also be injurious (see Chapter XIV).

By the second month, nearly all the parts are fully apparent, even the eyelids are visible in the embryo and a tiny nose begins to project; fingers and toes can be seen, and some centres of bone begin to harden, as for instance, in the ribs.

By the third month the embryo reaches an average length of three or more inches, and weighs on an average about 2½ ounces. In this month the sex organs of the future baby are rapidly developing, and indeed are rather unduly prominent in proportion to the other parts which enlarge relatively later.

Between the third and the fourth month, or often not till a little after the fourth month, the active muscular movements of the embryo’s limbs can be felt by the mother. The experience of this, like the consciousness of the moment of conception, depends very much upon the sensitiveness and delicate balance of the mother’s conscious control of herself.

Some are insensitively, though perhaps comfortably, unaware of what is going on in their systems; others are conscious, not of what is properly going on, but of what is going wrong in their systems owing to disease or maladjustment; but there are others who, in perfect health, are yet so acutely sensitive and conscious that they can at will detect, as it were, the condition of their whole organs. Such women as these will sooner feel the active movements of the embryo than those who are less perceptive. As a rule, medical practitioners estimate that about half-way between the date of conception and the date of birth, which should be a full nine calendar months, that is to say about 4½ months from the date of conception, muscular movements of the child are detectable and distinct.

In the third month, however, some women are conscious of the most delicate fluttering sensation.

By the end of the third month, a definite enlargement of the mother’s body becomes visible, because not only the actual child within her has to be accounted for in the space among her organs, but all the accessory growth of the chamber which accommodates the child in the womb has to find its place, the womb growing rapidly and containing not only the child, but the large amount of fluid by which the child is surrounded, and in which it partly floats. The visible changes in the mother to some extent depend on the proportion of this fluid which develops, some having much more than others, and it is to this rather than to the actual size of the child for the first four or five months that any outward change is due.

About the end of the third month the soft and cartilaginous beginnings of the vertebral column begin to harden in various centres, and afterwards the hardening of the bones (or ossification) slowly spreads throughout the whole skeletal system. For some other bones in the body, however, the hardening is not fully completed by the time of birth.

By the fifth month, the child weighs six to eight ounces, and is from seven to nine inches long. By this time its movements are very active and almost continuous except when it sleeps. It should be trained to sleep at the same time as its mother, and thus give her rest. My phrase “it should be trained to sleep” may arouse incredulous smiles from medical men, even from mothers who have borne children, but it is not impossible to train a child even so young as an unborn embryo, strange as it may sound. From about this month (the fifth) to the time of birth, the child appears to have a strong and definite personality, and sometimes, in some strange and subtle way, it seems possible to communicate with it. If there is that sweet and intense intimacy between mother and father which there should be if the full beauty of parenthood is to be realized, the child is apparently to some extent conscious of the nearness of its father, and I know at least of one or two couples who spoke to their coming child as though it were present, and who, by a touch of the hand could to some extent control and soothe it so that it would sleep during the night when the mother desired to sleep.

About the fifth month the actual nails begin to grow, although the local preparations for their growth took place much earlier.

After the fifth month, the child grows rapidly in weight, in the sixth month weighing nearly two pounds and during the seventh nearly three.

If it is placed in the best possible position, its head would be directed downwards, and it should be lying so that its arms and legs are tucked in much as a kitten curls up when it is asleep. It will move, however, sometimes completely round, entirely altering its position.

By the eighth month it weighs about four pounds and averages perhaps sixteen inches or so long. It should by this time be very active, so that its movements are not only strongly felt by the mother, but are externally quite perceptible.

By the ninth month, at birth, the child weighs between six and eight or more pounds. It is better for the mother that it should not be too heavy, as, unless she is a large and strongly built woman, the actual weight of the child becomes a great strain upon her, however strong she may be.

A child may be born during the seventh month, and children born during the seventh month live and have sometimes even grown up learned and important men. Sir Isaac Newton is an illustration of a premature child. Usually, however, a seventh month infant is terribly handicapped; its skin is not yet fully developed, and in many respects it is quite unfitted to face the world.

Many claims are made that a child is seven months at birth which are based on the mis-counting of the date of conception or a desire to conceal a pre-marital conception. When one is shown, as one sometimes is, a bouncing, healthy, ordinary baby, and told that it was “a very forward seven months child,” those who know can only smile or sigh, according to the circumstances, for an ordinary, healthy, bouncing baby with nails and well formed skin has never yet been generated in seven months.

The seventh month is the time of greatest danger for a late miscarriage, and many have been the disappointments of parents who ardently desired a child, but who lost it through premature birth at the seventh month. I have often wished to know why this should be so, and have found no satisfactory answer or indication of any scientific reason for this, but when revolving all the possibilities of ancestral reminiscence, it occurred to me that possibly our earlier ancestors, ancestors in fact so early as to be scarcely human, were born at the seventh month. I was, therefore, interested to find that for some of the monkeys seven months is the date of normal birth. Possibly some such ancestral characteristic may make the seventh month a critical time in the development of the human embryo, a time when it inherits the reminiscence of the possibility of separating itself from its mother and coming into the outer world.

The times, moreover, when birth is most liable are those few days in each month which correspond to the regular menstrual flow in the woman, the periods which would have taken place at each twenty-eight days had not the child been developing. It is, therefore, often desirable, particularly for the later months, for the woman to take one or two days of complete rest, or even to remain in bed during that dangerous day or two, so as to minimize the possibility of a miscarriage.

The same applies of course to some extent to the eighth month, but curiously enough, miscarriages in the eighth month appear to be less frequent. It is also popularly said that it is more difficult to rear a child born in the eighth month than one born in the seventh, though this does not appear to be true.

The last week or two of the child’s antenatal existence are used by it in finishing itself off; growing its tiny shell-like nails, losing the downy hair which covered its body earlier in its existence, and in a sense preparing itself, and particularly its skin, for contact with the outer world which is to come. Its movements are very active, and if it is in the most perfect position, the head tends to sink deep down towards the canal approaching the circle of bone through which it will have to pass (see Chapter II).

The question is often asked as to which is the time when the embryo is most sensitive to outward impressions, but as yet there is no sufficient body of evidence to show that at any particular time more than another (unless it be on the actual day of conception, see Chapter II) is the power of influence greater than any other.

Is it possible to pre-arrange, to determine the sex of the child which is voluntarily conceived? Since earliest human experiences have been recorded, this has formed the theme of some writers and thinkers, and a variety of opinions have been expressed, theories propounded, and rules for the production of a girl or boy at will have been given. Each of the views, however, still remains far from being established, and damaging exceptions may be found to every theoretic rule. The impartial observer must feel that we are still unable to control the sex of the child.

There are three main theories on this subject: (a) one is that the nature of the child which will be produced is already pre-determined in the ovum and sperm cell before they have united; (b) the second theory is that the critical moment which settles the sex of the future offspring is the moment of fertilization and the changes in the nucleus immediately resulting from it; (c) and the third theory is based on the view that the differentiation of the organs, which makes the difference in sex, take place at some stage in the embryo’s development after it is already a many-celled organism.

The first named theory lies behind the advice which varies around the theme that according to whether the conception takes place from the egg cell grown in the right or the left ovary and testicle so will the child be a boy or a girl. Instances of the desired child proving to be of the sex “arranged for” by following out some such methods are of comparatively frequent occurrence, but to the scientist are completely counter-balanced by other and negative results.

The second and third theories do not offer the same explicit application in practical advice. But all the practical advice, on whatever basis it is builded, appears to me to be laid on insecure foundations. In my opinion, the complexities of the factors which determine sex are such that it depends much less on the outward and visible nutrition of the mother, than on the inner and almost inscrutable quality of the nutrition of the ovum and spermatozoon before and immediately after fertilization has taken place.

That sex, even in some vertebrate creatures is actually controllable through nutrition can be easily demonstrated with a batch of frogs’ eggs. These can be divided into two portions and by simple differences in the feeding of the young tadpoles male or female frogs can be obtained; the richly nourished ones produce the female frogs, those on sparser diet the male. The human embryo, however, developing in and through its mother, will depend to some extent on her diet, but in a much less direct way, for, as all know, the actual nutrition of the system does not depend merely on the quantity and valuable nature of the food taken into the mouth; it depends equally or even more on the digestive power, on the circulatory system, even on the mentality of the person who eats, and to add still further to the complexity, the tissues and organs of one part of the body may be receiving fully sufficient nutriment, while owing to some hindrance or difficulty some other tissues may be wasting and under-nourished. It is consequently necessary before we can theorize, to determine, even in the healthiest woman, whether or no a very rich and abundant nutriment is reaching the developing embryo in its earliest and most critical days, for, on the other hand, just in this critical time, a woman relatively ill-fed and in relatively poorer health may be digesting her simple diet well and may be so stimulated as to provide for the minute developing embryo a richer and more nutritious environment than her better fed sister. Consequently, even if, as I incline to believe, the pre-determination of sex depends on the nutriment procurable by the early dividing cells of the embryo, it is still almost beyond the realm of scientific investigation or of human control to determine whether or not the embryo is surrounded with such stimulating food as will produce a girl, or the rather sparser diet which will produce a boy.

CHAPTER XIV
Prenatal Influence

On the power of the mother directly to influence her child while it is still unborn, diametrically opposite opinions have been expressed, and without exaggeration I think one may safely say that the tendency of biological science has been to scout the idea as “old wives’ tales” and incredible superstition. Fortunate indeed it is that though our immature and often blundering science has in many ways permeated and influenced our lives, yet this denial of profound truth by those incapable of handling it in the true terms of science, has not entirely barred this avenue of power to the mother. Fortunately there are innumerable children who owe their physical and spiritual well-being to the profound racial knowledge still dormant in the true woman. As I said when I touched upon this question in Married Love:—

Alfred Russel Wallace, the great naturalist and co-discoverer with Darwin of the principle of Evolution, was in many respects a pioneer of unusual foresight and penetrating observation, who thought that the transmission of mental influence from the mother to the child was neither impossible nor even very improbable. In 1893 he published a long letter detailing cases, which he prefaced by saying:—

Yet this suggestive pronouncement of the world-famous naturalist has never been seriously followed up by scientists.

I think the time is now ripe for a definite statement that: The view that the pregnant woman can and does influence the mental states of the future child is to-day a scientific hypothesis which may be shortly proved. I make this definite statement, in conjunction with the cognate and illuminating facts from other fields of research, a few of which are discussed in the following pages.

That our mental states can affect, not only our spirits and our points of view, but actually the physical structure of our bodies, is demonstrable in a hundred different ways, and appears either to be proved or merely suggested according to the bias and temperament of the one to whom the demonstration is made. But there is one at least of these physical correlations which can be demonstrated with scientific thoroughness, and which proves beyond doubt that the mental state of the mother has a reaction upon her infant even after it has severed its physical connection with her, and is a baby of a few months old. This fact is that a nursing mother who is subjected to a violent shock which results in a paroxysm of temper or of terror in her own mind, conveys the physical result of this to her infant when next she nurses it, so that the child has either an attack of indigestion or a fit. The effect of the mother’s mental state is transmitted by the influence on the milk, the chemical composition of which is subtly altered by her nervous paroxysm, and which thus acts as a poison to the infant.

A much more subtle and closer correlation must exist between the mother’s mental states and the child when it is still not yet free and independent in the outer environment of the world but while it finds in her body its entire environment, its protection and the resources out of which it is building its own structure, while the blood and the tissues of her body form its whole world, while through them and through them alone can it obtain all its nourishment.

True, the result of the mental state of the mother which we can see is, apparently, merely the physical result on the child’s digestion of the milk which has become poisoned: but to stop at this point like a jibbing mule, and to refuse to take the further step in the argument because the child is yet too young for us to understand its resulting mental states, which reason indicates must be correlated with its poisoned digestive system, is to defraud the mind of the logical conclusion of a sequence of ideas.

The argument is as follows:—

(a) The mother’s intense mental experience and consequent nervous paroxysm has a physical result upon the composition of her milk (presumably, therefore, upon other portions of her body, though this is irrelevant for the moment);

(b) This physically altered milk has a physical effect upon the infant who shows other and more extreme forms of physical distress;

(c) This physical distress must obviously to some greater or lesser degree, affect the child’s nervous system; and (which is the point where the old-fashioned will break off);

(d) Consequently the child’s mental state will be affected—although it is too young to translate this into conscious forms.

Were I to make this the main thesis of my book, examples of the effect of mental states on bodily functions could be readily multiplied, and illustrations drawn from facts quoted in other connections could be found in a great number of medical works. I here bring together a few which when placed in juxtaposition offer if not proof, yet such strong support of my theme as to place it in the realm of the scientifically ascertainable. For instance, Blair Bell in The Sex Complex, 1916, says:—