before its time of fruition. There are very many girls who would have had quite a healthy and natural fondness for babies, but who have had the feeling literally worn out by premature exercise or by sentimental pawing. A girl-child is not a small woman, and just as we should all disapprove any attempt to make "little fathers" of the boys, so we should disapprove the unhealthy endeavour to make "little mothers" of the girls. If there is something pathetic about the small girl drudge, stunted with carrying about heavy babies, there is something peculiarly offensive about the prim little girl who rebukes her brothers for tearing their clothes or dirtying their hands, when she ought herself to be likewise engaged.
From the Census reports it appears that in England and Wales there are nearly three and a half million spinsters over twenty years of age; many of these will never marry, and the cruelty of bringing them up to a vocation, which they will never be called upon to fulfil, should be repugnant to all decent feeling, even if it would not in itself constitute a danger. Such considerations do not trouble the sciolist with a theory to run, for he calls the maidens a "superfluous portion of the population," or "waste products of our female population,"[1] and proceeds to talk as if they could be set aside. But this piece of Podsnappery would bring its own punishment, if it were widely adopted, for undoubtedly the parasitic woman would be,
- ↑ Sex Antagonism, by Walter Heape, F.R.S.
