The effects of the conditions we have described and of the causes which produce them can be conveniently grouped under three heads. They concern, first the woman herself, secondly the children borne by her, thirdly the children that remain unborn of her. So far we have deliberately insisted only upon the evil effects upon the women themselves, and it still remains to insist upon them. The disastrous results of maternal ill-health and overwork upon the children cannot be exaggerated, but in the contemplation of them, people are too apt to forget that the mother herself is an individual with the right to “equality of opportunity,” which is the right as a human being to be given the opportunity of understanding and enjoying those things which alone make life tolerable to humanity.
It was perhaps inevitable that the mother should have been publicly overlooked, for the isolation of women in married life has, up to now, prevented any common expression of their needs. They have been hidden behind the curtain which falls after marriage, the curtain which women are now themselves raising.
The general effect upon women is the useless suffering inflicted upon them, and one of the chief causes of this is undoubtedly excessive childbearing. This evil is directly due to those semi-civilised notions which were touched upon above, and though, as we shall see when we deal with the decline of the birth-rate, nature is taking her own way of reacting against it, it still exists. We would draw attention to the conditions disclosed in such letters as 1, 20, 36, and 71. In the first case we find a woman married at nineteen having 11 children and 2 miscarriages in 20 years, her husband’s wages being 20s. a week. In the second case there are 5 children and one miscarriage in 9 years; in the third 5 children and 5 miscarriages in 12-1/2 years; and in the fourth 9 children and 1 miscarriage in 24 years. These cases have been taken more or less at random, and nothing could be more significant than the bare fact that out of 386 women who have written these letters, 348 have had 1,396 live children, 83 still-births, and 218 miscarriages. These figures speak for themselves: the mere physical strain of pregnancy and childbirth succeeding each other with scarcely an interval for ten or twenty years renders a healthy bodily and intellectual life impossible. And when the additional strain of insufficient means and incessant labour are added, the suffering which becomes the daily concomitant of life is unimaginable to those who are born in the more fortunate classes of society.