safely to maturity. Everything else a woman could call her own becomes secondary to this impulse in the maternal woman. As you saw in the normal woman, there are checks and balances within the female personality which prevent her from making a psychological martyr of herself to the point where she would be a detriment to her children, but at this time I should like to make a different point.
I have said that the maternal instinct is more powerful than the instinct for self-preservation. I ask you to imagine for a moment how easily this characteristic of women could frighten a young girl if the experience of pregnancy or the role of the mother is presented to her in an improper way. She will react with acute anxiety, fear, rather than with joyful anticipation. This anxiety will color in dark hues though will not overwhelm her desire and determination to have babies. It will tend to take all the pleasure out of her sex life, however; it will tend strongly to make her frigid. And it will tend to make her a less effective mother, even a very poor one indeed.
The biological role of woman is motherhood. If a woman cannot dare to accept this aspect of her destiny, she will be deeply defeated in her life. From any standpoint one wishes to look at the maternal role, it is a great and beautiful one, embodying in it and giving expression to qualities that are universally admired and cultivated: nobility, the sacrifice of self, fortitude, love that passeth understanding.
The depreciation of motherhood in any sense whatsoever in the mind of a young girl is a crime against her if one is in a position to be influential with her. To fill her with fears, misunderstandings, resentments of and reservations about her historic role is to cut her off from full flowering as a woman. The ability of woman to have an orgasm, her deepest form of relatedness to man, is planted rather lightly in biological soil, as we saw in the first section of this chapter.
